I need a fast-acting (close to instant) ingested poison available in Europe or Australia in the mid-1880's. Failing that I have to have a protracted dinner scene or invent some rare thing from the Outback.
I've been researching till my eyes cross, and I know that some of our members are a vast treasure house of trivia.
Aaaactually I have no clue...
[This message has been edited by TheoPhileo (edited July 17, 2004).]
1. Curare- a preparation made from the toxic skin of the Poison Dart Frogs by natives of America. It's preparation was observed by Sir Walter Raleigh and several others around 1807 and earlier. The problem is, it doesn't work ingested, though it takes only a small amount. I'd say that a small amount applied to a small barb/hook hidden in food would work adequately to inject the poison. Physical effects would be immediate, but actual death wouldn't take place for about 9 minutes. (death by asphixiation)
2. Tobacco (nicotine) Tabacco leaves can be soaked in the sun for several days, then the concoction is allowed to evaporate, leaving a thick black tar. The tar tastes VERY strong, but it only takes a small amount, preferably in coffee (to cover up the taste). The victim would become very hot, very stimulated, pass out very quickly, and die (most likely of heart failure) in as little as 1 minute. I say that its a little slower than curare because a person with a strong constitution might actually take 10 or 15 minutes to be "legally dead". A frail old woman or child would take only moments.
As with any poison, the amount ingested would largely affect how quickly the poison set in. Either of THESE poisons would DEBILITATE almost instantly, but wouldn't kill for several minutes. They were known, but rarely used (or hard to obtain, in the case of curare).
Curare- The victim would die of asphixiation, completely conscious until the end, with there heart continuing to beat for a short time after they were dead.
Tobacco- The victim would die of heart failure, but would fall unconscious in a swoon nearly instantly, and breakout in a hot sweat.
The story that this goes with is in Fragments and Feeback now, if you're curious.
Oops, blanked out. It's not mint. Or is it. Anyhow, that works by injestion. No idea what the symptoms are.
Damn, blanked out again (it's way too late at night sorry) Socrates?
It's one of 'em Greek dudes y'all
Ok, now I KNOW it's time for bed
[This message has been edited by Silver6 (edited July 17, 2004).]
I don't know too much about this, but maybe:
hemlock
belladonna/deadly nightshade
oleander
Not sure about preparation or timing, and suspect that you have already checked but thought I'd throw them in. I'm sure what you decide to use can be intensified (extra-strength) through preparation to make it fast-acting.
Not sure if they did champagne and kir in those days, but that might be a way to disguise a poison - a berry-based poison.
Found this:
http://www.ngia.com.au/np/pdf/2001No14.pdf
when I searched on "poison ingest victorian" just for fun. Oh yeah, what about arsenic? Any way to make a small dose fatal, other than just turning you pale?
Sounds like you'll enjoy writing this!
Lee
[This message has been edited by punahougirl84 (edited July 17, 2004).]
Atropine
Found in the belladonna plant. Very poisonous, though not as much so as aconite. Can be absorbed through the skin as well as ingested. Symptoms: Dry mouth and tongue. Difficultly swallowing. Flushed skin leading to rash on upper body. Headache leading to giddiness, hallucination, delirium. Breathing and pulse fast. Dilation of pupils is most distinctive feature - eyes look almost black. Later, signs of paralysis, then coma and death.
Cocaine
Not often used in murder. An overdose overstimulates the eart fatally.
Colchicine
Pale yellow crystals from meadow saffron. Kills in small doses. Fatal within 7 to 36 hours. Death is by paralysis of repiratory system.
Coniine
Oily liquid from hemlock. Not painful to die from it, but progressively paralyses the body until in the end heart or lungs fail. No post-mortem signs except of asphyxia.
Gelsemium
Seldom used. Symptoms are muscular weakness with slow pulse, dilated pupils. Death from respiratory failure.
Nicotine
Liquid at room temperature (the only alkaloid, along with coniine, which has this property). Yellowish oil, discolouring to dark brown in light. Poisoning usually done with insecticide, as this is where nicotine is used (only a tiny amount in cigarettes) Absorbed in skin or drunk.
Symptoms: Burning sensation in mouth. Vomiting and diarrhoea. Mental confusion and dizziness. Convulsions then death vy paralysis of respiratory system. Death is within minutes - only cyanide is quicker.
Opium and Morphine
Raw opium very seldom used as a poison as acts slowly and has a strong smell. Morphine is a white crystalline substance extracted from opium. Used as analgesic, but overdose can be fatal. Fatal dose varies but usually about 5 grams. Symptoms start within minutes. Drowsiness. Nausea. Face swollen and coloured. Patient feels cold. Cyanosis (greyness of extremities) Eyes dilate to pinpoints that don't react to light and dark (this is the most distinctive symptom). Breathing slow and noisy. Pulse slow and weak. Death is by respiratory failure.
Physostigmine
Used by some tribes as an "ordeal" poison. Causes excitement and hallucination. Overdose causes vomiting. Severe overdose interferes with heart and causes death.
Scopolamine (Hyposcine)
Naturally occurring in several plants including belladonna and henbane. Can be administered internally as well as externally. Tiny amounts can be used to treat anxiety or motion sickness. Larger doses break down ability to make reasoned judgements, so has been used as a "Truth Drug" Even larger doses cause hallucinations and floating sensation. Death is when the heart is affected.
Strychnine
Derived from a berry. Colourless solution with a very bitter taste, noticeable even in very weak solutions. Very powerful. 100 milligrams is always fatal, though much smaller doses have killed within 20 minutes.
Symptoms: Symptoms come on within 2 or 3 hours - sometimes much faster - but them proceed rapidly. Restlessless. Feeling of suffocation. Face muscles contract and victim looks as if they're grinning. This is followed by very violent and distorting contractions, followed by a period of rest, then an attack of even more violent contractions. Patient is conscious but in agony, unable to speak because of lockjaw. Pulse is incredibly high. Death is during a convulsion, from paralysis of respiratory system. Sometimes confused with tetanus or epilepsy (though different from epilepsy as person is conscious throughout.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cantharidin
Spanish fly. When crushed and rubbed on skin, causes blisters. Taken orally, a small dose results in kidney damage. Larger doses inflame mouth, throat and stomach. Vomit and urine contain blood. Headache, delirium, convulsions, leading to death.
Thanks for the link punahougirl, good stuff there. Angel Flower is particuarly appealing because of the irony of the name.
Arsenic is what's in the story right now, but it wasn't fast-acting enough for the scene I had in mind. The symptoms of Strychnine are tempting because I like the idea of them grinning at the head table, dying in front of everyone. If I can figure out a way to mask the bitter taste...
Even if the character spit it out, it'd work. Or if they just grimaced from the taste of bad champagne. . . .
I don't know if this would help, but from what I understand about it, champagne would be suitable as a trigger: nitrobenzene is a poison that used to be found in shoe polish the fumes of which could enter the skin and cause death, especially if the victim had alcohol in his/her system.
There's a story about a young man going to someone to buy a love potion that would make the young lady fall passionately and desperately in love with him. The vender kept asking him if he would also be interested in an indetectable poison, but the young man insisted he was just interested in making this girl absolutely obsessed with him and him alone.
So the vender sold him the love potion, all the while describing the virtues of his indetectable poison, even though the young man was not at all interested. When the young man left the shop, the vender told him, "See you later."
And he did.
There was an expedition (to find the North Pole, if I remember correctly) in which every man died because they were stranded, had used up their supplies, and tried to survive on the polar bear(s) they killed.
The high vitamin A levels in polar bear livers killed them off.
No antivenin back in the 1880's. Lethal.
The males are the ones that do most of the biting and are more toxic than the females.
http://arachnophiliac.co.uk/burrow/tenmostvenomous.htm
Here's a site for you to check as well.
-Bryan-
[This message has been edited by Monolith (edited July 18, 2004).]
http://www.jtbaker.com/msds/englishhtml/n4530.htm
Here's a quote from one website (http://www.destroy-all-monsters.com/fugu.shtml):
quote:
During the Meiji period, fugu was prohibited in many areas of Japan. The Tokugawa shogunate completely banned blowfish consumption, but by the mid-1800's it had returned as the government's power over the people waned.
Also, concerning poisonous critters in Australia, Australia is home to eight of the ten deadliest snakes in the world.
http://www.spaink.net/suicide/suicide_poison_natural.html
[This message has been edited by shadowynd (edited July 18, 2004).]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs
http://members.tripod.com/~Prof_Anil_Aggrawal/poiso026.html
http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/toxicagents/toxagent.html
>>I need a fast-acting (close to instant) ingested poison available in Europe or Australia in the mid-1880's. Failing that I have to have a protracted dinner scene or invent some rare thing from the Outback.<<
Does it have to be the poison that does the killing? Why not a poison that immediately causes hallucinations that result in the character doing something spectacularly stupid and deadly? (such as eating a polar bear pancreas, or gizzard or whatever that body part was) Such as trying to demonstrate that facial rouge protects against gunshots?
So does Desenex, but most people just don't believe in it... they keep putting it on their feet!!
What clowns.
I'm loving this discussion.
Want to know?
Glass blowers use arsenic to create an opalescent sheen in glass. If you combine arsenic with any number of things, some of which are found in champagne, you get arsine gas. And alcohol can leach the arsenic from the glass. Even a tiny dose is fatal.
quote:
Isn't Potassium fatal in large amounts?
Everything's fatal in large amounts. But I can't find an LD50 for potassium listed in any of my usual sources, so I don't know exactly how much you'd need to take before it was poisonous. I'd expect that more than about 10 grams at a time would be risky.
Potassium chloride (KCl) is a metal halide
which is used in medicine, scientific applications, food processing and in judicial execution through lethal injection
It occurs naturally as the mineral
sylvite and in combination with sodium chloride as sylvinite.
Orally it is toxic, but the LD50 is around 2500 mg/kg. Intravenously this is reduced to just over 100 mg/kg but of more concern are its severe effects on cardiac muscles; high doses can cause cardiac arrest and rapid death.
[This message has been edited by mikemunsil (edited July 21, 2004).]
[This message has been edited by mikemunsil (edited July 21, 2004).]
There are disadvantages to having a husband in the wine industry. This is a piece of fashion inforation that I would be just as happy not knowing right now.
Cyanogen is a very deadly poison, a grain of its potassium salt touched to the tongue being sufficient to cause instant death," The New York Times reported on Feb. 8, 1910. If Earth were to pass through Halley's tail, an astronomer predicted, "the cyanogen gas would impregnate the atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet.
It is (I think) the world's most venemous snake.
Jon
Cyanide isn't tasteless or odorless (though a significant fraction of the population can't smell the gas), but it is a pretty darn good poison.
And a good point on slow acting poisons. It really would be a lot better to kill somebody with a slow poison than a fast one. Many substances fit this bill, too.
There is a poisonous Australian frog, commonly called the Southern Corroboree Frog (its scientific designation is Pseudophryne corroboree), that manufactures its own alkaloid toxin by eating specific insects and secretes said substance from glands in the skin. This particular class of alkaloid has been labeled ‘pseudophrynamine’ after the frog’s genus. The pseudophrynamines were recently found to be efficient blockers of nicotinic receptors (biological components involved in neurological function). This and similar toxins are some of the most powerful cardiotoxins known to man. The venom is neurotoxic as well as myotoxic, and is curare-like in effect, causing irreversible blockage of neuromuscular signal transmission.
Alkaloids, complex organic compounds of nitrogen, have many forms, including strychnine, morphine, quinine, cocaine, and nicotine. Apparently, many alkaloids also come from plants.
This excerpt from the Australian Department of the Environment and Heritage details the frog’s habitat (which might come in handy if you need to write a scene where the toxin is ‘harvested’):
quote:
The nationally endangered Southern Corroboree Frog has an extremely limited distribution, restricted to sub-alpine areas in the Australian Capital Territory and Kosciuszko National Park in the south of New South Wales. The species is only found at high altitudes within an area of about 400 square kilometres. The Southern Corroboree Frog uses two distinct types of habitat during its lifecycle: pools, wet tussock grass and wet heath for breeding; and forest, sub-alpine woodland and tall heath next to the breeding areas during other times of the year.Females only breed once a year, and the tadpoles are slow growing, spending over six months in shallow pools. Its restricted habitat and specialised breeding pattern makes this species extremely vulnerable to disturbance.
Bear in mind that this is current habitat information. I’m not sure how much (if any) change has occurred since the late 19th century. I would hazard a guess that this particular type of frog was far more plentiful in the 1880s...before modern pollution and encroachment of habitat (as well as other currently unknown causes) pointed this species toward the trail of critical endangerment, where it finds itself today.
Another viable (and more clinically specific) alternative to using frog venom would be this:
quote:
From http://www.famie.com/australia/mostunusual_mostdangerous.htm (a site which describes some of Australia’s most dangerous animals)The Blue-Ringed Octopus is another one of the smaller, but more deadly marine animals that inhabit the coastal waters around Australia. The blue-ringed octopus is normally light in color, with dark brown bands over its eight arms and body, with blue circles superimposed on these dark brown bands. When the octopus is disturbed or taken out of the water, the colors darken and the rings turn a brilliant electric-blue color, and it is this color change that gives the animal its name. The blue-ringed octopus secretes a very deadly poison, either by biting with its parrot-like beak, or by squirting the poison into the water surrounding it.
The direct bite from the blue-ringed octopus is usually painless, but the deadly effects of the poison will be noticed immediately. The poison apparently interferes with the body's nervous system. The victim will immediately experience numbness of the mouth and tongue, blurring of vision, loss of touch, difficulty with speech and swallowing, and paralysis of the legs and nausea. If the victim does not receive medical treatment immediately, full paralysis may occur within minutes, followed by unconsciousness and death due to heart failure and lack of oxygen. There is no antivenom for the poison from a blue-ringed octopus. It is usually necessary to perform continuous CPR on a victim until the effects of the venom have subsided. This may take several hours, but it may mean the difference between life or death for the victim.
Hope some of this helps (if you don’t go cross-eyed reading it all!)
Inkwell
------------------
"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous
Also, check this out:
quote:
Suicide tree' toxin is 'perfect' murder weapon
15:56 26 November 04
Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. Subscribe and get 4 free issues.
A plant dubbed the suicide tree kills many more people in Indian communities than was previously thought. The warning comes from forensic toxicologists in India and France who have conducted a review of deaths caused by plant-derived poisons.
Cerbera odollam, which grows across India and south-east Asia, is used by more people to commit suicide than any other plant, the toxicologists say. But they also warn that doctors, pathologists and coroners are failing to detect how often it is used to murder people.
A team led by Yvan Gaillard of the Laboratory of Analytical Toxicology in La Voulte-sur-Rhône, France, documented more than 500 cases of fatal Cerbera poisoning between 1989 and 1999 in the south-west Indian state of Kerala alone. Half of Kerala’s plant poisoning deaths, and one in 10 of all fatal poisonings, are put down to Cerbera.
But the true number of deaths due to Cerbera poisoning in Kerala could be twice that, the team estimates, as poisonings are difficult to identify by conventional means.
Unnoticed homicidesUsing high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry to examine autopsy tissues for traces of the plant, the team uncovered a number of homicides that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. This also suggests that some cases put down to suicide may actually have been murders, they say.
Although the kernels of the tree have a bitter taste, this can be disguised if they are crushed and mixed with spicy food. They contain a potent heart toxin called cerberin, similar in structure to digoxin, found in the foxglove.Digoxin kills by blocking calcium ion channels in heart muscles, which disrupts the heartbeat. But while foxglove poisoning is well known to western toxicologists, Gaillard says pathologists would not be able to identify Cerbera poisoning unless there is evidence the victim had eaten the plant. “It is the perfect murder,” he says.
Three-quarters of Cerbera victims are women. The team says that this may mean the plant is being used to kill young wives who do not meet the exacting standards of some Indian families. It is also likely that many cases of homicide using the plant go unnoticed in countries where it does not grow naturally.
Journal reference: Journal of Ethnopharmacology (vol 95, p 123)
Another one was a seed, and I will have to go home and find the reference, but it was swallowed whole to induce an abortion. However, if you picked the wrong one or the outer covering of the seed was damaged and dissolved too quickly in your stomach you were a goner. They say between 30 - 50 percent of those who took the seed died as a result. It was quick, but I will find you the reference. They also used it as a decoration for ceremonial clubs and spears etc. It is red and black and shiny and very pretty, We used to have it growing at my school.
quote:
We used to have it growing at my school.
Just out of sheer curiosity, how did the teachers fare? Ran through a lot of them, did you?
So your brain can't tell your muscles to work, your heart to beat, your lungs to breathe...etc
[This message has been edited by Kickle (edited May 13, 2005).]
[This message has been edited by Kickle (edited May 13, 2005).]
http://members.tripod.com/~Prof_Anil_Aggrawal/poiso026.html
The thing about arsenic and glass is that arsenic is used to create a opalescent finish. It's actually mixed in with the glass, rather than being a layer of pigment.
One common form of poisoning then was not really poisoning but feeding contaminated foods such as eggs left in the sun, blood smeared on utensils and dishes, diseased animal parts mixed in with food and most vile mixing in sewage, wound drainage, or corpse meat. The practice of harvesting corpses for nefarious purposes was a problem worldwide and still is in some countries. In the USA Mississippi and Lousianna still have many cases of grave tampering. Death by what would be intentional food posioning would be very hard to prove and may take some time to achieve death. Although botulism was much more deadly in those days before we had readily designed medical treatments which are for the most part successful. Then one had to obtain a doctor to come by the house. if your poisoner was the same person who would get the doctor- oh well the victim was most likely doomed.
Another very common practice was placing glass, fibres, pieces of metal etc. There is a method today that is very quick. For example something that seems so harmless: Dietary fibre supplement powders mixed incorrectly (too little water) can choke one to death rather quickly. The mix when not accompanied by sufficent fluids swells rapidly filling the throat and part of sinuses blocking the airway- thus suffocating the victim. Which is why you never leave that stuff anywhere near children!
just some thoughts.
JB Skaggs
quote:
Dietary fibre supplement powders mixed incorrectly (too little water) can choke one to death rather quickly. The mix when not accompanied by sufficent fluids swells rapidly filling the throat and part of sinuses blocking the airway- thus suffocating the victim. Which is why you never leave that stuff anywhere near children!
Yikes! I suppose this in an instance where having a diet with plenty of natural fibre would be ideal, thus eliminating the need for supplements. "Pass the prunes, love!"
I also want to kill a character and I'm wondering if anyone knows how much tobacco is fatal(both by smoke inhalation and skin or mucous membrane absorption)in less than fifteen minutes.
Good luck, y'all with your writing!
[This message has been edited by Calfin (edited October 15, 2006).]
Salt is a hard to trace poison too.
In Southaven, MS a little known story of a male nurse injecting Puss into a patient happened around 1994. It may have been urban fantasy but I was told by a surgical nurse at the hospital there that they had nurse doing that and had him arrested.
I just tried that in Google and found what looks like a nice list of sites including ones like this:
http://www.oklahomapoison.org/prevention/nicotine.asp
Just a (scary) thought.
Inkwell
-----------------
"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous
I ran across this link not too long ago. Not entirely about poisons, but a lot of really obscure and useful native and aboriginal herbal treatments.
Ethnobotanical and Native Herbal Treatments
http://www.siu.edu/~ebl/
The really scary thing...um, I don't know.
quote:
The book, "Striking Back," ... author Aaron Klein describes how Israel tracked down Wadia Haddad, an operative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, in Baghdad. ...In Baghdad of 1977, luxuries like fine chocolates were rare. Through a Palestinian working with the Mossad who had gotten close to Haddad, the agency was able to feed Haddad chocolate brought from Belgium and spread with poison over six months, Klein said.Haddad died in March 1978, showing only symptoms of leukemia but no signs of poisoning...
Not the fast-acting poison the initial thread questioner sought, but an interesting one nonetheless.
But death by chocolate?... man, that method would sure work on me, should I ever piss someone off....
However, you might wish to investigate the ever popular method of offing someone with poisonous mushrooms. One in particular, is a member of the Amanita group and named, appropriately, "Destroying Angel." I once read that one of these mushrooms is so quick that by the time they have figured out what you ate that is making you sick, it is already too late. Eating one of these little beauties is tantamount to suicide.
Plutonium has been named the most toxic substance, but not suitable for what you are doing. However, another substance is right up there for such honors, ranking second and actually first for something not giving off radiation. I think you should take a close look at ricin = generally considered the most lethal substance known.
- Takes only a few hundred micrograms to kill you
- Can be administered just about any way (in food, by injection, by just spraying someone with it or releasing it into the air)
- No widely-available, reliable test exists to detect it
- Always fatal with sufficient dosage
- No antidote: best known treatment is to treat symptoms and hope the patient doesn't die before ricin is flushed (3-5 days)
It's slow-acting (disrupts protein production) and non-persistent, however, which limits its uses compared to, say, cyanide. But dang if it isn't potent!
Thus a tasteless poison with a delayed reaction would be best to kill say ... a nobleman who has a food tester. The tester would eat the food, find nothing wrong, but 45 minutes later drop dead. By then it's too late to save the noble.
Uranium, on the other hand, is proven to be extremely deadly, particularly when oxidized. Plutonium, though chemically very different, does form aqueously soluable oxides as well.
The trick of poisoning someone undetectably is to make it look like the person wasn't being poisoned. Thus, short of not killing the victim or even causing any symptoms not easily put down to mild illness, you must disguise the underlying cause of whatever debilitating effects you wish to cause. Any method of poisoning becomes detectable once you suspect poison enough to check for everything.
I would use a slightly modified inscecticide administered while the victim was driving or operating heavy machinery. There are classes of substances that will effectively "autodigest" during action, such that if no test is made for the poison within a few days of death the poison will be effectively impossible to detect. This is a marked advance over metallic based poisons, which remain in the corpse forever. But using such a substance is usually a direct lead back to the killer if it is discovered. So it is best if you can make the death look accidental.
However, I should point out that this thread started in 2004 and I've not only completed the story, but also sold it. This thread is a great reference, but don't worry about the parameters of my initial query.
Really.
I'm being serious!
Stop laughing!
Inkwell
-----------------
"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous
However, this bacterium is anaerobic (ergo, it 'grows' poorly in an oxygen atmosphere), and is difficult to produce in large quantities without specialized facilities. This also makes it extremely hard to use in an aerosol-weapon capacity, although lacing a substance (i.e., a cigarette, cigar, lollypop, inhaler, etc.) in which the bacteria could survive would solve the problem.
Another really scary thing about it is that "common nerve agent treatments (namely the injection of atropine and 2-pam-chloride) will increase mortality by enhancing botulin toxin's mechanism of toxicity."
The stuff's also been around (as a known substance) since the middle of the 19th-century, though it was not likely a 'workable' tool of assassination or weapon until the early 20th-century.
Inkwell
-----------------
"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous
[This message has been edited by Inkwell (edited May 08, 2006).]
The general idea with poisoning, after all, is to get away with it.
For poisions great and small you might want to look at "Horse Owner's Field Guide to Toxic Plants" by Sandra Burgur and Anthony P. Knight, BVCS, MS, MRCVS. It lists all known toxic plants in the United States, including symptoms of poisioning and known cures.
On Foxglove:
"Its toxic principles are saponins, alkaloids, and the cardiac glycosides ditoxin, digitalin and digoxin. When consumed it takes only a few hundredths of a percents of an animal's weight to be fatal. Toxicity is not affected by drying or aging. Signs of poisioning: Colic, bloody feces, poor appetite, pain, frequent urination. irregular heartbeat and pulse, and convulsions are possible symptoms in the horse before death."
My current favorite is:
Oleander: A woody evergreen bush, native to Asia but cultivated in the southern regions of the west coast and the Southern United States. "Cardiac glycosines, the the toxic principle, are found throughout the plant. It takes only 1 ounce of leaves to kill a large horse (1700-1800 lbs). of .0005 percent of its body weight. Do not burn this plant, as the smoke is also toxic." Signs of poisioning "diarreha, trembling, and cold extremities. Paralysis, cardiac arrest, and coma followed by death will occur if a fatal amount is ingested."
There are some plants in Namibia - Euphorbia species, IIRC - that are extremely poisonous to humans - a road-mending gang barbecued their food over a fire including some dried sticks from the plant, and 24 of them died as a result. That's nasty. On the other hand, rhinos can apparently eat it without any ill effects.
http://mason.gmu.edu/~cdyke1/projects/oleander.html
http://www.ttrotsky.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/tech/poison.htm
-----------
Wellington
[This message has been edited by kings_falcon (edited June 01, 2006).]
If you don't want to purchase a taser, then tape an egg to the center of your chest and aggravate a local police officer. Be sure to request the egg when they're checking out of the overnight lockup so that you can check on your results.
On a more general note, the higher voltage of stun guns usually causes the current to travel mostly along the skin, which is one reason they're called "stun" guns rather than "lethal heart attack" guns. However, if you stuck the probes directly into the injection site, you might overcome this to a degree.
One thing you won't overcome, stun guns are designed to deliver maximum debilitating pain for minimum tissue damage. The spark from an outboard motor ignition circuit is designed to...well, burn things rather than cause pain. It's also high voltage (and relatively low amperage), but it's...different. Unpleasant, but bearable.
If you want other means to micro-cauterize a poisoned wound, I'd try a needle and candle approach. Messy, more tissue damage than you'd really want, painful, but it beats a stun gun in my thinking.
quote:
If you don't want to purchase a taser, then tape an egg to the center of your chest and aggravate a local police officer. Be sure to request the egg when they're checking out of the overnight lockup so that you can check on your results.
J - that was way too funny.
It would also give you something to eat while you waited for them to drag the magistrate out of bed for your bond hearing.
I don't know about venom but for Oleander there is no specific treatment although the book recommends activated charcoal via stomach tube (eeeew!), IV fluids and some cardiac medications and EKG monitoring until the symptoms pass or the victim succumbs. I mean after that point it truely would be beating a dead horse. CPR on a horse is just no fun.
quote:
As...an antidote?
... to... life?
[This message has been edited by trousercuit (edited July 07, 2006).]
In the story, the guy didn't inject it into a vain or something but under
the nail of the big toe so they wouldn't discover any "injection-holes"
during autopsy.
Now is it true the coronor doesn't look for holes under the (toe)nails?
In the story the poisening was successful but i wonder in real life
would the potassium chloride be effective at all if injected under a
nail instead of directly into the bloodstream using a vain?
If you look at "forensic detectives" and other programs like that, they
always show casses where easily traceble poisons are used like Arsenic,
cyanide,nicotine and Caffeine.
But never with potassium chloride.
In my opinion this could mean it is very hard to trace and they don't want to show
it to the public.
Someone knows this stuff?
O and i just want to add i'm a "make love not war" kind of guy, but i find poisen
really intreging to talk about.
It is certainly detectable in the blood.
However, when writing a murder mystery, you can make almost anything true by having someone with authority make the statement.
I can't count the number of myths/legends make it into crime dramas as facts. Heck, for any given myth you could probably find that half of the investigators believe it to be fact.
Is that also a myth than?
ps. potassium chloride is called KCl and not KCL i believe.
[This message has been edited by Bob12 (edited August 17, 2006).]
Okay, so that L should be lowercase.
A good one would notice the high Potassium Chloride in the blood and investigate - looking everywhere for needlemarks, inlcuding under the nails.
Another might just shrug off high Potassium Chloride levels in the blood as a fluke unless there were hypothetical reasons to suspect foul play.
And what if the victim were the kind of person to have naturally high levels and the extra 100mg would throw them off the chart? If they were the kind of person to have extremely low Potassium chloride levels, it might not show up at all. -- I don't know the natural range of it, but I suspect that 100mg, even in the whole bloodstream, is high. (The natural salt in the blood is mostly NaCl but is still only in trace quantities.)
Its believable in any case, but it's not completely true.
Not everywhere in the body will be a good place to stick a needle and inject poison. Without hitting a vein, you risk putting the poison into a pocket where it is absorbed into the blood slowly - possibly so slowly that the body can process it harmlessly.
Under a toenail/fingernail sounds like a very difficult place to get it into the bloodstream effectively.
I have another one for u.
A few weeks ago i was watching "dr G medical examiner" on the Discovery channel.
She was working on a really sad case where two young children were murdered.
At first she could't find any clues at all but later she discovered that the oldest child had imprints of his teeth on the inside of his upper lip.
This ment that the child had been suffocated with a pillow or something.
The youngest child didn't have any teeth yet so dr G said that there was no proof of the younest being suffocated but because the older one was proven to be mudered, it was safe to say the young child also was suffocated, and so the killer got convicted.
But the whole story made me wonder, if it wasn't for the teethmarks, dr G said, she wouldn't have been able to solve the case.
Would this than mean that if you would knock someone out and put a plastic bag over his head and seal it of somehow, this would leave now trace of murder?
Perhaps leaving enough air in the bag so there won't be any over/under pressure and the victim can breeth normaly and dies when the oxygen runs out.
Could this be a "perfect crime" then?
A plant dubbed the suicide tree kills many more people in Indian communities than was previously
thought. The warning comes from forensic toxicologists in India and France who have conducted a
review of deaths caused by plant-derived poisons.
Cerbera odollam, which grows across India and south-east Asia, is used by more people to commit
suicide than any other plant, the toxicologists say. But they also warn that doctors, pathologists
and coroners are failing to detect how often it is used to murder people.
A team led by Yvan Gaillard of the Laboratory of Analytical Toxicology in La Voulte-sur-Rhne,
France, documented more than 500 cases of fatal Cerbera poisoning between 1989 and 1999 in the
south-west Indian state of Kerala alone. Half of Keralas plant poisoning deaths, and one in 10
of all fatal poisonings, are put down to Cerbera.
But the true number of deaths due to Cerbera poisoning in Kerala could be twice that, the team
estimates, as poisonings are difficult to identify by conventional means.
Unnoticed homicides
Using high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry to examine autopsy
tissues for traces of the plant, the team uncovered a number of homicides that would otherwise
have gone unnoticed. This also suggests that some cases put down to suicide may actually have
been murders, they say.
Although the kernels of the tree have a bitter taste, this can be disguised if they are crushed
and mixed with spicy food. They contain a potent heart toxin called cerberin, similar in structure
to digoxin, found in the foxglove.
Digoxin kills by blocking calcium ion channels in heart muscles, which disrupts the heartbeat.
But while foxglove poisoning is well known to western toxicologists, Gaillard says pathologists would not be able to identify Cerbera poisoning unless there is evidence the victim had eaten the plant. It is the perfect murder, he says.
Three-quarters of Cerbera victims are women. The team says that this may mean the plant is being
used to kill young wives who do not meet the exacting standards of some Indian families.
It is also likely that many cases of homicide using the plant go unnoticed in countries where it
does not grow naturally.
Journal reference: Journal of Ethnopharmacology (vol 95, p 123)
Does anyone know if this info is up to date, or would it be traceble nowadays?
The real problem in that case is that suspicious deaths aren't being investigated carefully enough in India. Which is hardly surprising. The first step in getting away with murder is to avoid a homicide investigation in the first place. I'll be frank, I actually know someone who got away with homicide. Definite homicide, but the circumstances were such that there wasn't likely to be an investigation. If there had been, the homicide would have been detected easily.
I should say, I know I know at least one person who got away with homicide. I probably know more than one, but just don't know about the actual circumstances. Not having everyone know about it is most of getting away with it, right?
In any case where death isn't considered sufficiently suspicious by society at large to merit investigation, you have to live with the possibility that it was a homicide. In fact, that's what we mean by judging that a death wasn't suspicious, we mean that we don't really care even if it was a homicide. In the specific case I mention, it's a circumstance where I personally don't have any interest one way or the other. Not enough to bother going to the police about it. I don't think that it's a case where the police would care either. Of course, now you're all probably imagining some kind of unlikely circumstance with a drug-peddling pederast 
This kind of situation might be less common here in the States than it is elsewhere in the world, but it does happen. Sometimes no one cares if it was homicide. Very often people do care, but it's just not worth the trouble of going to the authorities, usually because the authorities wouldn't care either.
( BTW I prefer the term murder to homicide -- when it's murder. )
Anyway, the police were there and they were sorting it out, more or less. I scoured the papers for days for news about what had happened.
Nothing.
Weird thing is, almost exactly the same thing happened once before, not far from there. No one cared about it that time either.
These were both clearly and visibly murders, it's just no-one cared about who got murdered.
Accomplished may not be the right word, considering we know about them. The most accomplished we probably never hear of.
[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited August 28, 2006).]
In the homocide I mentioned, I guess that technically it would qualify as murder. It didn't change my opinion of the perpetrator, and others might argue that it wasn't really murder. I'm content to call it homocide, myself.
The lesson is simple. Getting away with it is a matter of the technical resources of those who care enough to try and find a murderer. If the poison is undetectable to anyone likely to investigate, that's sufficiently undetectable. But no poison that actually kills will be completely undetectable if enough effort goes into finding the cause of death.
Is this a common used presidure now a days during autopsy?
Or is it rearly used?
quote:
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury:e.coli
Mmmm...spinach.
Inkwell
-----------------
"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous
[This message has been edited by Inkwell (edited September 27, 2006).]
"Ho, ho, hooo...ugh, E. Coli!"
Inkwell
-----------------
"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous
Is that possible than?
I was told that nowadays all poisons could be traced during autopsy.
In addition to this, one must remember that not all forensics labs have a Grissom on hand.
Inkwell
-----------------
"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous
In the article (on this forum) it is said "But while foxglove poisoning is well known to western toxicologists, Gaillard says pathologists would not be able to identify Cerbera poisoning unless there is evidence the victim had eaten the plant"
There is talk about "western toxicologists" !!!!!
Is this info out of date or would it still aplay to autopsys nowadays?
http://www.emedicine.com/emerg/topic913.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_15
I wonder if there are poisons that someone could inject, but i still think murder by icicle or ham is better. One melts, one you can eat, it would be great for a story. I wonder if there are injectable sleeping aids that could knock someone out for a few minutes to a few hours?
Rommel Fenrir Wolf II
half a bottle of Jack in me now
[This message has been edited by Rommel Fenrir Wolf II (edited October 09, 2007).]
quote:
It's odd that a thread detailing various ways to die keeps getting resurrected.
It's a zombie thread, didn't you know?
has anyone mentioned a peanut allergy? those are lethal. grind up some peanuts and put them in the champaigne. while it may taste salty, it probably wont be noticed, except perhaps by a peanut fanatic.
the question is would the victim notice, since he has rarely, if ever, tasted peanuts.
or maybe you could just kill him with a bullet in the middle of the night... I hear that lead is very toxic.
[This message has been edited by dreadlord (edited November 06, 2007).]
quote:
People kept bringing up snake venom.
Eeewww!
Pat
THE DOSE MAKES THE POISON by Patricia Frank discusses "symptoms, mechanisms, treatments, and detection" and includes, along with offically regarded poisons, things like food additives, cosmetics, and other stuff that we are exposed to in a normal life.
I told my wife that I found 50 books that I wanted, but put 49 back. If I had bought the poison book, I might worry that her eyes would get stuck from rolling them toward the back of her head. But it would be a fantastic writer's reference - especially for crime thrillers.
A fun and useful companion volume, especially for historical SF/F: The PDR for Herbal Medicines. Very thorough, and it's amazing more people don't die from these drugs (and they ARE drugs), since most have negative or even lethal side effects.... far more so than commercial pharmaceuticals.
As to the homemade lethal injection someone mentioned... 50cc of saturated solution of any metallic salt will do, including table salt or Epsom salts (commonly used for large animals for field anesthesia or euthanasia, via venous or direct cardiac injection respectively). Heart stops in seconds. Tho if you don't give 'em enough, they'll wake back up, none the worse for wear! But that needle puncture and massive salt imbalance will be flamingly obvious to a modern autopsy.
/thread
Seriously though. Im scared by the activity of this.
I know very little about poisons, but it would make sense if you would work backwards. Determine what was the official cause of death, consider/rule out other possible causes (did she have any health issues that could have contributed - age, weight, afflictions, etc?), search poisons that would have that effect, and determine availability, opportunity, and probable mode of delivery.
By correlating this data, you can limit your possibilities. I'm assuming you suspect him due to something she said, his behavior, or serious motive. If you had access to her computer (or his), you could possibly find this information very quickly, but you are better off letting law enforcement handle that and whatever you do don't put yourself at risk. I hope you find answers, but it is good to be prepared for none. Much of this is probably time-sensitive, and it sounds like some time has already elapsed. Also consider that one of the phases of grief is blame. I don't know anything about the situation, but the desire for blame has led to many conspiracies and false accusations - just something to consider.
Good luck.
I don't know very much about poisons, but you make it clear the husbands behavior is very suspicious. Still, I have many contacts in the medical and science field, and will ask around. I know it is a long shot, but I am compelled to do what I can.
What are the authorities doing with this case? Are the police still investigating?
Also, what did the husband do for a living? Perhaps this would give a clue as to what compounds he had access to.
Also, was the pathologist a toxicology specialist? Many things can cause a high potassium count. Did your sister have type-1 diabetes, use potassium supplements or any other medications, have Addison's disease or kidney problems? Also, when they took the blood sample and found the potassium increase, did they do a second sample to verify the result?