VPT 421: Veterinary Toxicology (2+0)

INCIDENTS OF IMPORTANCE IN HISTORY OF TOXICOLOGY

• The early cave dwellers recognized poisonous plants and animals and used their extracts for hunting or in warfare.
• By 1500 B.C, written recordings like Ebers papyrus indicated that hemlock, opium, arrow poisons and certain metals were used to poison enemies or for state executions.
• Poisons such as arsenic, aconite and opium were also known to Hindu medicine as recorded in the Vedas.
• The ancient Chinese used aconite as an arrow poison.
• Greeks, Romans and Italians used poison for execution and murder of their political opponents.
• Socrates was charged with religious heresy and corrupting the morals of local youth and was executed with  extract of hemlock (Conium maculatum) and Greeks recognized hemlock as the state poison. The active chemical in hemlock was the alkaloid coniine which, when ingested causes paralysis, convulsions and eventually death.

Socrates drinking poison hemlock

• Demosthenes committed suicide by consuming a poison hidden in his pen.
• Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt experimented with strychnine and other poisons on prisoners and poor. She committed suicide with Egyptian Asp (Egyptian cobra sometimes used in executions).

Cleopatra - Queen of Egypt
(69-30 BC)

• King Nero used poisons to eliminate his stepbrother Brittanicus and employed his slaves as food tasters to differentiate edible mushrooms from their more poisonous kin.
• King Mithridates VI of Pontus, was afraid that he would be assassinated by his enemies. He used his prisoners as guinea pigs to test the poisons. He started taking antidotes for many poisons. He consumed a mixture containing about 36 ingredients. But, when he was caught by his enemies and wanted to commit suicide, he could not do so and he took the help of one of his slaves to stab himself to death. The term mithridatic (meaning antidote) is derived from his name.

Mithridates

• A lady named Toffana prepared arsenic containing perfumes and such cosmetics were named as Aqua toffana. These perfumes were used to kill enemies.
• In France, a lady named Catherine de Medici along with Marchioners de Brinvillen used most effective poisons in the name of providing treatment to sick and poor people. Later she was imprisoned for killing 2000 infants.