The most commonly used toxin in Greece was the water hemlock, a plant in the carrot family not to be confused with the evergreen conifer common in New England.
Plato immortalized hemlock, which is said to be the most violently poisonous plant in the North Temperate Zone, in his description of the death of Socrates. In the rest of Europe from the time of the Roman Empire through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, arsenic was the king of poisons.
Mineral forms of arsenic were known as early as the fourth century BC, but the German scholastic Albertus Magnus is usually accredited with the discovery of the element around The first precise directions for the preparation of metallic arsenic, however, are found in the writings of Paracelsus, a physician-alchemist in the late Middle Ages who is often called the father of modern toxicology. Dioscorides, a Greek physician in the court of the Roman Emperor Nero, described arsenic as a poison in the first century.
Its ideal properties for sinister uses included its lack of color, odor or taste when mixed in food or drink and its ubiquitous distribution in nature, which made it readily available to all classes of society. Symptoms of arsenic poisoning were difficult to detect, since they could mimic food poisoning and other common disorders.
Arsenic could also be given as a series of smaller doses, producing a more subtle form of chronic poisoning characterized by a loss of strength, confusion and paralysis. Eventually, the arsenic of choice emerged as so-called white arsenic or arsenic trioxide As2O3 ; the fatal dose was known to be an amount equivalent in size to a pea.
All of the above properties of arsenic contributed to its alleged widespread use in antiquity as a homicidal agent. Doubtless it is an exaggeration, but it has been said of this period that poisonings were so common that few believed in the natural deaths of princes, kings, or cardinals. Whatever the true extent of its covert use, arsenic has engendered a body of legends so tangled that reliable sources today disagree about many of the specifics.
During the fourth century BC, the Romans made considerable use of poisons in politics. In this same period a conspiracy was uncovered involving a group of women who schemed to poison men whose deaths would profit them. In 82 BC, in an attempt to stem what was becoming an epidemic of large-scale poisonings, the Roman dictator and constitutional reformer Lucius Cornelius Sulla issued the Lex Cornelia, probably the first law against poisoning.
Poison and politics were also intertwined in the early Renaissance period in Italy. Records of the city councils of Florence during this period contain detailed testimony naming victims, prices and contracts, complete with dates that transactions were completed and payments made.
Among the most infamous of poisoners was a woman known as Toffana who made arsenic-laced cosmetics and instructed women on their use. Another woman, known as Hieronyma Spara, organized group instruction in the homicidal uses of arsenic for a number of young married women who wanted to better their station in life by becoming wealthy young widows.
Reports of death by arsenic containing cosmetics continued through the twentieth century. It was perhaps not surprising for the Borgias to specialize in dispatching bishops and cardinals. As the Pope, Alexander VI appointed cardinals who were not only allowed but encouraged to increase their personal wealth through perquisites granted by the church.
Forensic Sci. Seyferth, D. Organometallics 20 , — Lloyd, N. Wolfe-Simon, F. Science , — Alberts, B. Science , Download references. You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Correspondence to Katherine Haxton.
Reprints and Permissions. Haxton, K. All about arsenic. Nature Chem 3, Download citation. Published : 23 August Issue Date : September Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:. Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative. Advanced search.
Say what? Arsenic is pronounced as AR-s'n-ik. Although arsenic compounds were mined by the early Chinese, Greek and Egyptian civilizations, it is believed that arsenic itself was first identified by Albertus Magnus, a German alchemist, in Today, most commercial arsenic is obtained by heating arsenopyrite. Arsenic and its compounds are poisonous. They have been used to make rat poison and some insecticides. Small amounts of arsenic are added to germanium to make transistors.
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