January 16, 2024 • 37 mins
In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Joe explore various historical interpretations of the diamond, from divine tears to both a potent medicine and a deadly poison.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
And today we are going to begin a multi episode
dive into the world of diamonds. So, diamonds, this is
a topic that it's probably been in sort of the
background for a while. We've considered, you know, we know
that there are a lot of interesting things about diamonds,
but I know, for my own part, there's like this
surface level resistance to covering diamonds because the first thing
(00:40):
that comes to mind is just sort of like the
ubiquitous vision of diamonds that you encounter in diamond TV commercials,
and it just kind of, you know, it certainly drives
home this idea that diamonds are something everyone wants, diamonds
are something everyone needs. But also diamonds end up looking
like this this ridiculous, mainstream square thing, and I'm just
(01:03):
resistant to the idea that there might be anything cool
about them.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
The elegance, the grandeur, the luxury.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah. Yeah, But when you dive deeper, both in terms
of the subject matter and also the history of diamonds,
there's a lot more there, and so we have a
number of different angles to approach in this series, including
some some basic reminders about what diamonds are. But but yeah,
I thought it a nice way to sort of kick
this off would just be to talk a little bit
(01:31):
about just like how we perceive diamonds, not even like,
you know, overtly, like let's sit down and think about diamonds,
but just sort of, like, you know, subconsciously, how we've
grown up processing them, because yeah, they're they're highly referenced
in our language. You know, they're they're valuable. Obviously, why
are they valuable? The various answers to that, But for
(01:55):
my own part, I was thinking about it growing up.
Diamonds were first of all, something that you know, my mother,
of various female members of the family had, but they
were too precious for me to touch or look at
too much. And then if you did look at them,
and I have to acknowledge this will vary depending on
your family's particular jewels, but they never looked like much
(02:15):
to me, especially as a kid. I'd look at one
and it's like, Okay, it's a little speck of nothing,
but then the light catches it just right, and it's brilliant,
it's amazing. But then you look back at it, okay, no,
just a little rock or something. And then watching movies,
I would know two things about diamonds. First of all,
they're super valuable because people are always trying to steal them,
(02:35):
and once you steal them, you can just like turn
them in for money somewhere, I guess. And finally, and
this often is seen in the same movies, you can
take a diamond and cut through any pane of glass
instantly by tracing a circle on that pane of glass,
you know, and it just neatly falls out into your hand,
or use a little suction cup to pull it out. Right.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
I assume that's not really true. It doesn't work that way.
Is that Have you ever looked into that?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I believe this has been myth busted. Okay, so do
not attempt. But it looks super easy in various caper
films and TV shows and cartoons. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I'm trying to think about the early significance of diamonds
to me, apart from them just being like a cash
equivalent mcguffin in you know, high stories and stuff. You know,
the bad guy in the movie always wants the diamonds,
get me the diamonds in real life. I remember when
I was young, I think I was a little confused
about the difference between a diamond and a glass prism,
(03:31):
because they looked the same to me, and the glass
prism was bigger and could cast, you know, the the
rainbows all over the wall, and so it wasn't quite
clear to me. I guess what was better about this
really tiny diamond as opposed to the huge diamond hanging
in the window.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, because the prism, like you said, is a lot bigger.
It seems to work a lot better. Well, caveat on
that in a bit. But then, more to the point,
super cheap. You can buy prisms all day, you know,
especially the placestic variety, and you're not going to break
the bank.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
But then again, apart from just the knowledge that a
lot of people had them, you know, on like their
engagement ring or their or their wedding ring, I guess
usually engagement ring, I didn't really have much real world
consciousness of them. They were they were primarily something in fiction.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, and then the TV ads too, though. I remember
thinking as a kid, it's like you'd see these images
of like, all right, you're in love, you're married, you
need to give more diamonds, And I and part of
you kind of like ask the question, Wow, if I'm
ever a married person, well, I just be buying diamonds
all the time, Like I've apparently got to buy the
(04:38):
first diamond and then just diamonds every year thereafter. But uh, yeah,
it's just I think it's amusing that diamonds can be
so all over the place. You know, they're valuable, but
they can also seem kind of plain and lame. They're sparkling,
they but also sometimes the way that we describe them
and think of them and may be imbued with spiritual truth.
(05:00):
They might be a physical manifestation of love, a symbol
of human greed, of horror and inequality, a magical thief's tool,
and also the ultimate and just gaudy excess. And I
feel like even the geologic truth of the diamond, which
we'll get into later, it feels so weird. Perhaps this weirdness,
(05:21):
at least for me anyway, And I think maybe for
a lot of film viewers of the time. You might
think back to a very memorable scene in Superman three
in which Christopher Reeves Superman picks up a chunk of
coal and crushes it in his fist, and then opens
his fist to reveal not only a diamond, but a
fully cut diamond.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
So it's got what the facets on it that that's
not how diamonds come straight out of the earth.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Well yeah, I mean, of course they're usually not made
by Superman, so I I guess with Superman everything's fair game.
He would do this in the comics too, apparently I
had to research this, but this is a Superman gag
that goes way back. I don't know if he ever
like makes any use of it, or it's just kind
of like he's always just kind of showing off. Maybe
the one up Jesus, I'm not sure, but but yeah,
(06:09):
I'll just crush that coal, open his fist. Bam, diamond, priceless,
already cut, ready to go.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
It makes me wonder about a Superman plot line where
the villains are like diamond cartels that are worried Superman
is going to increase the supply too much.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, or like villains who are like no, Superman's on
his way to shut down an operation like quick spreads
whole everywhere just in case he just haphazardly makes a
few diamonds. We may come out ahead in the end.
But yeah, to your point, he could you get like
gold finger the diamond market, couldn't he? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Oh no, wait, that would be a reverse gold finger.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
That's right, it would be a reverse gold finger. Yes,
So yeah, I had this scene popping around my head.
I had the diamond commercials, and those diamond commercials again,
they try to convince you, even at a young age,
that diamonds are life. Diamonds, diamonds are everything worth having
in life, that they reflect life. And that's why I
think it's going to be great that our first major
(07:04):
avenue of investigation here concerns another idea that diamonds just
might be death.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Right. So this is actually what first got me interested
in the topic of diamonds for a series today. I
wanted to begin by looking at a weird question, and
the question is are diamonds poisonous?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
So to be clear, this is not getting into very
valid discussions of things like blood diamonds and all. This
is the idea that there is something about the diamond
that is in and of itself poisonous to the human body.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, poisonous if ingested in one form or another. Now,
before we get to the answer to this question, I
need to back up and explain the origin of the question,
which is that a few months ago, you may remember
we were doing a series on the shadow, the shadow
in history, art, science, and so forth. I think this
(07:57):
was during the last October, and one of the things
we ended up talking about in that series on the
shadow was an optical effect known as the Highligen shine.
This is a real world phenomenon in which people sometimes
see the shadow of their own head surrounded by a
bright halo of light when they happen to be standing
(08:19):
over a field of grass in the early morning. And
there might be other conditions that create the same effect,
but that's one of the most common ways people see it. Now,
you can go back and listen to that episode if
you want the full explanation of how this halo arises
from the interplay of sunlight, grass and do. The relevant
fact about it for today is that the Hylagan shine
(08:39):
is also sometimes called Cellini's halo, and it gets this
name from one of the early figures to notice and
mention it in writing, and that is a sixteenth century
Italian goldsmith and sculptor named Benvenuto Cellini, one of the
weirdest and most fascinating characters I have come across while
researching for this show. I am full steam ahead on
(09:03):
the Benvenudo Cellini train. Now I kind of want to
go back and read the entire memoirs. I might do that.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
So.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Benvenudo Cellini lived from fifteen hundred to fifteen seventy one,
and though he is remembered for his artworks, which include
an almost absurdly ornate golden salt cellar, we talked about
this when he came up in that previous episode. He
made that for Francis the First the king of France
at the time, and also a large bronze sculpture of
(09:31):
Perseus holding up the severed head of Medusa, which is
one of the sculptures in the covered gallery that's at
the edge of the Piazza della Signora, which is the
big square in the center of Florence. Rob I've got
a picture of both these artworks for you to look
at here if you want. While he is known for
these artworks, he is known today I think at least
(09:51):
as much for his bizarre, fascinating, grandiose and almost certainly
heavily embellished auto biography, which is just packed full of
these weird, passionate rousing tales primarily about how awesome he is.
We get stories of Cellini lauded by kings and queens
(10:12):
for his unique genius, Cellini visited by angels who write
secret heavenly words on his forehead, Cellini single handedly fighting
off gangs of bandits, Cellini falsely imprisoned, Cellini hatching and
executing a daring prison break from Castle San Angelo in Rome.
And even in describing the Heiligensheine the glow around the
(10:33):
shadow's head, Chillini seems to believe it to be a
sign of God's special providence toward him, rather than like
an optical effect that anyone would experience in the same circumstances.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
But as I recall from the previous episode, he was like,
many people have observed this. When I asked them, They're like, yes,
I see the halo above your head, around your head.
You are chosen by God. Clearly we all agree.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah. I showed it to other people and they In fact,
this is a theme I've noticed in the parts of
his memoirs I've read. He often is like somebody else
saw the thing I did, and they they agreed that
it was magnificent, and they told me I was special.
So rob, I thought you would appreciate this too. We
also get a story of Chillini meeting at least one
mythical monster in the story, which is the salamander. So
(11:22):
when Cellini was a child of five years old, he
tells that his father was playing the viola beside a
fire of oak logs in the basement of their house
when his father saw something in the fire and then
made his children come and look, and little Binvenudo saw
a lizard dancing in the heart of the flame, and
his father told him that it was the mythical salamander,
(11:45):
the elemental beast of fire, and he saw it.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Oh excellent. You know, now that I thought about it
a little bit, I think tomorrow's monster fact may have
to be the salamander. But the real quick I think
that I have read before that some of these myths
about the salamander. And then again we have to point
out like a duality. Here there's this idea of a
mythical fire lizard, and then there's the actual salamander, and
(12:11):
the connecting tissue seems to be that there were accounts
of burning damp logs that and in reality, either contained
a salamander or you know, had a salamander clinging to
the underside of it. You'll frequently find salamanders in you know,
boggy or marshy environments underneath such a log. But if
you were to take such a log, throw it on
(12:32):
the fire, and you would see some sort of little
creature squirming there. Oh, it's it's some sort of It's
clearly it's made of fire. That's why it's in the fire. No,
it's just a salamander that was on the log you
threw in. Now, why you're throwing in super damp logs,
I don't know. Maybe you just don't have a lot,
and maybe the fire is fully raging at that point,
and therefore you can throw something a little damp on there.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
That is an interesting possibility. I hadn't thought about it
that way. But yeah, maybe somebody actually did accidentally get
some salamanders in the fire.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
More on that tomorrow. More in that tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Okay, Okay. In the case of this story, having read
it from the autobiography, I really can't tell if this
is something that makes more sense as there actually was
some sort of creature in there and they just misinterpreted
what it was, or if I don't know, they were
just looking into fire and seeing things in the shapes.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
That's one of the compounding factors here, right, is that
humans logs staring into fires, and if you steer into
fires long enough, your imagination can allow you to see things.
And then if you have a pre existing cultural notion
that there is some sort of magical fire lizard in there, oh,
you might just see it anyway.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
All of that to say that while Benvenudo Cellini is
a fascinating and in some ways important historical figure, we
should not take anything in his autobiography at face value
as history or science. You just read it and you
get the feeling even without you know, comparing it to
external evidence. It's like, Okay, there's obviously some embellishment going
(14:03):
on here. But to come back to the diamond question,
one of the many, many weird stories Cellini tells about
his time in prison is about a supposed attempt on
his life via poison made out of shattered diamonds. So
to set the stage in this passage, Chillini is hanging
(14:23):
out in prison one of the multiple times he's imprisoned
in the story, he has just written a sonnet that
will prove his innocence, Like he's written a sonnet that
is so virtuous and indicative of his lack of criminality
that he believes the constable had it sent to the
Pope for review, with the implication that, like, when the
(14:44):
Pope sees this poem I wrote, then they'll have to
release me because they'll know I couldn't have done it.
But suddenly the friendly constable in the prison dies and
he is replaced by the constable is replaced by his brother.
And at this point Sciellini believes that a group of
his enemies sort of like seize the moment and conspire
(15:07):
to kill him by poison. And another thing is that
Jellini is frequently making references to conspiracies of enemies against him.
He seems to constantly think that he's got a bunch
of enemies who are out to get him. And it's
not exactly clear to me how much truth there is
to this. There might be, but it's hard to tell.
(15:28):
So he describes their plot as follows, and the translation
of Chileini's autobiography I'm going to read for here is
by Thomas Roscoe. This was published back in the nineteenth century.
So Chillini writes, they at first thought of mixing with
my meat the powder of a pounded diamond. This is
not a poison of itself, but is so excessively hard
(15:52):
that it retains its acute angles, Differing from other stones, which,
when they are pounded entirely lose the sharpness of their
particles and become round. The diamond alone preserves the acuteness
of its angles. Hence it follows that when it enters
the stomach with the meat, and the operation of digestion
(16:13):
is to be performed, the particles of the diamond stick
to the cartilages of the stomach and the bowels, and
as the newly received food is impelled forward, the minute
parts of the diamond which adhere to those cartilages, in
process of time perforate them, and this causes death. Whereas
every other sort of stone or glass, when mixed with meat,
(16:36):
is incapable of sticking to the coat of the stomach,
and of consequence is voided with the food.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
This doesn't sound like a pleasant poison.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
No, this is horrible. No, he's saying that I don't.
He's distinguishing it somehow from the concept of poison, which
I don't know. I mean, either way, it's something that
ingested harms you, but maybe the other idea that a
poison is something that though I don't even I don't
think Chillini in his time would have had these concepts.
(17:06):
But is killed by way of some like chemical metabolism,
where this is killed because like literally, it's just like
pieces stabbing you on the inside. It's like swallowing a
bunch of needles or something, except on an incredibly tiny scale.
So he's saying, you know, it's it's mechanically killing you
from the inside rather than chemically killing you from the inside,
(17:28):
and it truly does sound horrible. However, Chillini says that
he escapes death from the intended plot as a result
of his enemies bungling their plan. So he says that
one of the conspirators is that it was the supplier
of the diamond. So that conspirator gets the diamond and
he gives it to another one of the conspirators who
(17:51):
is supposed to pound it into a powder, and that
powder is going to be used to poison him. But
this second guy who is supposed to pound the diamond,
being broke and greedy, kept the diamond and swapped it
out for a different gem of lesser value, which he
pounded and then handed over for the purpose of the murder.
So here we pick up again with Chillini's narrative. He says,
(18:13):
on the day that it was administered to me, being
good Friday, they put it into all my victuals, into
the salad, the sauce, and the soup. I ate very heartily,
as I had had no supper the night before, and
it happened to be a holiday. I indeed felt the
meat crash under my teeth. Oh, but never once dreamt
(18:37):
of the villainous designs of my enemies. When I had
done dinner, as there remained a little of the salad
on the dish, I happened to fix my eyes on
some of the smallest particles remaining. I immediately took them, and,
advancing to the window, upon examining them by the light,
recollected the unusual crashing above mentioned. Then, viewing the particles
(19:00):
with attention, I was inclined to think, as far as
my eye could judge, that a pounded diamond had been
mixed with my victuals. So Jelani knows he's going to
die and he prays to God. However, upon examining the
grains further, he realizes that they're actually not quite indestructible
to him. He can sort of crack and crunch them
(19:22):
with a small knife, and that means they are not
actually made of diamond. And because a diamond he thinks
he would not be able to crush with this small knife,
but this other gym he would. And then he says, Okay,
if there are another gem, they're not actually able to
injure me. It would have to be diamond powder for
it to work. So I think he sort of like
(19:43):
deduces the whole plot and how it was bungled here.
But oh there's a good twist here. Though. He at
first shows evidence of the attempted poisoning to another prisoner,
a bishop of Pavia, who is in prison on account
of quote plots and intrigues, and he allows this bishop
(20:05):
in the cell over to think that Chillini has been
successfully poisoned with a real diamond and only has a
few months to live, and uses this to get the
bishop to share his presumably better quality bishop food with Chillini.
And by the way, this is by no means the
only story that Chillini tells about plots against his life.
(20:26):
It's not even the only attempted poisoning. There's another story
where he claims that enemies tried to poison his food
with mercuric chloride at the time known as corrosive sublimate,
which definitely is poisonous in reality, But according to Chillini,
they didn't give him a big enough dose, so they
poisoned him with it. Instead of killing him, it only
(20:48):
made him sick to his stomach and cured his syphilis.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Oh man.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
So, anyway, to come back to the question at hand,
I was really fascinated by this story, and I wondered
if there was any truth to Chillini's ideas about the
lethal effect of eating ground up diamonds. And I'm going
to get into some more details here, but as best
I can tell, the answer is probably no. But I'm
(21:25):
not going to give a note with such confidence that
you get the green light to go eat some diamond powder.
I'd still be cautious about it. Yeah, do not do that,
because one thing that is clear is Chillini is far
from the only person in history to advance this notion.
It has been held by many in many different cultures, times,
(21:45):
and places throughout world history that eating diamonds is poisonous,
though interestingly it also in other contexts has diamonds have
been regarded as medicine. So to further explore this urban
legend about diamond based poisons, the best source I found
was a book called Diamonds, An Early History of the
King of Gems from Yale University Press twenty eighteen, written
(22:09):
by a British historian named Jack Ogden, who seems to
specialize in the history of jewelry.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, this is a great book. I've been reading this
as well, and we'll reference this in future topics we're
discussing concerning diamonds. But yeah, Ogden is what a genologist
in addition to an historian, so he knows his diamonds.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Yeah, And in the section on poisoning by diamond Ogden
says that as far as he can tell, there is
no scientific support for the belief that diamonds are poisonous.
As one of the early sources to write extensively on
this subject, Ogden cites the famous eleventh century Persian scientist
and scholar al Biruni, who was one of the great
(22:52):
polymaths of the Islamic Golden Age, famously a master of
many many disciplines, so he wrote books on extremely varied subjects,
from mathematics to astronomy, history, geography, and ethnography. He apparently
produced a very important medieval book on the culture of India.
In one section, Ogden talks about how Albiruni made a
(23:14):
note of how appreciation for diamonds varied greatly by culture,
and so while diamonds were, he says, widely venerated for
their ornamental value in India, he claimed that they were
not equally venerated in neighboring regions like Iraq and Korsan,
which Korison at the time would have been a region
corresponding to what is today parts of Iran, Afghanistan, and
(23:37):
Central Asia. And in these latter regions, Albiruni said that
diamonds were only used for drilling and for making poison.
But did Albiruni think that they were actually effective as poison.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
No.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
He offered several lines of evidence against the idea that
pieces of diamond could be used as poison the way
that Chillini would later describe. First of all, he mentions
a kind of logical problem with how these poisoning plots
are supposed to work. He says, if people were fed
pieces of diamond as a poison quote, if it has
not been ground, well, it will be betrayed by the
(24:13):
teeth of the eater.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Ugh.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Oh god. There's a lot of like cringe inducing ideas here,
from from tooth trauma, from crunching on a diamond to
swallowing sharp things.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Yeah, like, even if it's gritty, you know, like that
might be enough to make the target of your assassination
either just send back the dish or it would raise
their suspicion that someone was trying to poison them with diamonds,
as we saw our previous example. And certainly if the
individual had a food taster as well, that would also
(24:48):
be some that would also be something that would tip
your hand here and would alert your target that you
were trying to do them in.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Yeah, and interestingly, most of the the old stories about
poisonings via via diamond powder concern very rich people in history,
you know, and for I think probably obvious reasons that
you know, diamond powder is probably not cheap to come by.
So the people who were allegedly being poisoned by diamond
powder were, you know, aristocrats, enemies of the Medici family maybe,
(25:17):
or kings and queens or popes or sultan's things like that.
But anyway, so Albrouni is saying, presumably, if it were
to be successfully snuck into someone's food, it would have
to be pulverized into a very fine powder. But the
second thing is albi Rouni cites experimental evidence. He says
that he and maybe he or someone else tried feeding
(25:40):
pieces of diamond to a dog and says that the
dog showed no signs whatsoever of harm, neither immediately after
the experiment nor any time later. He's like, yeah, dog's fine.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Oh wow, is this the titular diamond dog?
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Then that had not occurred to me. I don't know.
Now that is some experimental evidence. Though on the other hand,
that clearly would not meet the standards of a modern
toxicology experiment. But it's something something to look at now,
I'll be ROUNEI us. He puts all these considerations together,
and he says, you know, in the end, there's no
(26:13):
basis for thinking diamonds are poisonous. He says that it
is all idle talk, it's tall tales, but that did
not stop lots of other people from believing it. Ogden
mentions an account written by the sixteenth century English politician
Jerome Horsey, who recorded comments made by the Russian Czar
Ivan the Terrible. I believe this was near the time
(26:34):
of Ivan's death, in which Ivan was going on about
the godlike potency of the diamond, and he said, among
other things, that quote the least parcel of it in
powder will poison a horse, with the implication you know,
how much more will it do to a human if
it'll poison a horse? And I just wanted to mention
a footnote of Ogden's where he says, well, first of all,
(26:57):
in this footnote he says, you know, if you go
trying to look up that comment of Ivans, it is
not in the edited published account of Jerome Horsey's travels
in Russia, but it is in his manuscript from which
the edited account was produced. But then finally he says,
quote whether Ivan's example of a horse was a deliberate
pun on Horsey's name is unknown, but Ogden also mentioned
(27:20):
several records of people who allegedly attempted to commit murders
by slipping diamonds into people's food. So one was noted
by a sixteenth century Portuguese doctor named Garcia del Orta
or Garcia de Orta, who claims that a woman tried
to kill her sick husband by feeding him ground up
(27:40):
diamonds and that didn't work. Another account takes place in
early seventeenth century England. It's some kind of very messy
lover's dispute among aristocrats in which the wife of an
earl wanted her marriage annulled so she could marry a
different earl. But the guy who she wanted to get
married to had an adviser who disapproved of her, so
(28:03):
she wanted to kill the advisor so she could go
ahead with the marriage to this other guy. But apparently
at one point in this caper, she sent an associate
to an apothecary to buy diamond powder. It was like,
you know, we've got to have the diamond powder for poisoning,
you know, whatever it costs to get it. And the
apothecary was like, I have no idea what you're talking about,
and she called him a fool, and she was eventually
(28:26):
able to poison the adviser, but it seems like it was.
Historians think it was probably with a different agent other
than diamond now. Ogden mentions another sixteenth century physician, an
Italian named Girolamo Cardano, who also commented on the use
of diamonds as a poison and similar to Albi Rooney,
cast doubt on the idea because he was like, you know, like,
(28:49):
there are cases where people steal diamonds by swallowing them
and then later retrieving them, and there's no evidence that
they suffered any harm. Now you might think, well, well,
but those are like whole, intact diamonds. Maybe maybe swallowing
a whole diamond is fine, but swallowing the ground up
diamond powder is what's really dangerous. And uh. And Cardono
(29:11):
also says he knows of at least one case where
somebody had swallowed a big mass of diamond powder quote,
without prejudicing the health of the taker anymore than if
he had eaten so much bread. Though this does make
me wonder, Okay, assuming diamonds, diamonds and diamond powder are
not particularly poisonous, how do they generally affect digestion? Like
(29:34):
I was thinking, you know, like is a diamond upset
stomach a thing, our diamond farts a thing.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Well, certainly that I can see where the concept would
be alluring, because I mean it's kind of like the
diamond dog thing. Like the diamond has just such linguistic weight,
you know, it brings with it all these connotations of
obscene wealth and splendor, and we combine it with something
that could be considered lowly like a dog, like the
(30:00):
passing of gas. It instantly like zings in the brain, right.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Yes, And that kind of points to another thing. So
Cardano's comment about stealing or smuggling diamonds by swallowing them,
it really kind of makes me wonder about this belief
in the poisonous power of diamonds, Like if this belief
about death by diamond ingestion could trace back to people
trying to prevent diamond theft or diamond smuggling, you know,
(30:28):
like better not try to swallow it or hide it
in your mouth. If you swallow it, it'll rip your
guts apart. Now, Ogden kind of comes up short looking
for recent evidence of experiments on the toxicity of diamonds,
(30:50):
and he ends up having to look back to a
letter written to the journal Notes and Queries in eighteen
seventy five which claimed that quote, the only possible way
in which it diamond powder could be injurious would be
as a mechanical irritant to the mucous membrane of the stomach.
So I was kind of wondering, are there any more
(31:10):
recent studies on the toxicity of ground up of either
diamonds in whole form or shattered diamonds or diamonds ground
up into a powder. And I did not directly find
any good toxicology research on this. I did come across
another just sort of like compilation overview in a book
(31:31):
on nanomedicine written by an author named Robert Fritus, who
has written a lot of information that's freely available online.
In his work, Fritis collects a bunch of other claims
from the history of diamonds, but both claims of them
working as poison but also as medicine, and this author writing,
I think in the early to mid two thousands, like
(31:51):
two thousand and three, two thousand and five, it looked
like these sources were dated. This author basically says that
the evidence from history is inconclusive, and that he's also
not able to find any good recent toxicology studies on
diamond powder ingestion. He does note that any abrasive, gritty
powder ingested in sufficient quantities can cause problems. Like if
(32:14):
you you just eat a bunch of sand, you know,
you can get intestinal blockage, obviously if you have to
be super super grossier. But if you know, you eat
like a needle or something that is long and sharp,
you can get perforations somewhere in the digestive system. So
a lot of things, a lot of you know, non
food items, if eaten in sufficient quantities, can hurt you.
(32:36):
I mean, I guess even food items eaten in sufficient
quantities can hurt you. But he says, it looks like
there's not strong modern evidence that diamond powder in particular
is dangerous. However, I would say that does not mean
you've got the green light to go eat it. This
guy's conclusion seems to be that there's not strong evidence
that diamond powder is poisonous, but there's like enough concern
(32:59):
that it would be worth studying to make sure, especially
for people who are maybe exposed to it more often
in their line of work. So, to summarize my thoughts here,
most of the actual accounts of diamonds used as poison
as opposed to you know accounts as opposed to just
free floating factoids about how diamonds work and what they
can do. The accounts seem to be either unsubstantiated rumors,
(33:24):
or they conclude with the diamond poison not working, or
the details seem a little slippery. However, the evidence on
whether diamonds are poisonous does still seem to be mixed.
It seems like it's probably not any more poisonous than
any other abrasive, gritty powder, but we're far from one
(33:44):
hundred percent confidence on that. Plus any powder insufficient quantities
could hurt you, so I would still say it is
probably better not to eat it.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Yeah, there's just no reason to ingest diamond dust like
it's on one hand, yes, it probably won't hurt you,
but just to be safe, don't do it and don't
poison people. Obviously, that's I think, that's that's something we
stand by here on the show. But even if you
were in the business of poisoning people, this would not
(34:15):
be a good poison. This would be nothing you could
rely on, So don't do it.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Well, it makes me wonder about the sort of the
literary appeal of the idea of diamonds as poison. You know,
the same reason it struck us as interesting to talk
about this on the show is that it seems unusual
and like an extravagant type of poison. So I almost
wonder if in some of these stories where it was
allegedly used to poison people or to attempt to poison people,
(34:41):
it should make us question the facts of the narrative,
because this is like a potent image of somebody using
an extravagant, expensive luxury item to harm someone, and it's
like packed with meaning, you.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Know, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of irony to it.
This is exactly the kind of thing. And I don't know,
it's impossible that either of these characters utilize some sort
of fictional diamond poison at some point or another, but
it's the kind of thing you could imagine Diabolic from
Danger Diabolic, yes, using you know, against his rich enemies.
(35:13):
And likewise, for like modern film franchises, you could imagine
the Jigsaw Killer from the Saw movies using something like this.
It's just it would be the perfect ironic death for
some sort of like a uber rich villain, right.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Right, or for somebody like like Benvenudo Cillini, who is
a goldsmith and a jeweler and a sculptor, somebody who
worked with gold and jewels. I don't know if scholars
of Chillini's life and memoirs would have more to say
about that, but yeah, it seems like it seems fitting
that his enemies would try to get him with a
beautiful jewel that he might be, something that he might
(35:49):
have used in one of his works.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
All right, well, we're gonna go ahead and close out
this first episode of our look at Diamonds, but we'll
be back on Thursday with part two. We're going to
kick that off with some diamond basics. So if you're like,
hold on, I still don't know what a diamond is,
don't worry. We're gonna jump in with some of the
basics at the beginning of the next episode, and then
we'll get into more weird and fascinating elements of the
(36:15):
diamond's role and culture and belief and so forth. So
it should be a fun ride. In the meantime, we'll
remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
a science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays
listener mail on Mondays. On Wednesday's we do a short
form artifact or monster fact episode. I think we're gonna
put together one on the Salamander for tomorrow, and then
(36:37):
on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just
talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
is Robert.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
And today we are going to begin a multi episode
dive into the world of diamonds. So, diamonds, this is
a topic that it's probably been in sort of the
background for a while. We've considered, you know, we know
that there are a lot of interesting things about diamonds,
but I know, for my own part, there's like this
surface level resistance to covering diamonds because the first thing
(00:40):
that comes to mind is just sort of like the
ubiquitous vision of diamonds that you encounter in diamond TV commercials,
and it just kind of, you know, it certainly drives
home this idea that diamonds are something everyone wants, diamonds
are something everyone needs. But also diamonds end up looking
like this this ridiculous, mainstream square thing, and I'm just
(01:03):
resistant to the idea that there might be anything cool
about them.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
The elegance, the grandeur, the luxury.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Yeah. Yeah, But when you dive deeper, both in terms
of the subject matter and also the history of diamonds,
there's a lot more there, and so we have a
number of different angles to approach in this series, including
some some basic reminders about what diamonds are. But but yeah,
I thought it a nice way to sort of kick
this off would just be to talk a little bit
(01:31):
about just like how we perceive diamonds, not even like,
you know, overtly, like let's sit down and think about diamonds,
but just sort of, like, you know, subconsciously, how we've
grown up processing them, because yeah, they're they're highly referenced
in our language. You know, they're they're valuable. Obviously, why
are they valuable? The various answers to that, But for
(01:55):
my own part, I was thinking about it growing up.
Diamonds were first of all, something that you know, my mother,
of various female members of the family had, but they
were too precious for me to touch or look at
too much. And then if you did look at them,
and I have to acknowledge this will vary depending on
your family's particular jewels, but they never looked like much
(02:15):
to me, especially as a kid. I'd look at one
and it's like, Okay, it's a little speck of nothing,
but then the light catches it just right, and it's brilliant,
it's amazing. But then you look back at it, okay, no,
just a little rock or something. And then watching movies,
I would know two things about diamonds. First of all,
they're super valuable because people are always trying to steal them,
(02:35):
and once you steal them, you can just like turn
them in for money somewhere, I guess. And finally, and
this often is seen in the same movies, you can
take a diamond and cut through any pane of glass
instantly by tracing a circle on that pane of glass,
you know, and it just neatly falls out into your hand,
or use a little suction cup to pull it out. Right.
Speaker 3 (02:53):
I assume that's not really true. It doesn't work that way.
Is that Have you ever looked into that?
Speaker 2 (02:59):
I believe this has been myth busted. Okay, so do
not attempt. But it looks super easy in various caper
films and TV shows and cartoons. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
I'm trying to think about the early significance of diamonds
to me, apart from them just being like a cash
equivalent mcguffin in you know, high stories and stuff. You know,
the bad guy in the movie always wants the diamonds,
get me the diamonds in real life. I remember when
I was young, I think I was a little confused
about the difference between a diamond and a glass prism,
(03:31):
because they looked the same to me, and the glass
prism was bigger and could cast, you know, the the
rainbows all over the wall, and so it wasn't quite
clear to me. I guess what was better about this
really tiny diamond as opposed to the huge diamond hanging
in the window.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Yeah, because the prism, like you said, is a lot bigger.
It seems to work a lot better. Well, caveat on
that in a bit. But then, more to the point,
super cheap. You can buy prisms all day, you know,
especially the placestic variety, and you're not going to break
the bank.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
But then again, apart from just the knowledge that a
lot of people had them, you know, on like their
engagement ring or their or their wedding ring, I guess
usually engagement ring, I didn't really have much real world
consciousness of them. They were they were primarily something in fiction.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Yeah, and then the TV ads too, though. I remember
thinking as a kid, it's like you'd see these images
of like, all right, you're in love, you're married, you
need to give more diamonds, And I and part of
you kind of like ask the question, Wow, if I'm
ever a married person, well, I just be buying diamonds
all the time, Like I've apparently got to buy the
(04:38):
first diamond and then just diamonds every year thereafter. But uh, yeah,
it's just I think it's amusing that diamonds can be
so all over the place. You know, they're valuable, but
they can also seem kind of plain and lame. They're sparkling,
they but also sometimes the way that we describe them
and think of them and may be imbued with spiritual truth.
(05:00):
They might be a physical manifestation of love, a symbol
of human greed, of horror and inequality, a magical thief's tool,
and also the ultimate and just gaudy excess. And I
feel like even the geologic truth of the diamond, which
we'll get into later, it feels so weird. Perhaps this weirdness,
(05:21):
at least for me anyway, And I think maybe for
a lot of film viewers of the time. You might
think back to a very memorable scene in Superman three
in which Christopher Reeves Superman picks up a chunk of
coal and crushes it in his fist, and then opens
his fist to reveal not only a diamond, but a
fully cut diamond.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
So it's got what the facets on it that that's
not how diamonds come straight out of the earth.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Well yeah, I mean, of course they're usually not made
by Superman, so I I guess with Superman everything's fair game.
He would do this in the comics too, apparently I
had to research this, but this is a Superman gag
that goes way back. I don't know if he ever
like makes any use of it, or it's just kind
of like he's always just kind of showing off. Maybe
the one up Jesus, I'm not sure, but but yeah,
(06:09):
I'll just crush that coal, open his fist. Bam, diamond, priceless,
already cut, ready to go.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
It makes me wonder about a Superman plot line where
the villains are like diamond cartels that are worried Superman
is going to increase the supply too much.
Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, or like villains who are like no, Superman's on
his way to shut down an operation like quick spreads
whole everywhere just in case he just haphazardly makes a
few diamonds. We may come out ahead in the end.
But yeah, to your point, he could you get like
gold finger the diamond market, couldn't he? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Oh no, wait, that would be a reverse gold finger.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
That's right, it would be a reverse gold finger. Yes,
So yeah, I had this scene popping around my head.
I had the diamond commercials, and those diamond commercials again,
they try to convince you, even at a young age,
that diamonds are life. Diamonds, diamonds are everything worth having
in life, that they reflect life. And that's why I
think it's going to be great that our first major
(07:04):
avenue of investigation here concerns another idea that diamonds just
might be death.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Right. So this is actually what first got me interested
in the topic of diamonds for a series today. I
wanted to begin by looking at a weird question, and
the question is are diamonds poisonous?
Speaker 2 (07:25):
So to be clear, this is not getting into very
valid discussions of things like blood diamonds and all. This
is the idea that there is something about the diamond
that is in and of itself poisonous to the human body.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
Yeah, poisonous if ingested in one form or another. Now,
before we get to the answer to this question, I
need to back up and explain the origin of the question,
which is that a few months ago, you may remember
we were doing a series on the shadow, the shadow
in history, art, science, and so forth. I think this
(07:57):
was during the last October, and one of the things
we ended up talking about in that series on the
shadow was an optical effect known as the Highligen shine.
This is a real world phenomenon in which people sometimes
see the shadow of their own head surrounded by a
bright halo of light when they happen to be standing
(08:19):
over a field of grass in the early morning. And
there might be other conditions that create the same effect,
but that's one of the most common ways people see it. Now,
you can go back and listen to that episode if
you want the full explanation of how this halo arises
from the interplay of sunlight, grass and do. The relevant
fact about it for today is that the Hylagan shine
(08:39):
is also sometimes called Cellini's halo, and it gets this
name from one of the early figures to notice and
mention it in writing, and that is a sixteenth century
Italian goldsmith and sculptor named Benvenuto Cellini, one of the
weirdest and most fascinating characters I have come across while
researching for this show. I am full steam ahead on
(09:03):
the Benvenudo Cellini train. Now I kind of want to
go back and read the entire memoirs. I might do that.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
So.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
Benvenudo Cellini lived from fifteen hundred to fifteen seventy one,
and though he is remembered for his artworks, which include
an almost absurdly ornate golden salt cellar, we talked about
this when he came up in that previous episode. He
made that for Francis the First the king of France
at the time, and also a large bronze sculpture of
(09:31):
Perseus holding up the severed head of Medusa, which is
one of the sculptures in the covered gallery that's at
the edge of the Piazza della Signora, which is the
big square in the center of Florence. Rob I've got
a picture of both these artworks for you to look
at here if you want. While he is known for
these artworks, he is known today I think at least
(09:51):
as much for his bizarre, fascinating, grandiose and almost certainly
heavily embellished auto biography, which is just packed full of
these weird, passionate rousing tales primarily about how awesome he is.
We get stories of Cellini lauded by kings and queens
(10:12):
for his unique genius, Cellini visited by angels who write
secret heavenly words on his forehead, Cellini single handedly fighting
off gangs of bandits, Cellini falsely imprisoned, Cellini hatching and
executing a daring prison break from Castle San Angelo in Rome.
And even in describing the Heiligensheine the glow around the
(10:33):
shadow's head, Chillini seems to believe it to be a
sign of God's special providence toward him, rather than like
an optical effect that anyone would experience in the same circumstances.
Speaker 2 (10:45):
But as I recall from the previous episode, he was like,
many people have observed this. When I asked them, They're like, yes,
I see the halo above your head, around your head.
You are chosen by God. Clearly we all agree.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
Yeah. I showed it to other people and they In fact,
this is a theme I've noticed in the parts of
his memoirs I've read. He often is like somebody else
saw the thing I did, and they they agreed that
it was magnificent, and they told me I was special.
So rob, I thought you would appreciate this too. We
also get a story of Chillini meeting at least one
mythical monster in the story, which is the salamander. So
(11:22):
when Cellini was a child of five years old, he
tells that his father was playing the viola beside a
fire of oak logs in the basement of their house
when his father saw something in the fire and then
made his children come and look, and little Binvenudo saw
a lizard dancing in the heart of the flame, and
his father told him that it was the mythical salamander,
(11:45):
the elemental beast of fire, and he saw it.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Oh excellent. You know, now that I thought about it
a little bit, I think tomorrow's monster fact may have
to be the salamander. But the real quick I think
that I have read before that some of these myths
about the salamander. And then again we have to point
out like a duality. Here there's this idea of a
mythical fire lizard, and then there's the actual salamander, and
(12:11):
the connecting tissue seems to be that there were accounts
of burning damp logs that and in reality, either contained
a salamander or you know, had a salamander clinging to
the underside of it. You'll frequently find salamanders in you know,
boggy or marshy environments underneath such a log. But if
you were to take such a log, throw it on
(12:32):
the fire, and you would see some sort of little
creature squirming there. Oh, it's it's some sort of It's
clearly it's made of fire. That's why it's in the fire. No,
it's just a salamander that was on the log you
threw in. Now, why you're throwing in super damp logs,
I don't know. Maybe you just don't have a lot,
and maybe the fire is fully raging at that point,
and therefore you can throw something a little damp on there.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
That is an interesting possibility. I hadn't thought about it
that way. But yeah, maybe somebody actually did accidentally get
some salamanders in the fire.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
More on that tomorrow. More in that tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Okay, Okay. In the case of this story, having read
it from the autobiography, I really can't tell if this
is something that makes more sense as there actually was
some sort of creature in there and they just misinterpreted
what it was, or if I don't know, they were
just looking into fire and seeing things in the shapes.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
That's one of the compounding factors here, right, is that
humans logs staring into fires, and if you steer into
fires long enough, your imagination can allow you to see things.
And then if you have a pre existing cultural notion
that there is some sort of magical fire lizard in there, oh,
you might just see it anyway.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
All of that to say that while Benvenudo Cellini is
a fascinating and in some ways important historical figure, we
should not take anything in his autobiography at face value
as history or science. You just read it and you
get the feeling even without you know, comparing it to
external evidence. It's like, Okay, there's obviously some embellishment going
(14:03):
on here. But to come back to the diamond question,
one of the many, many weird stories Cellini tells about
his time in prison is about a supposed attempt on
his life via poison made out of shattered diamonds. So
to set the stage in this passage, Chillini is hanging
(14:23):
out in prison one of the multiple times he's imprisoned
in the story, he has just written a sonnet that
will prove his innocence, Like he's written a sonnet that
is so virtuous and indicative of his lack of criminality
that he believes the constable had it sent to the
Pope for review, with the implication that, like, when the
(14:44):
Pope sees this poem I wrote, then they'll have to
release me because they'll know I couldn't have done it.
But suddenly the friendly constable in the prison dies and
he is replaced by the constable is replaced by his brother.
And at this point Sciellini believes that a group of
his enemies sort of like seize the moment and conspire
(15:07):
to kill him by poison. And another thing is that
Jellini is frequently making references to conspiracies of enemies against him.
He seems to constantly think that he's got a bunch
of enemies who are out to get him. And it's
not exactly clear to me how much truth there is
to this. There might be, but it's hard to tell.
(15:28):
So he describes their plot as follows, and the translation
of Chileini's autobiography I'm going to read for here is
by Thomas Roscoe. This was published back in the nineteenth century.
So Chillini writes, they at first thought of mixing with
my meat the powder of a pounded diamond. This is
not a poison of itself, but is so excessively hard
(15:52):
that it retains its acute angles, Differing from other stones, which,
when they are pounded entirely lose the sharpness of their
particles and become round. The diamond alone preserves the acuteness
of its angles. Hence it follows that when it enters
the stomach with the meat, and the operation of digestion
(16:13):
is to be performed, the particles of the diamond stick
to the cartilages of the stomach and the bowels, and
as the newly received food is impelled forward, the minute
parts of the diamond which adhere to those cartilages, in
process of time perforate them, and this causes death. Whereas
every other sort of stone or glass, when mixed with meat,
(16:36):
is incapable of sticking to the coat of the stomach,
and of consequence is voided with the food.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
This doesn't sound like a pleasant poison.
Speaker 3 (16:45):
No, this is horrible. No, he's saying that I don't.
He's distinguishing it somehow from the concept of poison, which
I don't know. I mean, either way, it's something that
ingested harms you, but maybe the other idea that a
poison is something that though I don't even I don't
think Chillini in his time would have had these concepts.
(17:06):
But is killed by way of some like chemical metabolism,
where this is killed because like literally, it's just like
pieces stabbing you on the inside. It's like swallowing a
bunch of needles or something, except on an incredibly tiny scale.
So he's saying, you know, it's it's mechanically killing you
from the inside rather than chemically killing you from the inside,
(17:28):
and it truly does sound horrible. However, Chillini says that
he escapes death from the intended plot as a result
of his enemies bungling their plan. So he says that
one of the conspirators is that it was the supplier
of the diamond. So that conspirator gets the diamond and
he gives it to another one of the conspirators who
(17:51):
is supposed to pound it into a powder, and that
powder is going to be used to poison him. But
this second guy who is supposed to pound the diamond,
being broke and greedy, kept the diamond and swapped it
out for a different gem of lesser value, which he
pounded and then handed over for the purpose of the murder.
So here we pick up again with Chillini's narrative. He says,
(18:13):
on the day that it was administered to me, being
good Friday, they put it into all my victuals, into
the salad, the sauce, and the soup. I ate very heartily,
as I had had no supper the night before, and
it happened to be a holiday. I indeed felt the
meat crash under my teeth. Oh, but never once dreamt
(18:37):
of the villainous designs of my enemies. When I had
done dinner, as there remained a little of the salad
on the dish, I happened to fix my eyes on
some of the smallest particles remaining. I immediately took them, and,
advancing to the window, upon examining them by the light,
recollected the unusual crashing above mentioned. Then, viewing the particles
(19:00):
with attention, I was inclined to think, as far as
my eye could judge, that a pounded diamond had been
mixed with my victuals. So Jelani knows he's going to
die and he prays to God. However, upon examining the
grains further, he realizes that they're actually not quite indestructible
to him. He can sort of crack and crunch them
(19:22):
with a small knife, and that means they are not
actually made of diamond. And because a diamond he thinks
he would not be able to crush with this small knife,
but this other gym he would. And then he says, Okay,
if there are another gem, they're not actually able to
injure me. It would have to be diamond powder for
it to work. So I think he sort of like
(19:43):
deduces the whole plot and how it was bungled here.
But oh there's a good twist here. Though. He at
first shows evidence of the attempted poisoning to another prisoner,
a bishop of Pavia, who is in prison on account
of quote plots and intrigues, and he allows this bishop
(20:05):
in the cell over to think that Chillini has been
successfully poisoned with a real diamond and only has a
few months to live, and uses this to get the
bishop to share his presumably better quality bishop food with Chillini.
And by the way, this is by no means the
only story that Chillini tells about plots against his life.
(20:26):
It's not even the only attempted poisoning. There's another story
where he claims that enemies tried to poison his food
with mercuric chloride at the time known as corrosive sublimate,
which definitely is poisonous in reality, But according to Chillini,
they didn't give him a big enough dose, so they
poisoned him with it. Instead of killing him, it only
(20:48):
made him sick to his stomach and cured his syphilis.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
Oh man.
Speaker 3 (21:04):
So, anyway, to come back to the question at hand,
I was really fascinated by this story, and I wondered
if there was any truth to Chillini's ideas about the
lethal effect of eating ground up diamonds. And I'm going
to get into some more details here, but as best
I can tell, the answer is probably no. But I'm
(21:25):
not going to give a note with such confidence that
you get the green light to go eat some diamond powder.
I'd still be cautious about it. Yeah, do not do that,
because one thing that is clear is Chillini is far
from the only person in history to advance this notion.
It has been held by many in many different cultures, times,
(21:45):
and places throughout world history that eating diamonds is poisonous,
though interestingly it also in other contexts has diamonds have
been regarded as medicine. So to further explore this urban
legend about diamond based poisons, the best source I found
was a book called Diamonds, An Early History of the
King of Gems from Yale University Press twenty eighteen, written
(22:09):
by a British historian named Jack Ogden, who seems to
specialize in the history of jewelry.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Yeah, this is a great book. I've been reading this
as well, and we'll reference this in future topics we're
discussing concerning diamonds. But yeah, Ogden is what a genologist
in addition to an historian, so he knows his diamonds.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
Yeah, And in the section on poisoning by diamond Ogden
says that as far as he can tell, there is
no scientific support for the belief that diamonds are poisonous.
As one of the early sources to write extensively on
this subject, Ogden cites the famous eleventh century Persian scientist
and scholar al Biruni, who was one of the great
(22:52):
polymaths of the Islamic Golden Age, famously a master of
many many disciplines, so he wrote books on extremely varied subjects,
from mathematics to astronomy, history, geography, and ethnography. He apparently
produced a very important medieval book on the culture of India.
In one section, Ogden talks about how Albiruni made a
(23:14):
note of how appreciation for diamonds varied greatly by culture,
and so while diamonds were, he says, widely venerated for
their ornamental value in India, he claimed that they were
not equally venerated in neighboring regions like Iraq and Korsan,
which Korison at the time would have been a region
corresponding to what is today parts of Iran, Afghanistan, and
(23:37):
Central Asia. And in these latter regions, Albiruni said that
diamonds were only used for drilling and for making poison.
But did Albiruni think that they were actually effective as poison.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
No.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
He offered several lines of evidence against the idea that
pieces of diamond could be used as poison the way
that Chillini would later describe. First of all, he mentions
a kind of logical problem with how these poisoning plots
are supposed to work. He says, if people were fed
pieces of diamond as a poison quote, if it has
not been ground, well, it will be betrayed by the
(24:13):
teeth of the eater.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Ugh.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
Oh god. There's a lot of like cringe inducing ideas here,
from from tooth trauma, from crunching on a diamond to
swallowing sharp things.
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Yeah, like, even if it's gritty, you know, like that
might be enough to make the target of your assassination
either just send back the dish or it would raise
their suspicion that someone was trying to poison them with diamonds,
as we saw our previous example. And certainly if the
individual had a food taster as well, that would also
(24:48):
be some that would also be something that would tip
your hand here and would alert your target that you
were trying to do them in.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Yeah, and interestingly, most of the the old stories about
poisonings via via diamond powder concern very rich people in history,
you know, and for I think probably obvious reasons that
you know, diamond powder is probably not cheap to come by.
So the people who were allegedly being poisoned by diamond
powder were, you know, aristocrats, enemies of the Medici family maybe,
(25:17):
or kings and queens or popes or sultan's things like that.
But anyway, so Albrouni is saying, presumably, if it were
to be successfully snuck into someone's food, it would have
to be pulverized into a very fine powder. But the
second thing is albi Rouni cites experimental evidence. He says
that he and maybe he or someone else tried feeding
(25:40):
pieces of diamond to a dog and says that the
dog showed no signs whatsoever of harm, neither immediately after
the experiment nor any time later. He's like, yeah, dog's fine.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Oh wow, is this the titular diamond dog?
Speaker 3 (25:53):
Then that had not occurred to me. I don't know.
Now that is some experimental evidence. Though on the other hand,
that clearly would not meet the standards of a modern
toxicology experiment. But it's something something to look at now,
I'll be ROUNEI us. He puts all these considerations together,
and he says, you know, in the end, there's no
(26:13):
basis for thinking diamonds are poisonous. He says that it
is all idle talk, it's tall tales, but that did
not stop lots of other people from believing it. Ogden
mentions an account written by the sixteenth century English politician
Jerome Horsey, who recorded comments made by the Russian Czar
Ivan the Terrible. I believe this was near the time
(26:34):
of Ivan's death, in which Ivan was going on about
the godlike potency of the diamond, and he said, among
other things, that quote the least parcel of it in
powder will poison a horse, with the implication you know,
how much more will it do to a human if
it'll poison a horse? And I just wanted to mention
a footnote of Ogden's where he says, well, first of all,
(26:57):
in this footnote he says, you know, if you go
trying to look up that comment of Ivans, it is
not in the edited published account of Jerome Horsey's travels
in Russia, but it is in his manuscript from which
the edited account was produced. But then finally he says,
quote whether Ivan's example of a horse was a deliberate
pun on Horsey's name is unknown, but Ogden also mentioned
(27:20):
several records of people who allegedly attempted to commit murders
by slipping diamonds into people's food. So one was noted
by a sixteenth century Portuguese doctor named Garcia del Orta
or Garcia de Orta, who claims that a woman tried
to kill her sick husband by feeding him ground up
(27:40):
diamonds and that didn't work. Another account takes place in
early seventeenth century England. It's some kind of very messy
lover's dispute among aristocrats in which the wife of an
earl wanted her marriage annulled so she could marry a
different earl. But the guy who she wanted to get
married to had an adviser who disapproved of her, so
(28:03):
she wanted to kill the advisor so she could go
ahead with the marriage to this other guy. But apparently
at one point in this caper, she sent an associate
to an apothecary to buy diamond powder. It was like,
you know, we've got to have the diamond powder for poisoning,
you know, whatever it costs to get it. And the
apothecary was like, I have no idea what you're talking about,
and she called him a fool, and she was eventually
(28:26):
able to poison the adviser, but it seems like it was.
Historians think it was probably with a different agent other
than diamond now. Ogden mentions another sixteenth century physician, an
Italian named Girolamo Cardano, who also commented on the use
of diamonds as a poison and similar to Albi Rooney,
cast doubt on the idea because he was like, you know, like,
(28:49):
there are cases where people steal diamonds by swallowing them
and then later retrieving them, and there's no evidence that
they suffered any harm. Now you might think, well, well,
but those are like whole, intact diamonds. Maybe maybe swallowing
a whole diamond is fine, but swallowing the ground up
diamond powder is what's really dangerous. And uh. And Cardono
(29:11):
also says he knows of at least one case where
somebody had swallowed a big mass of diamond powder quote,
without prejudicing the health of the taker anymore than if
he had eaten so much bread. Though this does make
me wonder, Okay, assuming diamonds, diamonds and diamond powder are
not particularly poisonous, how do they generally affect digestion? Like
(29:34):
I was thinking, you know, like is a diamond upset
stomach a thing, our diamond farts a thing.
Speaker 2 (29:40):
Well, certainly that I can see where the concept would
be alluring, because I mean it's kind of like the
diamond dog thing. Like the diamond has just such linguistic weight,
you know, it brings with it all these connotations of
obscene wealth and splendor, and we combine it with something
that could be considered lowly like a dog, like the
(30:00):
passing of gas. It instantly like zings in the brain, right.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
Yes, And that kind of points to another thing. So
Cardano's comment about stealing or smuggling diamonds by swallowing them,
it really kind of makes me wonder about this belief
in the poisonous power of diamonds, Like if this belief
about death by diamond ingestion could trace back to people
trying to prevent diamond theft or diamond smuggling, you know,
(30:28):
like better not try to swallow it or hide it
in your mouth. If you swallow it, it'll rip your
guts apart. Now, Ogden kind of comes up short looking
for recent evidence of experiments on the toxicity of diamonds,
(30:50):
and he ends up having to look back to a
letter written to the journal Notes and Queries in eighteen
seventy five which claimed that quote, the only possible way
in which it diamond powder could be injurious would be
as a mechanical irritant to the mucous membrane of the stomach.
So I was kind of wondering, are there any more
(31:10):
recent studies on the toxicity of ground up of either
diamonds in whole form or shattered diamonds or diamonds ground
up into a powder. And I did not directly find
any good toxicology research on this. I did come across
another just sort of like compilation overview in a book
(31:31):
on nanomedicine written by an author named Robert Fritus, who
has written a lot of information that's freely available online.
In his work, Fritis collects a bunch of other claims
from the history of diamonds, but both claims of them
working as poison but also as medicine, and this author writing,
I think in the early to mid two thousands, like
(31:51):
two thousand and three, two thousand and five, it looked
like these sources were dated. This author basically says that
the evidence from history is inconclusive, and that he's also
not able to find any good recent toxicology studies on
diamond powder ingestion. He does note that any abrasive, gritty
powder ingested in sufficient quantities can cause problems. Like if
(32:14):
you you just eat a bunch of sand, you know,
you can get intestinal blockage, obviously if you have to
be super super grossier. But if you know, you eat
like a needle or something that is long and sharp,
you can get perforations somewhere in the digestive system. So
a lot of things, a lot of you know, non
food items, if eaten in sufficient quantities, can hurt you.
(32:36):
I mean, I guess even food items eaten in sufficient
quantities can hurt you. But he says, it looks like
there's not strong modern evidence that diamond powder in particular
is dangerous. However, I would say that does not mean
you've got the green light to go eat it. This
guy's conclusion seems to be that there's not strong evidence
that diamond powder is poisonous, but there's like enough concern
(32:59):
that it would be worth studying to make sure, especially
for people who are maybe exposed to it more often
in their line of work. So, to summarize my thoughts here,
most of the actual accounts of diamonds used as poison
as opposed to you know accounts as opposed to just
free floating factoids about how diamonds work and what they
can do. The accounts seem to be either unsubstantiated rumors,
(33:24):
or they conclude with the diamond poison not working, or
the details seem a little slippery. However, the evidence on
whether diamonds are poisonous does still seem to be mixed.
It seems like it's probably not any more poisonous than
any other abrasive, gritty powder, but we're far from one
(33:44):
hundred percent confidence on that. Plus any powder insufficient quantities
could hurt you, so I would still say it is
probably better not to eat it.
Speaker 2 (33:53):
Yeah, there's just no reason to ingest diamond dust like
it's on one hand, yes, it probably won't hurt you,
but just to be safe, don't do it and don't
poison people. Obviously, that's I think, that's that's something we
stand by here on the show. But even if you
were in the business of poisoning people, this would not
(34:15):
be a good poison. This would be nothing you could
rely on, So don't do it.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
Well, it makes me wonder about the sort of the
literary appeal of the idea of diamonds as poison. You know,
the same reason it struck us as interesting to talk
about this on the show is that it seems unusual
and like an extravagant type of poison. So I almost
wonder if in some of these stories where it was
allegedly used to poison people or to attempt to poison people,
(34:41):
it should make us question the facts of the narrative,
because this is like a potent image of somebody using
an extravagant, expensive luxury item to harm someone, and it's
like packed with meaning, you.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Know, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of irony to it.
This is exactly the kind of thing. And I don't know,
it's impossible that either of these characters utilize some sort
of fictional diamond poison at some point or another, but
it's the kind of thing you could imagine Diabolic from
Danger Diabolic, yes, using you know, against his rich enemies.
(35:13):
And likewise, for like modern film franchises, you could imagine
the Jigsaw Killer from the Saw movies using something like this.
It's just it would be the perfect ironic death for
some sort of like a uber rich villain, right.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
Right, or for somebody like like Benvenudo Cillini, who is
a goldsmith and a jeweler and a sculptor, somebody who
worked with gold and jewels. I don't know if scholars
of Chillini's life and memoirs would have more to say
about that, but yeah, it seems like it seems fitting
that his enemies would try to get him with a
beautiful jewel that he might be, something that he might
(35:49):
have used in one of his works.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
All right, well, we're gonna go ahead and close out
this first episode of our look at Diamonds, but we'll
be back on Thursday with part two. We're going to
kick that off with some diamond basics. So if you're like,
hold on, I still don't know what a diamond is,
don't worry. We're gonna jump in with some of the
basics at the beginning of the next episode, and then
we'll get into more weird and fascinating elements of the
(36:15):
diamond's role and culture and belief and so forth. So
it should be a fun ride. In the meantime, we'll
remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily
a science podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays
listener mail on Mondays. On Wednesday's we do a short
form artifact or monster fact episode. I think we're gonna
put together one on the Salamander for tomorrow, and then
(36:37):
on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just
talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (37:03):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
Popular Podcasts
Cold Case Files: Miami
Joyce Sapp, 76; Bryan Herrera, 16; and Laurance Webb, 32—three Miami residents whose lives were stolen in brutal, unsolved homicides. Cold Case Files: Miami follows award‑winning radio host and City of Miami Police reserve officer Enrique Santos as he partners with the department’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, determined family members, and the advocates who spend their lives fighting for justice for the victims who can no longer fight for themselves.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.