Ep 176 Strychnine: The WD-40 of Victorian Medicine

This week, we’re coming at you with a classic TPWKY episode on one of the most notorious poisons out there: strychnine. Although strychnine might not flash across too many headlines these days, it was once imported by the ton in certain regions of the world. What did people want with so much strychnine? Depends on who you ask. Maybe it was for a revitalizing tonic, maybe a rat poison, or maybe it was to murder the founder of a famous university. Tune in to learn how this deadly poison acts on the body and keep listening for a very special musical treat. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
In January eighteen ninety three, it happened that I had,
for a few weeks been in a habit of taking
an occasional dose of one of our stock dispensary mixtures,
a tonic containing, amongst other things, a fair dose of
strych nine. On the morning of Tuesday, January tenth, I
went into the dispensary to take a dose of the tonic.

(00:21):
I at once noticed a much more intensely bitter taste
than was usual. I did not know quite what to do,
and my first impulse was to take an emetic. But
as the swallowing of saliva lessened the bitter taste every
minute that I hesitated, I persuaded myself that the difference
might only be fancy. Fifteen minutes elapsed, and I began

(00:42):
to feel very restless. An indescribable nervous sensation came over me,
as if there were rope pulleys running down to my extremities,
which were gradually being drawn tight. I had to make
an effort to prevent my mouth closing too soon as
I spoke, and to dig my pen into the paper
and write thick, as if to form a fulcrum over

(01:03):
which to lever my hand along the pages, while a
contra force in my arm strove to dash the pen
to the floor. My limbs were throwing off the control
of will and moved erratically. When I wished to go on,
my legs stopped, and when by a violent effort I
forced them to proceed, I could not pull up to
a standstill without walking against a bed to steady myself.

(01:27):
What I said or did I cannot remember. But I
managed to get along somehow, though feeling as if head, hands,
and legs belonged not to me, but to three separated individuals,
like a mechanical doll that has had all its limbs
pulled with a jerk of the string. I said to
Doctor Considine, I am really very ill. I feel sure

(01:49):
I am suffering from strychnine poisoning. I had taken six
tenth of a grain. I remembered that half a grain
had caused death. I must to prepare to die, to
die fearfully, to die soon. The simple fact to a
man that he is to die is a heavy blow
for the strongest will or the stoutest heart. The thought

(02:12):
was horrible, latent under the guise of a harmless looking
crystal but more death dealing than dagger or dynamite. The
deadly drug seems to revenge its former subjugators when once
it gets the upper hand.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Air raine, I know. Wow.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yes, that was a personal account of strychnine poisoning by
doctor W. T.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Harris.

Speaker 1 (03:24):
Wow isn't that wow?

Speaker 3 (03:27):
So many questions, so like why did he because what
did he say that he was going to drink?

Speaker 1 (03:32):
Oh, stric nine, Like it's a stock dispensary mixture. It
was a tonic that had STRYC nine in it, but.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Then he knew but then he knew that it was
more bitter, but so then.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
So he yeah, so he took the usual tonic that
he always did, which has a strychnine and other things
in it, you know, as you do as you do,
And then he tasted it and he was like, whoa,
this is really bitter. This is much more bitter than normal.
There must be a higher dose of strych nine. Maybe
someone dilute it before.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
So he knew, he knew something was off, but thought
it was like a NBD.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
And then he was like it was too much strick. Yeah,
it's gonna kill me.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
So he knew that it could happen really, like, there's
so many questions.

Speaker 1 (04:12):
Well, he convinced himself he was a doctor, so he
convinced himself that the bitter taste was just in his head.
And he's like, no, it's not not more bitter than normal.
I'm freaking out over nothing exactly. And then he's like
and then his limbs started to not function false yeah,
and then there's like, this account is actually much longer.
I shortened it quite a bit. So he has these

(04:33):
like panic moments and he's talking to this doctor. He's
trying to walk around with this doctor anyway. You can
find a full account in a book called Bitter Nemesis,
The Intimate History of Strych nine by John Love That
I know, but yes, well Hi, I'm.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Aaron Welsh and I'm aeron Aman Update.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
And this is this podcast will kill you.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
I'm so excited to talk all about Stryck nine today.

Speaker 1 (04:59):
I feel like, you know, we we said, okay, this season,
we're going to dive into these more like headline topics,
and we are absolutely going to do that, but you know,
we're also going to intersperse someone's that maybe are not
so much like just focus on the grimness of reality.
And I mean this is pretty grim grim, but it

(05:20):
also is like it's when is when is the last
time you saw Strick nine in the news. I guess
a relgion PM was someone strictly into his office last year?

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a it's it's a rarity, which
is good. I feel like there are still some important
takeaways that we can learn from Strick nine when it
comes to current.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Events or whatever.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
Oh for sure.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
But no, it's gonna be it's going to be an
interesting episode, kind of a classic T B A b
K Y even though it's not a n infectious disease.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
Yeah, yeah, back to our roots a little bit.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Yeah, we are. I'm excited to talk all about it
and learn all about Like I don't know anything about
how it works.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
I don't know anything about the I can't wait to
tell you.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
Actually, though, you're because you're gonna be like what I
can't wait to learn about the history. I know literally
nothing except I resume things like people were drinking tonics,
you know they were, of course, they were.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
For fun, for vitality, all of that good stuff vitality,
of course, And speaking of drinks for vitality, just kidding
what are we drinking this week?

Speaker 2 (06:28):
We are drinking up the bitter end, the bitter end,
the bitter end. Yeah, it's foreshadowing.

Speaker 1 (06:34):
It is foreshadowing, and I'm not even going to give
you any more hint than that because I hate you.

Speaker 4 (06:38):
Don't get it.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Bitter end? What's in the bitter end?

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Erin, It's a bitter drink. It's got campari, which is
very bitter. It's got bitters which are bitter.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
Also bitter orange.

Speaker 1 (06:50):
Which is not bitter but acidic. I guess rind would
be bitter, but we're not doing the rind whatever and
club soda.

Speaker 3 (06:58):
You can find the full really official recipe for that
quarantine and non alcoholic plusy beurta. It'll just be non
alcoholic campary. It exists on our website, this podcast will
Kill You dot com under the episodes tab.

Speaker 1 (07:10):
Yep check it out. That's that's why it is also
on our website. There's all all kinds of good stuff.
We've got transcripts, We've got links to merch to bloodmobile,
to our bookshop, dot org affiliate account, our Goodreads list,
and links to a contact us form if you want
to share a first hand account, suggest an episode all
of that stuff, maybe some more stuff.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
That's a good stuff. You tell us, you tell us.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
If you haven't already subscribed to the exactly Right Network
YouTube channel, please do yes, would love it. If you're
watching this video, hello, Hello, still feels really weird, like
I'm talking to a person through I.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
Guess that we are doing it.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
I think that's the point.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:51):
Yeah, Or if you haven't rated, reviewed, and subscribed on
whatever podcasterer that you like, We're on iHeart Radio and
iHeart podcasts. Yeah, we're on Apple of the podcasts and
the Spotify all of them.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
All the stuff. Yeah, check it out now.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
I don't think there's any more business. So should we
just get started, right? Okay?

Speaker 3 (08:29):
When we agreed to do this episode, Erin, I had
no idea what strick nine was not the slightest clue
at all. I knew that it came like from a
plant or something, and I knew I assumed it was
some kind of talksin or poison. This is dark erin,

(08:50):
so just fair warning, it's about to get really really dark.
The symptoms of styck nine poisoning are horrific. Yes, that's
my warning to have everyone. The good news is that
it's rare.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
So strychnine is an alkaloid, which means it's a plant
derived chemical, a plant drive compound that comes from the
tree strychnos nux vomica. I think that's how you say.
It sounds a lot like a Harry Potter spell.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
It does.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
But this is also called the strychnine tree or the
poison fruit, which is a very apt name for.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
It, and it is native.

Speaker 3 (09:33):
This tree is native to India and parts of Southeast Asia.
And I wanted to just give everyone a bit.

Speaker 2 (09:38):
Of a sense of like, what the what this looks like?

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Okay, cool? Okay, I have a description too, but I
was like this in wait a second, this is really silly.
But have you been watching White Lotus?

Speaker 2 (09:49):
Okay? I googled it, Aaron.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
It is not the same tree as white lotus. White
lotus they called the suicide tree, and that is a
tree that produces a totally different toxin that functions as
like a cardiac glycoside would stop someone heart.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Ok maybe we should do an episode.

Speaker 3 (10:02):
We should I was thinking the same exact thing. So,
not the same tree as in white lotus, but does
exist in some at least of the same regions of
the world, and it doesn't look very similar because that
fruit in white lotus was like this kind of like
oblong shaped green thing. These look the fruits look kind

(10:23):
of like, i don't know, like a cross between an
apple and an orange.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
So they have like a peel.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
They're kind of that size, like a large orange or something,
and they're orange red in color when they're ripe, and
they have like almost like a shell, but the peel
doesn't quite look like an orange peel, but it has
this sort of harder exterior, and when you cut into
it or crack it open, there's this like white kind
of jellyish pulp, almost like if you've ever seen a

(10:49):
mango steen or even like those poison fruits.

Speaker 2 (10:52):
In white lotus.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
Why do we keep saying it where it's like that
whitish kind of pulp. And then there's these seeds inside.
And the seeds, as is true for so many plant
poisons that we've done on this podcast, often the seeds
have really really high concentrations of these alkaloids they're found
throughout the plant, so the flowers have really high concentrations.

(11:15):
The bark has strychnine as well as other compounds like brucene,
which are similar, but the seeds are kind of where
the money is and they're these like flat, almost like
hockey puck shaped little discs. They're pretty hard, but they're
covered in almost this kind of fuzz. Huh okay, okay questions, Yeah, okay,

(11:39):
give it to me.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
Does anything eat the seeds?

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (11:43):
Yes, oh I wrote it down somewhere exactly which animals do.
But yes, there's a few different animals, hornbills and certain
types of langers.

Speaker 1 (11:54):
I think, oh wow, okay, so they must just not
be susceptible to strychnine.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
It's so interesting.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
So they can metabolize they have like different ways to
metabolize the strychnine.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Okay, yes, so they have adapted.

Speaker 1 (12:08):
And I'm jussing otherwise it's just like a pest. Otherwise
pest repellent.

Speaker 3 (12:14):
Exactly like many I know. I feel like we really
Matt candeis we miss you here?

Speaker 4 (12:19):
We do?

Speaker 5 (12:20):
We do?

Speaker 2 (12:20):
Because he would have.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
A lot more great detail on like what is this
doing for the plant? I did read a very interesting
like evolution of plant these types of alkaloid chemicals and
things in plants, and like the fact of how much
convergent evolution there is where so many different plant species
end up independently evolving very similar types of compounds. Strychnine

(12:46):
is not one of those. So strychnine is actually kind
of unique. And the way that it is created in
the plant itself is through a very very complex pathway.
So the metabolism to yate strychnine in the plant is
very complex.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Which is super interesting compound.

Speaker 3 (13:05):
Yeah, yeah, it's like one of the largest alkaloids out there.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
It's yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
That's that is the compound itself. It is present in
this particular tree, but most people today are not necessarily
exposed directly from this tree, but they're exposed via poisons,
specifically rodenticides, because that is what it is used in commercially,
though there have also been reported cases from contaminated herbal

(13:35):
supplements and things like that, and then there could be
like occupational exposures.

Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:39):
I think it's also used I read in homeopathy sometimes
like tinctures like intentionally included.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
Oh dear, Yeah, that sounds like a bad idea. So yeah,
according to like the I got to go back to
our favorite poison control centers data. Yeah, yeah, to kind
of get a sense of like where people are being
exposed to strychnine today, there's three main routes that people
tend to be exposed. It's either unintentional or accidental exposure.

(14:10):
So whether that's to an urbal supplement or to a
rodenticide or some kind of poison, but some kind of
accidental exposure. Unfortunately, it is also still used in suicide
attempts and then also adulteration of other recreational drugs. So
a lot of times illicit or recreational drugs are mixed
with a ton of other stuff, and sometimes that includes strychnine.

(14:32):
Where are they getting it from?

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Why? Strict nine?

Speaker 3 (14:34):
I don't know, I don't know, but occasionally that's where
people are getting exposed to it from. And toxicity from
strych nine truly is horrific. So I'm going to walk
us through what it looks like and then we'll talk
about we know exactly what is happening and why this
is happening, so within potentially minutes of exposure, and most
of the time this is going to be an oral exposure,

(14:56):
but it could be through mucous membranes or even like
inhaling it. If it's like an occupational exposure or something.
But most of the time it's going to be through ingestion.
Within about fifteen to thirty minutes, so really quick timeframe,
it's absorbed into the bloodstream. And the initial symptoms are
described very similarly to what the first hand account that

(15:18):
you read Aaron was. And I'm going to give a
quote here quote apprehension, a heightened sense of awareness, and
muscle spasms end quote. And then we'll start to see
these other symptoms. We start to see a generalized kind
of hyper reflexia, so someone's reflexes will start to you know,

(15:40):
you imagine hitting your knee and your knee pops, so
any of those kinds of reflexes will start to like activate,
and then we see this hyper sensitivity to stimuli that
triggers convulsions that can look very similar to seizures. So
when you say hyper hyperreal activities, that would say hypersensitivity

(16:01):
HP sensitivity, so that like if you hit your knee,
then it's like not just boo, it's like.

Speaker 2 (16:05):
Woch exactly, It's like show.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
And then it's also like a muscle spasm on top
of it, right, So like I bump into you and
your arm starts to spasm. Then your whole body starts
to spasm. Then you go into this what looks like
a generalized tonic chlonic type of seizure.

Speaker 1 (16:22):
Okay, like a domino effect of like the convulsion movement exactly.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah, and then we'll see these kind of very characteristic
types of muscle spasms. We'll see that the upper limbs
tend to flex as they go into spasm, so they
come in towards the chest and they have.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
They have the contraction in this direction.

Speaker 3 (16:44):
Okay, the lower limbs and the back tend to extend,
and so they are also contracting, but like in the
opposite direction, so your legs are going outwards, and this
can end up resulting in what's called episthetonis, which we
saw in tetanus as well. Yes, but that's when you

(17:06):
have these muscle spasms of the back that are so
powerful that we see the back and the neck arching backwards.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
It's like, really truly horrific.

Speaker 3 (17:17):
You'll get spasms in the muscles of the face and
the jaw that result in contorting the face to look
like a very severe grimace. This is called rhesus sardonicus,
again seen in tetuses. Yeah, and we see this kind
of over and over again in these kind of spasm
convulsion type waves, and the person who is experiencing this

(17:43):
does not lose consciousness the way that we see with
typical seizures, which makes this that much more horrific and
also provides a clue as to what.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
Is going on.

Speaker 3 (17:56):
Right, It's not just seizures, because someone is very aware
of what is happening to them, but they cannot control it.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
Okay, okay, and this is all within like ten to
fifteen minutes fifteen.

Speaker 3 (18:07):
So it all, yeah, it all starts within ten to
fifteen minutes or fifteen to thirty minutes or so, depending
on you know how much what the dose was and
all of that. Each one of these spasms can last
anywhere on the order of like thirty seconds to a
couple of minutes, but they often without treatment, will get
more intense, will last longer, and will have less time

(18:31):
between each one of these spasm or convulsion episodes as
this progresses, so very often death will result from either
respiratory arrest because your diaphragm and the muscles of your
chest wall are also spasming, so then you cannot breathe, okay,

(18:52):
or from cardiac arrest, which could occur from you know,
not directly from the muscle of the heart spasming, from
things like electrolyte abnormalities that can happen because as your
body is contracting this much, as all of your muscles
are undergoing this much contraction, they can end up like

(19:13):
releasing enzymes and causing something called rhabdomyolysis or other complications
that then basically make your whole metabolic system really messed up,
and then your heart can't function, and so then you
can have cardiac arrest as well.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
It's okay.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
So it's really horrific. And one of the papers, just
to give you a sense of like how long does
this go on? Like what are we talking about? One
of the papers that I read basically estimated that most people,
depending on the dose that they take, don't tolerate more
than five to ten of these spasm episodes before succumbing

(19:50):
to death. So it's usually within a matter of hours at.

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Hours, okay. And so question you said, without treatment, what
treatments are available art is there an antidote?

Speaker 3 (20:02):
No, there's no antidote at all that we have. The
treatment is focused on aggressively controlling these convulsions, and we
do that using medicines that are very similar to what
we would use for typical types of seizures.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
Okay, like what would that be? Like? What is the
mechanism of action here? Oh?

Speaker 3 (20:24):
I'm so glad you asked, Aaron, because I feel like
that's an important part before we talk about how we
treat it.

Speaker 4 (20:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
Yeah, so what what is happening here?

Speaker 3 (20:31):
And that will tell us why we can treat it
the way that we do, even though we don't have
any kind of specific antidote. So last season, Aarin, we
did an episode where I quoted Taylor Swift and you
didn't get it.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
I said, yeah, you need.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
To calm them down. You're being too loud. You need
to just stop, Like, can't you just seeest? No, it
was in stiff person syndrome actually, because a very similar
idea kind of applies here. So in that episode, I
was talking about the idea of these inhibitory neurotransmitters. So

(21:09):
strychnine is affecting our nervous system's ability to inhibit contraction.
So strychnine is blocking receptors in our nervous system that
are usually in charge of inhibition, calming down or relaxing
our nervous system, specifically our muscular nervous system. Okay, So

(21:33):
without this inhibitory influence, specifically, strychnine is blocking glycine receptors,
and glycine is one of our major inhibitory neurotransmitters along
with GABBA, which is what we were talking about in
stiff person syndrome, right, right, So without glycine being able
to bind to its receptor and do its job, there's

(21:55):
this overwhelming increase in motor neuron impulses going to our
mind uscles, and that is why we see these contractions
and these spasms. And it just so happens that the
particular side of action, this particular glycine receptor is in
a part of our spinal cord that is very specific
to our motor neurons. It is not in our brain,

(22:18):
in our cerebrum. And that is why you remain so
aware of what is going on, because nothing is blocking
the nervous system impulses in your brain. It's specifically blocking
it in our spinal cord and in our musculature. Like
what is happening between our nervous system and our muscles,

(22:39):
just making them contract. And if all of the descriptions
that I read of what this disease looks like sounded
very similar to tetanus, it's because they are Tetanus blocks
the release of glycine, whereas strychnine is blocking glycine's action.
But it's the same exact end result essentially. Okay, so

(23:02):
that is what is happening.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
Does that make sense? Yeah? Okay?

Speaker 1 (23:06):
And it also yeah, okay, it's I mean, that's the
only thing that I knew about strictine was that it
was like basically mimics tetanus almost precisely.

Speaker 2 (23:15):
I had no idea about that, Aaron.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
I mean I only once I read about it right
right before during the episode. I had no idea.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
But like tetanus, we haven't.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
We have like tetanus antitoxin and things like that, right,
But that doesn't work in strictine because in strictine you're
blocking the receptors. So we don't have anything that is
like an antidote to unblock those receptors, right, So the
treatment is focused on aggressive control of these convulsions. We
use the same types of medicines. Those are usually benzodiazepines
or barbituates, which are acting actually as GABBA agonists, so

(23:50):
they're acting on the other side of our inhibitory nervous
system to try and increase inhibition and decrease those convulsions.
Sometimes you even have to use a medicine that basically
causes total neuromuscular blockade, so a paralytic, and that's like
the type of medicine that you might use to intubate
somebody before a surgery, and so in that case it

(24:11):
means that we're talking about intubation, we're talking about ventilator
support and all of that. Activated charcoal can also be
used if you get someone early enough to try and
prevent further absorption. But it's a little, you know, tricky,
because if they've already started showing a lot of signs
and symptoms, then if you cause a lot of vomiting,

(24:33):
then you could trigger more of these convulsions because they're
triggered by any kind of you know, a movement, a sound,
a touch, any kind of stimulus can trigger these contractions.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
And so vomiting it's not just like because and once
you ingest, it like goes really quickly to your bloodstream.
So will vomiting even.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
Help or so.

Speaker 3 (24:53):
It has been shown that activated charcoal can help to
slow down overall.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
Absorption of it. Okay, yeah, okay, but it's it is
a balance.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
Oh I had a question, and now I forget what
it is.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Was it how much of this can kill you?

Speaker 1 (25:08):
That was one of my questions?

Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, okay, I can tell you that it's a very
small amount area. The lethal dose is often reported as
about sixty to one hundred milligrams for an adult. That's
about one to two milligrams per kilogram of body weight.

Speaker 1 (25:24):
Okay, what does that look like like?

Speaker 3 (25:27):
Yeah, I knew you were going to ask that, so
I couldn't get a perfect answer to this, but I
tried really hard. So we're going to er and math
this a little bit. The seeds of the Strych nine tree,
which again often have high concentrations of Styck nine, they're
about one and a half percent strick nine by weight

(25:48):
I think, I think by weight, okay, but they're about
one and a half percent strict nine. And Google search
suggested that each seed weighs between three and seven grams
per seed. Okay, so if we call it five grams
per seed and one and a half percent of that
is strick nine. Then we're talking about potentially one seed

(26:09):
containing about seventy five milligrams, So one seed potentially could
be enough to kill a person because how much do
you need sixty to one hundred milligrams okay, depending on
your body size, okay.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
And so that is the question that I actually wanted
to that I wanted to ask was if someone does recover,
how does that happen and is it like how long
does that take? Is it the recovery? Like what is
the half life of this compound in the body?

Speaker 2 (26:36):
So glad you asked about the half life.

Speaker 3 (26:37):
The half life is about ten to sixteen hours, so
we do eliminate it. It's primarily metabolized through the liver.
With the liver, some of it excreted through the kidneys,
but mostly through the liver. So we basically have to
break this down and metabolize it to then eventually get
rid of it through our liver's metabolic kind of detoxification system.

(26:59):
It is fairly rapid ten to sixteen hours. But because
this is such a rapid onset disease right where it's
being absorbed into your bloodstream and starting to show symptoms
within a.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
Matter of minutes.

Speaker 3 (27:13):
Most people will die within that timeframe if they don't
have any access to supportive care, depending on the dose. Right,
if this is just causing muscle spasms but doesn't end
up affecting your respiratory muscles at least to a degree
that it's causing respiratory arrest. If it is not causing
you know, further electrolyea abnormalities, you don't end up with

(27:35):
kidney damage or rubdomyolysis or something like that. People do
survive exposure to strychnine frequently. I do not know if
there's any data on whether people can develop a tolerance
to it, and like what that will look like in
terms of are you upregulating your glycine receptors or something

(27:56):
like that so that you're not having as much of
a reaction.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (28:00):
I what I read is suggested that no, there is
no such thing as like iokane powder strict not you
can which.

Speaker 3 (28:05):
Makes sense because like, why why would there why would
there be? Yeah, so that's I mean, that's strick nine.
It's it's so so so awful, Aaron. Yeah, we don't
use this in medicine today, No, we don't hear today
we have tell me, I'm assuming that we have. Can

(28:29):
you walk me through how we figured this out, why
people thought it was a good idea to use this
and for what and when did they stop?

Speaker 6 (28:38):
Totally totally Okay, let's do it, Okay.

Speaker 1 (28:56):
Aaron, you just you just took us through like a
it's it's a really dark thing, and I think that
this could be an opportunity now to like, do we
want to lighten things a little bit?

Speaker 2 (29:08):
Always?

Speaker 1 (29:09):
Okay, what I'm gonna ask you to do is go
to that link that I sent you, Okay, and uh
press play and we'll play for about thirty seconds.

Speaker 2 (29:20):
Thirty seconds, Okay, I'm gonna press play now.

Speaker 4 (29:58):
Okay, Okay, okay, Okay.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
So I have no idea what I was listening to Eron.
I was kind of rocking out, got a little weird.

Speaker 4 (30:07):
What's going on?

Speaker 1 (30:08):
That is a band called Stryck nine.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
The band is called Strick nine.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
The band is called Stryck nine. So when I told
my husband that we were doing Stryck nine next as
a topic, he goes, oh my god, will you play
a song from my high school band called Stryck nine.

Speaker 2 (30:26):
Stop it. This is John's band.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
This is John when he was fifteen. He was the drummer.
Their fan is called Stryck nine, So I was like, yes,
of course, I thought you'd enjoy that little tree. I
loved it.

Speaker 3 (30:42):
I remember you saying that there was like a band
called Stryck nine that you But then I A, I
totally forgot about it, like entirely.

Speaker 2 (30:49):
And also it was John's n's band.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
So he's thrilled.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Oh he's famous. Now are they on Spotify?

Speaker 1 (31:02):
I don't believe that they are.

Speaker 5 (31:03):
No.

Speaker 1 (31:04):
They had to like dig up an old CD and
then like burn it to the computer kind of a thing.
I know. I was like, can I get a T shirt?

Speaker 3 (31:13):
Like?

Speaker 1 (31:13):
Do you still have band t shirts? He thinks somewhere,
but he couldn't find one.

Speaker 2 (31:18):
We should start selling Stryck nine merch straight crossover.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
There we go.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
Okay, So why was their band named strick nine? Was
he like a nerd or did it just sound like deadly?
I think it was, yeah, it was deadly.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
I'm not sure, Like, oh, I wish I could ask
the genre. What he said was, oh, I forget it
was something like post metal. No, I don't know, I'm
gonna mess something up it. It was like punk metal.
I don't know. I don't know genre.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
I love genres. I want to listen to the whole song. Now,
how did you pick that exact clip? I wonder well,
because this.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
Morning he came in and I was like, Oh, I'm
gonna play which is the song that is like the
instru mental song, because I want to I want to
put it into like little bits here and there, and
this one it's eight minutes long, the whole of it.
And I was like, well, I'm not gonna play the
whole thing, so like what He's like, well, you got
to wait for the chorus then, and so we listened

(32:15):
and listened and it was like, yeah, started basically like
at two minutes forty five seconds, and I was like, okay,
I'll start at two thirty.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
I'm glad.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
What a treat.

Speaker 1 (32:25):
I'm so glad. Okay, are you ready to learn about
the history of Strict nine?

Speaker 2 (32:30):
I'm so ready. Okay.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
Have you ever been to Stanford? Yeah? Oh? Really?

Speaker 3 (32:37):
Okay, Like to visit the campus? Yeah, okay, I've never been. Okay,
it's beautiful. Best with it in high school?

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Yeah? Did you happen to visit the arboretum on campus?

Speaker 3 (32:47):
No?

Speaker 2 (32:47):
Aaron. I was in high school.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Okay, well, I love I love an arboretum.

Speaker 3 (32:51):
I walked around the quad and I was like, oh,
I go to school here, and then I was like, no,
I can't get into Stanford.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Well, okay. If you had visited the arboretum, you may
have spotted the Stanford Mausoleum, which holds the remains of
Leland Stanford, Jane Stanford, and Leland Stanford Junior. And in
case you're wondering, yes, these are the Stanfords that gave
their name to Stanford University. In that mausoleum you might
have seen Jane's memorial stone. I think it's only open

(33:20):
like one day to the public a year which reads
quote Jane Stanford born in mortality August twenty fifth, nineteen
twenty eight, passed to immortality February twenty eighth, nineteen oh five. Yeah,
Jane was the last of these three Stanfords to pass,
and her death essentially ensured the continued operation of the

(33:43):
university through the gift of much of her estate. Not
your average gift, then again, Jane Stanford was far from
average in life as well as in death.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
I cannot wait for this, aarin on.

Speaker 1 (33:57):
That fateful February day in nineteen you know five. She
did not pass into immortality as her husband Leland had
eleven years earlier through heart failure, or as her son
Leland Junior had twenty years earlier from typhoid fever when
he was fifteen. Yeah, gosh, Jane died not from natural causes, but,

(34:19):
as the coroner's jury put it, quote strict nine, poisoning
with felonious intent by some person or persons to this
jury unknown.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Quote Oh my god, why.

Speaker 1 (34:33):
Would anyone want to kill one of the founders of
Stanford University? And who might have been the culprit? Both
are questions that I'll get to later on.

Speaker 2 (34:42):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 3 (34:43):
The amount of like what do you call it when
you're like dragging me along by a string?

Speaker 2 (34:49):
Cliffhanger? Like, I'm like, come on.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
What, Oh You're gonna have to wait because we got it.
We got a first answer. Why stryck nine? Right, Okay, yeah, okay.
So to get at that question, it's worth taking trip
through the history of strychnine itself. As you described for
us Aaron, Strychnine is a substance derived from the nuts
of certain trees. The most well known being the stryctnosed
nux vomica tree. And now I don't have to describe

(35:14):
this here, so let me just scooch on down.

Speaker 4 (35:16):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
So, yeah, the poison is in the nuts of those trees,
and people had known about the deadly qualities of strych nine,
or rather nux vomica, which is what the unrefined powder
from these nuts was called for centuries until they like
isolated the compound itself, and they had used it as
a poison for pests. Vomica, by the way, doesn't have
anything to do with vomiting that it doesn't make you vomit.

(35:40):
It's the Latin for ulcer or abscess. And the powder
was apparently used sometimes to treat skin source.

Speaker 2 (35:46):
Oh interesting.

Speaker 1 (35:48):
Yeah, but it didn't really become all that popular, like
a household name in many parts of the world until
the eighteen hundreds. During this time, many people bought into
this idea that every plant on earth served some sort
of purpose for humans for humans, right, like it's only
there for you.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
Such an anthropocentric idea.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
I mean, yeah, it makes sense, right as people were
actually making the links between things like Sinchona bark, which
is where quinine comes from, which is used to treat malaria,
willow bark and aspirin and belladonna opium. I mean like
there's a lot, right, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
Sure.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
It was like all plants had to have some medicinal purpose,
and if a plant seemed toxic, that was interpreted as
it being very likely beneficial in small doses. Like there
had to be two sides to it. In many ways,
strychnine was just another one of these plant derived ingredients
popular in tonics, tinctures, pills, creams, et cetera. No one

(36:50):
had done any scientifically rigorous tests on what exact benefits
it provided. They just kind of assumed that it did.
It was like, okay, well if it kills rats, so
it must be good in small doses for humans.

Speaker 2 (37:03):
Okay, seriously, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
It was advertised as a treatment for deafness, headache, intestinal worms,
prolapsed rectum, lead poisoning, rheumatism, diabetes, catatania, strangulated hernia, cholera,
just to name a few. Just like the spectrum of like.

Speaker 3 (37:26):
The spectrum aaron. Anytime there's a spectrum that wide, you just.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
Know, yeah, come on right, it's it's not yeah.

Speaker 2 (37:35):
Yeps, like what they think collagen will treat.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Today, studies suggest it doesn't do anything. Doctors experimented with
injecting strychnine up the urethra and into the bladder to
treat urinary retention. Can you imagine?

Speaker 3 (37:53):
Okay, but I mean at least that I can see
the basis for you know, sure it sounds awful, but yeah, yeah,
but at least that it's going to cause spasms. So
if it causes bladder spasm, will that help your yearninary attention?
Right there?

Speaker 1 (38:07):
There's a curtain logic to it.

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Exactly, Yeah, okay, it was.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
It was also hailed as an excellent performance enhancer and
overall vitality booster, especially popular with athletes, and I think
that people viewed the tetanus like effect that it had
as a way to counteract weak muscles or paralysis of
different films, so they try to use it to treat paralysis.

Speaker 3 (38:29):
I thought that we weren't going to be talking about
current events here, but this feels a lot like I'm
just sorry.

Speaker 1 (38:35):
But yeah, I mean that's the thing, is that like
reaching for something that's like quote unquote natural too.

Speaker 2 (38:40):
Rite exactly, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
In the nineteen oh four Olympics in Saint Louis, Missouri,
the winner of the marathon clocking in at three hours,
twenty eight minutes and fifty three seconds, which is glacial
compared to today's record of two hours and thirty five seconds.

Speaker 3 (39:00):
Okay, I was like, I have literally no idea.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
I mean, it's like it's a great like three hours
and twenty minutes.

Speaker 3 (39:08):
It is like you could Yeah, it's I think I
could do a marathon in three days.

Speaker 1 (39:12):
Oh yeah, No, it's not the thing I could do.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
But I mean that, like that is not compared to
winning today. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
But the winner of this marathon collapsed of exhaustion several
times during the race, and at one of these collapses
a few miles before the finish line, his trainers gave
him raw egg, white brandy, and Stryck nine. Wow, he
had to be carried over the finish line.

Speaker 2 (39:37):
Does that count?

Speaker 1 (39:38):
He still won? I think the first winner like took
a cab or something, and he was like I got tired,
Like I our carriage to the finish line was like
I got tired. He got found out. Why would you
enter the race?

Speaker 3 (39:54):
I have so many questions, but for a different episode, Okay.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
But Stryck nine was available basically any pharmacy throughout the
eighteen hundreds and into the early nineteen hundreds, and included
in tons of proprietary medications for athletes, for adults, for children,
for everyone, Strict nine, for all, strict nine, for all,
strict all. It was super cheap to import, and so
it was a great money maker. There were skeptics, of course,

(40:20):
like people who recognized it as the poison that it was,
and then there were people who were like, well, it's
not harmful, but I don't really think it does anything.
I'm switching to arsenic. But that was a real one. Yeah, okay,
But for decades the champions of Stryck nine greatly outnumbered
the naysayers. The WD forty of Victorian medicine is what

(40:42):
John Buckingham called It. Was the author of that bitter
remedy book, Bitter Nemesis. Yeah, that's hilarious, hilarious.

Speaker 2 (40:51):
I like that a lot.

Speaker 1 (40:52):
It was especially popular as a last resort injection given
by doctors to patients that seemed to be not long
for this world. Buckingham writes, quote, how many famous Victorians
left this world with the words ringing in their ears.
There is just one other thing that I may try.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Oh no, yeah, oh gosh, yep.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
To give you a sense of just how popular this
stuff was, in the eighteen eighties, London was importing around
five hundred tons of the nucks vomica nuts each year.
What can you even I can't even comprehend. Yeah, each
what to be used in medications as a performance enhancer,

(41:37):
as a rat poison or mouse or vole or rabbit
or cat or dog or whatever you whatever your target
pest species is wow, And of course as a weapon
of murder. And I don't think they were importing it
for the purpose of murder. I'm just saying that it
was used.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
On it was useful for that.

Speaker 1 (41:53):
Yeah. When it comes to poisons of the eighteen hundreds,
strychnine does not come close to the popularity of arsenic.
Unlike arsenic, which is tasteless, colorless, odorless, and dissolves easily,
strychnine is extremely bitter and does not easily dissolve. As
poisoning cases increased in the eighteen hundreds, especially using arsenic,

(42:15):
additional protections were added to these substances and you had
to at least record like who purchased the poison or medication,
and how much of it they purchased. I don't know,
like how you do ID checks and like to verify anyway,
which is a plot point in a book that I
read about strychnine anyway. Oh. Yeah, Apparently the rise in
poisonings overall may have been driven in part not just

(42:37):
by easy access to these substances, but also because life
insurance was beginning to become a thing. So you could
take out a policy on someone and slip a little
bit of arsenic or strychnine into their coffee, and then
before there were tests, you couldn't confirm that it was poison, right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
I mean it feels though, like the way that you
die with strychnine is fairly obvious.

Speaker 1 (43:00):
That's so that's the thing. Yeah, it is, It is
very obvious. I mean. And this was also pre tetanus vaccine,
so maybe TENNUS cases were more common.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
It's still like, I don't.

Speaker 1 (43:11):
Know, I mean, I think it was enough. It was
obvious enough that there was a motivation for chemists to
develop tests, and they did this for arsenic and then
for other poisons such as stryck nine. Okay, but yeah,
as you said, like it causes very distinctive symptoms, right,
but that didn't stop poisoners.

Speaker 2 (43:30):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
The most famous of these, or infamous rather of the
Stryck nine poisoners was William Palmer, whom Charles Dickens called
the greatest villain that ever stood in the old Bailey. WHOA, yeah,
the greatest villain.

Speaker 4 (43:45):
He is.

Speaker 1 (43:46):
He killed or is suspected of having killed several people,
including his friend, his brother, his mother in law, his children.
Just a really dark, really dark character. Yeah, infamous. His
trial marked a huge huge step forward in forensic medicine
and the use of expert testimony from medical and forensic
witnesses during a criminal trial.

Speaker 2 (44:08):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Agatha Christie's time as a drug dispenser during both World
Wars inspired her writing, which of course featured many characters
using poisons like Strych nine to dispatch their relatives and friends.
Her first book, which was the first to include Poirot
like her Famous Detective, featured Strick nine, The Mysterious Affair
at Styles. This is the one that I read. It

(44:30):
was a plot point that anyway, Yeah, okay, yeah, it's
also in Sherlock Holmes. It has and or had a
certain level of notoriety back in the day. For a time,
strychnine murders or suicides via strychnine weren't. They weren't necessarily commonplace,
but neither were they totally unheard of, and there certainly

(44:50):
would have been many opportunities for Jane Stanford's murderer to
have read about one of these cases and gotten the
idea to use strychnine in their own murder plot. In
nineteen oh five, at seventy six years old, Jane Stanford
had led quite the life. She and her husband Leland
had grown incredibly wealthy and influential in California over the

(45:13):
second half of the eighteen hundreds. Leland, who was at
one point the governor of California and a US Senator,
was very involved in the railroad business and was widely
considered a robber baron. They were one of the wealthiest
families in the US at this time, equivalent to today's billionaires.

(45:33):
In eighteen sixty eight, at the age of thirty nine,
Jane gave birth to their son, Leland Junior. And I
mentioned her age because at that time that was like
an older age for a first time mom, and because
they had been trying for years and years and years.
I think they got married when she was like twenty two.
So they had been trying for years for a kid

(45:55):
and nearly gave up hope. And then Leland Junior was born.
He was much loved every whim attended to, and so
when he died tragically at the age of fifteen from
typhoid fever, it was beyond devastating for Jane and Leland Senior,
and so to honor his memory, they opened Stanford University,
which was essentially a shrine to him, and over the

(46:17):
course of their lives they gave about one point four
billion dollars in today's dollars to the university.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
Yeah. And because of their founder's roles and the huge
sum of money that they contributed, they stayed incredibly involved
and steered it however they wanted, which was not always
in a popular direction. Jane was very into spiritualism, like
communing with the dead. She and she regularly had conversations

(46:46):
with her dead son who would help guide her and
how to structure the university, who to hire, which grants
to give, how to write her will? Okay, And so
this was a time when spiritualism was very popular like
the late eighteen hundreds and so, but it was also
very found upon. It was seen as like crass and
so Jane and those around her tried to hide her

(47:06):
interest in the subject as best they could, but it
was kind of like an open secret.

Speaker 2 (47:11):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (47:12):
She and Leland Senior also imposed their personal values on
how the university should operate. Neither had spent time at
universities themselves, and they viewed a quote unquote classical education
as useless and cruel. They were like Harvard Yale, what
a waste of time. You're not preparing anyone for the
real world. So they wanted to start a university that

(47:34):
would actually prepare students for life in the real world.

Speaker 2 (47:38):
Okay, I don't what does that mean. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
I don't, but I know that they wanted their university
to be open to both men and women, so they
supported co education from early on, poor and rich with
training in the sciences, liberal arts, and practical arts like agriculture.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Their supporters admired their drive to enable people of all classes,
though not necessarily of all races. Admissions for black people were, yeah,
they were limited for years. They wanted to enable people
to excel and to have access to an education, while
their critics called it a money laundering scheme or restitution

(48:17):
for their ill gotten wealth. Okay, maybe it's everything. Leland
Stanford Junior University opened in eighteen ninety one with fifteen
faculty in five hundred and fifty nine students, which actually
made it the largest college in the Far West. At
the helm of the university was David Starr Jordan, the
first president of Stanford University, though not the Stanford's first pick.

Speaker 2 (48:41):
Ok.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
They tried to go like a bunch of other people
before him. They poached him from his role as president
of Indiana University after several others turned him down. Jordan's
training was in biology and medicine, and his research interests
revolved around cataloging fish, but his true passion was eugenics.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
I it's this is one of those weird moments erin
where I'm like, I know his name because we just
were talking about him. We just were talking about you
were at Indiana University. Yeah, Like it's one of those
weird coincidences.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Well, because there was like the street named Jordan's River,
the Jordan named I think it's called something else now
technically campus Creek.

Speaker 3 (49:26):
Maybe yeah, yeah, but yeah, yeah, okay, this is so interesting,
keep going, keep going. Yeah he's a eugenesist.

Speaker 1 (49:33):
He's a eugenicist. I'm not going to go into his eugenesis. Like,
it's just you know, he was here, I was. Yeah,
he was always resentful. Quote that he owed his job
to a message from a dead child. End quote. Spiritualism
embarrassed him greatly, and he thought that the whole lot
were frauds. But he lapped up the opportunity to lead

(49:55):
Stanford University. Okay, yep, you know. Yeah, he had to
work under the Stanford's direction and basically create this university
from scratch, which is a big undertaking. But he also
held all the power to hire and fire faculty, with
Jane only intervening in extreme circumstances. No committee to listen to,

(50:17):
no compromises he had to make. He could just hire
his buds. And for years, yeah, for years, the setup
seemed to work fairly well. He was more or less
viewed as like a benevolent dictator. Okay, and then Jane
wanted to get more involved. She thought that religious teaching
should be required, specifically Christianity. This was against the university's

(50:40):
laws of like, there's going to be no religious focus.
She regretted coeducation and wanted to forbid women from enrolling.
She was like, I'm worried about the influence that they're having.
She took issue with certain outspoken professors and wanted them fire.

(51:01):
Jane had grown resentful of Jordan's extensive power and wanted
to curtail it. Jane and Jordan began to see each
other as the obstacle preventing them from achieving their vision
of the university. Jane began to draw up plans to
have him removed as president and given an honorary research position.

(51:22):
She also, as was her habit, changed her will several
times throughout this period, including having the bulk of her
wealth go to Stanford as a gift, which I don't
think was too appreciated by some of the other people
who would then receive less in her will. Oh, I see,
I got the impression that Jane was not the easiest

(51:45):
person to get along with, kind of demanding and expecting
everyone to fall in line. Her family members and employees,
her personal maid, her butler, her companion slash secretary bore
the brunt of this having to go along with her
every whim, no matter how unreasonable, and like an infected wound,

(52:06):
that resentment festered. In January nineteen oh five, for someone
in Jane's life, that resentment spilled over into a murderous hatred.
On the evening of January fourteenth, police were called to
Jane's forty one thousand square foot residents in San Francisco's
Knob Hill.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
Okay, yeah, I'm feeling a lot of very mixed emotions
at all of this.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
I know, it's like a lot, It's a lot. Jane
had gotten violently ill after drinking from the bottle of
mineral water left on her bedside table, which she had
every single night. You know, this is her ritual. She'd
only taken a sip of the unusually bitter tasting water
and then got incredibly ill. Was like, this is really bad.

(52:55):
I feel terrible. What's going on. She had recovered by
the morning, but was by the incident suspecting that someone
was trying to poison her. Tess later revealed she was right.
They the bottle had been dosed with strychnine, about three
fourths of a grain, when the lethal dose was around
half a grain. Grain was like an old measurement and
I'm not really sure how translates, but just to put

(53:16):
it in perspective, yeah, half a grain with the lethal dose.
All her employees claimed innocence surprise, surprise, including her companion
slash secretary, thirty nine year old Bertha Berner, and Elizabeth Richmond,
Jane's personal maid, a quote quiet little mouse of a woman.
Jane seemed to harbor her own suspicions. After the murder attempt,

(53:40):
Jane had Richmond, her personal maid, move bedrooms and shifted
her duties to other maids. And they had been fighting
a lot anyway, and a few weeks later Richmond was
fired Jane. There was like some incident where Jane had
flown into a rage if Richmond didn't perform a task
precisely to her liking, and Richmond was defensive and impatient,

(54:02):
and it was just like I think there was a
period of like hiring refiring type thing which happened with
many of her other employees. Actually, Richmond also, though, had
trouble keeping her story straight, like times and dates didn't
line up. She claimed, Oh, I didn't get fired, I quit.
I don't know. Bertha Berner was another strong suspect in

(54:25):
this attempt. She also had a hard time keeping her
facts straight and may have harbored some anger towards Jane
for the demands that she made on her and how
powerless she was to negotiate against them. She was her mom,
who was ill her sole caretaker, and so she was
dependent on Jane for income and was also included in

(54:45):
the will. But she also had to leave her mom
frequently because Jane would be like, I want to go
travel now. I want to go here, I want to
go there, and I want to be gone for months
at a time. Richmond and Berner, so the personal maid
and her onion slash secretary had the best access to
Jane's room and could have slipped in easily to add
some strych nine to her bottle for their own reasons,

(55:08):
or they could have been persuaded to do so by
someone else, like Jane's butler, Albert Beverly, who was another
disgruntled employee slash former employee. He also had wrecked another
estate or like messed with the water in another estate
of Jane's because he got fired or I don't know, okay,
or maybe David Starr Jordan. Yeah, as we know was

(55:30):
about to be ousted as president if Jane got her way.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
That's where my money is. But what do I know?

Speaker 1 (55:39):
Jane and her relatives enlisted the help of the Morse
Detective Agency to investigate who's behind the poisoning. They did
this because they didn't want the police to get into involved,
because they didn't want publicity.

Speaker 7 (55:50):
Around It makes sense, yeah, and the detective agency concluded
that it was all an attempt to discredit Jane's companion,
Bertha Berner, orchestrated by jealous coworkers.

Speaker 1 (56:00):
They didn't like the influence that she had on Jane.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
What an interesting conclusion.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Yeah, No one seemed to buy the story, like not
even the detectives themselves. They were just like, well, there's
what we got, and no one pushed back. I don't know.
Jane herself seemed at a loss, as she wrote, quote,
I am not quite so sure of health and life
as Heretofore, death in a natural way would not be

(56:29):
a calamity, for I have much and dearly loved ones
waiting for my advent there. But I am startled, even horrified,
that any human being feels that they have been injured
to such an extent as to desire to revenge themselves
in a way so heroic as has happened end quote Yeah.

(56:50):
Struggling to cope with the shocking knowledge that someone wanted
her dead and dealing with the ongoing tension with Jordan,
Jane decided to take a trip to Hawaii. Accompanying her
on this trip would be Bertha Burner and a handful
of other employees. Before she left, Jane wrapped up some business,
including signing a statement to prevent any legal challenge to

(57:13):
the money that she left the university, which suggested that
she still feared for her life. They set off on
February fifteenth, and everything seemed to be going smoothly for
almost two weeks. February twenty eighth, nineteen oh five, a Tuesday,
started out like any other day. Jane woke up around

(57:33):
eight thirty, which is when she usually woke up. Didn't
have too much on the schedule, some sight seeing, maybe
some light shopping. After a big lunch, dinner consisted of
a simple soup, and Jane started to get ready for bed.
Around eight fifteen pm. She asked Bertha to prepare her
evening medicine, which was a Cascara capsule. This was a

(57:54):
popular laxative that had a small amount of strich nine.
It was really popular. That is not necessarily unusual maybe
in this context. And baking soda, which she took often
like about a half tea spoon of as an antacid.

Speaker 2 (58:10):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (58:10):
Bertha allegedly also took a capsule of this cascara stuff.
The laxative laxives were really popular for a while.

Speaker 2 (58:18):
Yeah, no one was eating fiber I guess.

Speaker 1 (58:21):
Probably not, I don't know. At some point in the
middle of the night, Jane became violently ill. She was
awoken by a spasm that threw her to the floor.
She cried out for help, and a doctor eventually arrived,
but couldn't do much. He tasted the baking soda at
her bedside and found it to be extremely bitter, which

(58:43):
combined with her spasms, made him immediately suspect strych nine.
He tried to get Jane to throw up, but she
just could not. Bertha, too, stood helplessly by, as did
a couple other people who were awoken by the commotion.
Jane knew she was dying. In between spasms, she said,
Oh God, forgive me my sins is my soul prepared

(59:06):
to meet my dear ones, and this is a horrible
death to die. I'm going to read you a quote
from Who Killed Jane Stanford by Richard White. Quote. As
the final spasm took hold, her body went rigid. The
soles of her feet were turned inward toward each other,
with the insteps arched extremely and the toes pointing forward.

(59:29):
Her knees were widely separated, Her eyeballs protruded, her pupils dilated,
her jaws were fixed, her fingers contracted, and the thumbs
dug into the palms of her hands. Her respiration stopped.
She never breathed again from the time the doctor entered
the room until the last spasm ten minutes had passed.

(59:51):
End quote.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
It's it really is so horrific, horrific, horrific.

Speaker 3 (59:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:58):
Yeah. Her death bore all the hallmarks of Strick nine poisoning,
attested to both the doctor that had witnessed her death
and the one who examined her post mortem. Right, And
this is this is how Bertha told the story to
stryc nine. Can we can we agree on that absolutely?

Speaker 2 (01:00:19):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
Okay?

Speaker 3 (01:00:21):
And if every part of that description is Strick nine
strict nine and if.

Speaker 1 (01:00:24):
That wasn't enough. Tests later confirmed the presence of strick
nine in both the baking soda at her bedside table
as well as in her stomach. Was it self administered
or was it murder? The answer to that question held
great significance for the future of Stanford University. If it
was self administered, that could call into question her final

(01:00:45):
note gifting Stanford the bulk of her fortune. If it
was murder, it will embroil the university in scandal. The
ideal scenario would be that she died of natural causes
mistakenly attributed to strych nineh Gosh. The police strongly suspected murder,
and the search was on for the culprit. Immediately, Bertha

(01:01:06):
emerged as the lead, but not the lone suspect. There
were many other ones that were kind of like swirling around.
Bertha was the only one present at both poisonings and
the only one with access to both the poisoned mineral
water in the first attempt and the baking soda in
the second. She had an alleged connection with PJ. Schwab,
who was a druggist in California who would have had

(01:01:28):
access to strychnine. She her story changed a bunch of
different times about her location, her role, where she got
the baking soda, all these different things, and I think
that she bore some resentment toward Jane, although it all
not all of the records have survived, but Jane had

(01:01:50):
thwarted some romances of Bertha's, including from the butler who
was married. But then, like she yeah, Bertha had stolen
from Jane from in various points of time. And like
I said, Bertha was really frustrated that she had to
tend to Jane on her long travels instead of being
able to be in San Francisco to care for her
sick mother. And Jane had recently announced she wanted to

(01:02:14):
go on a really long trip to Japan, and so
that would have again taken her away. Circumstantial evidence against
Bertha was mounting, But then arrives David Starr Jordan. A
few days after her death, Jordan and some other folks
associated with Jane or Stanford traveled to Hawaii to retrieve
her body, and on the boat right over, they had

(01:02:36):
plenty of time to decide what the police should actually conclude. Jordan,
who was initially of the belief that she was murdered,
and even encountered her after the first poisoning and said, oh,
that sounds like Strict nine poisoning. He began to walk
all that back. Maybe it was an accidental poisoning, and

(01:02:56):
then that turned into I actually don't think it was
poisoning at all. It was I think it was natural causes.
Heart attack, apoplexy, and bronchitis were all things floated.

Speaker 2 (01:03:09):
That totally makes sense.

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
I remember he had medical training, he had gone to
medical school, and so he should have recognized the signs
of strychnine poisoning. While most papers pushed back against this
new narrative that he was trying to spout, a few
began to pick up the story, and a few more
were paid off by Jordan to suppress the story entirely,

(01:03:31):
and one paper reported You're gonna love this that she
had a case of indigestion that she mistook for poisoning
and this led to hysteria that exactly mimicked Strict nine poisoning,
leading her to die of fright.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Ah, you knew hysteria had to come into it at
some point.

Speaker 1 (01:03:51):
I just like I know that hysteria is used in
so many things, but I just stric nine. Poisoning is
like so so extreme in character.

Speaker 3 (01:04:00):
Risk, so extreme, and it's so specific, like it's either
strychnine or its tetnus, right, Okay, And there.

Speaker 4 (01:04:06):
Was no wound.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
There's no one coming on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know,
I know.

Speaker 1 (01:04:14):
And this is all with tests that had confirmed the
presence of strychnine.

Speaker 2 (01:04:19):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
This denial, though, that it was poisoning, worked in Bertha's favor,
whose actions and words had been under the microscope since
Jane died, and whose story changed more than once, drawing
more suspicion on herself, and whether or not Bertha was
the one responsible, which it does look like she was
in retrospect, given the evidence that has survived. If she

(01:04:43):
had been responsible or not been responsible, Saying that it
wasn't poisoning would have removed any of the issue whatsoever,
whether she was guilty or not. Right. Yeah, Bertha needed
Jordan and his natural causes theory to avoid a murder trial,
and Jordan needed Bertha to keep his role as president
and Jane's gift to Stanford, because if it wasn't then

(01:05:05):
it could have drawn into question everything. Maybe Bertha misremembered
what she saw suggested Jordan, and Bertha accordingly changed her
testimony wow. Where she initially stated that Jane died in
great agony, with her limbs and jaws rigid, she changed
it to say that, no, she died peacefully, softly. Her

(01:05:28):
revised testimony eliminated any detail suggestive of Strych nine poisoning.
What Yeah? And when this altered story reached the newspapers,
it was met with incredulity, like exactly what you just
your reaction, like, do you really expect us to believe this?
How could you possibly say it was natural causes?

Speaker 3 (01:05:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
The papers ripped Jordan apart, who said, quote, I do
not care what the people think or what the constables say.
I am firm in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:06:00):
Good for you, bro, But also the.

Speaker 1 (01:06:04):
Outcry didn't amount to much. That was that was it.
He had gotten doctors and other people to discredit the autopsy.
He got the lead witness to change their testimony, I
say he, but like so, it's unclear exactly these things happened.
The autopsy was discredited, the lead witness changed their testimony,
and there was this vested interest in having this be

(01:06:26):
classified as a natural death, The investigation petered out and
no one was held responsible for Jane Stanford's murder. What yeah,
uh huh?

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
Do you think they tell this like on the tours
of Stanford.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
I've never been on a tour. Maybe I went on
a tour, but I can't remember. It was like twenty
plus years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:06:50):
That's a good question.

Speaker 3 (01:06:52):
Someone can someone who went to Stanford tell us, like,
did they talk about this?

Speaker 2 (01:06:55):
I want to know how much? What's the vibe?

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
What's the vibe? Yeah, there's a whole class taught on
this actually at Stanford. I'm pretty sure at Stanford. It's
by the person Richard White, who I have quoted throughout here,
who killed Jane Stanford. This book is like based on
a course that he has taught. It's because what's really
fascinating about the book, and what I didn't really go
into very much in this history section, is how it

(01:07:21):
kind of does show this period of history, the class
dynamics between you've got like this billionaire and then all
the people who have to basically respond to her every
whim and grow resentful of that. There's a lot of
racial aspects of this too, Whereas like Chinese immigration is
very high, and there are a lot of Chinese immigrants

(01:07:41):
working in San Francisco, and so then suspicion is on
them as well, because it's like, oh, well, just totally radist,
right right, Yeah, but.

Speaker 3 (01:07:52):
There's an extra level of like hating her because she's
a millionaire, but also because she's a woman, so she's
more demanding, she's more demand, more unreasonable.

Speaker 1 (01:08:01):
But also it does seem like she.

Speaker 2 (01:08:03):
Was demanding unreasonable.

Speaker 1 (01:08:06):
Yeah, So it's just a really it's a really complicated story.
But there's a lot there, and I think, I mean,
there's not going to be a satisfying conclusion to this,
as with most like cold cases, I would say, but
I think that finally there has been recognition that she
was murdered. Murdered, yeah, wow, Yeah, and yeah, I mean

(01:08:31):
David Starr Jordan served as President of Stanford until nineteen thirteen,
and that's when he was given the role of Chancellor.
Bertha Berner lived out the rest of her life quietly.
I think she died in nineteen forty five. At one point,
she published a biography of Jane's life and denied, until
her last breath any role that she played in her murder. Yeah,

(01:08:54):
the death of Jane Stanford did not bring about the
end of strick nine, but it did mark sort of
like the beginning of its decline and popularity, not because
of her death, but just because timing wise, within a
few decades of the twentieth century, at the start of
the twentieth century, it stopped being included in many proprietary
medicines and remained a chemical curiosity, incredible for being one

(01:09:17):
of the most complex chemicals known, with chemists finally synthesizing
it with very low yield in nineteen fifty four, like
minuscule yield, and since then it's found a small place
in some homeopathic remedies as I mentioned, and in certain
religious ceremonies. But maybe there's more to Strych nine today.

(01:09:37):
So Aaron, what can you tell.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
Me there's not.

Speaker 8 (01:09:44):
I'll tell you that I know though, Yeah, love it.

Speaker 3 (01:10:11):
So I got to go back to the annual report
of the National Poison Data System, last cited in one
of our poison Control episodes last year, the twenty twenty
three report. It comes out at the end of the year,
So this came out at the end of twenty twenty four. Okay,
but it's from twenty twenty three data. There were twenty

(01:10:33):
five case mentions and twenty two single exposures of STRICK
nine poisoning that were reported to the National Poison Data
System that was for So it's interesting they split it
into STRICK nine that's non rodenticide and then rodenticide exposure specifically. Okay,
so twenty five case mentions, twenty two single exposures of

(01:10:56):
non rodenticide Strict nine poisoning. Those ended up treated in
a health care facility, which means that the rest of
them weren't. So whether they were a small enough you know,
exposure that or just a suspected exposure, but they ended
up not needing to go to a hospital or anything,
which is good.

Speaker 2 (01:11:14):
No deaths reported, Wow, okay, great. And then when it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:18):
Comes to rodenticide, this is where we see the majority,
So forty four case mentions of STRICT nine containing rodenticide
exposure with thirty one single exposures. Fifteen of those ended
up needing to be treated in a health care facility,
but still no deaths, which just goes to show that
we have gotten much better at treating this.

Speaker 2 (01:11:37):
Although what I think is so.

Speaker 3 (01:11:38):
Interesting erin is that I was as I was digging
into this to try and see, you know, like how
do we treat it today versus how we used to
treat it. I read a report, a case report from
twenty twenty three that happened at my hospital, the one
that I worked at my emergency room for residency. It
was like people that I knew. I was like, I

(01:11:59):
know these people.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
That's amazing.

Speaker 3 (01:12:01):
They probably don't know me, but I know them, and
it is It was exactly almost exactly the same as
the case reports that I read from the early nineties,
just in terms of like how the case presented, what
they did, what all of the treatments were, like all
of that. And it's just so interesting to me that like,
we still don't have anything that is specific to treat strychnine. Uh,

(01:12:27):
it's all just sort of supportive care in the same
way that it has been for a long time. So
it really just comes down to access to care, identification
of what an exposure is, knowing that it was strict nine.
So in the er, having like knowing what this looks like, right,
because you have to be able to identify it really quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
Yeah, and so if you basically it's strictander tetanus. So
with tetanus, are you looking for a wound like yeah, potentially, yeah, okay, yeah, yeah,
that's a differential diagnosse.

Speaker 3 (01:12:57):
Or some some other some other kinds of yeah, some clues.
I think that tetanus two tends to be a bit
more insidious.

Speaker 5 (01:13:08):
I see, if I remember correctly, i'd have to go
way the heck back right, the onset of how exactly right, right,
right right, whereas this is like an ingestion or an exposure,
and then very quickly thereafter you have symptoms.

Speaker 3 (01:13:21):
I usually try and include like, so, what's the updates
on information? I got very little for you, Aaron. I'm
not surprised you had mentioned, Aaron that it was what'd
you say, the nineteen fifties that we finally were able
to synthesize four.

Speaker 1 (01:13:36):
Yeah, it's still like even today, it's like very low yield,
many many, many steps.

Speaker 3 (01:13:40):
It's very it's so twenty twenty two a paper came
out in Nature that was like actually trying to figure
out the biosynthesis of this and all of the steps,
And that was the first time that they actually figured
out like how intrinsically what are all of the steps
for this to actually be produced in the plant, and
how can that help us to make this outside of
the plant. What are we going to do with it

(01:14:01):
when we make it outside the plant? I don't know,
I don't know, but I mean basic chemistry and basic
chemical biosynthesis research is very important for our general foundation
of knowledge, right, So I'm not discounting.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
That, no, No, I mean also just to understand the
complexity and like the evolution of the production of these things,
and also our response to them and the variability and
the responses, Like there's.

Speaker 3 (01:14:24):
So much yeah, right, yeah, And this strick nine is
strych nine, and there's a few other like brucine, which
is also present in the same plant. They are very
very interesting compounds because, like we said, they are so complex.
The pathway that is required to create strych nine has
so many steps and is such a long pathway that

(01:14:44):
it is a very unique and it's a very structurally
unique compound. So, like, what drives or what drove the
evolution of that compared to so many other cases where
we see this convergent evolution in chemical defenses? Right, why exactly,
like what exactly is strych nine defending against? Why did
it evolve to be so incredibly toxic. It also, like

(01:15:07):
the toxicity really varies in terms of what species we're
looking at. So like humans, even though such a small
amount can kill us, we are relatively resistant to strychnine
compared to some other animals who are even more sensitive
to its effecialistic And then you also have some animals
like hornbills or grain langers who can eat these fruits

(01:15:28):
and not have any issue. So yeah, so that like
that part of the whole story that I didn't dig
as much into because I'm not Matt candaas I mean,
if it's.

Speaker 2 (01:15:37):
Plants, none of us are exceptionally we can't compare.

Speaker 3 (01:15:42):
But it is it is a really really interesting part
of the story, and so I do think there is
a lot of research being done on that part of
the story. I don't know if anyone's working on specific antidotes.
My guess is probably not that many people, because of
how rare of an exposure it tends to be. It's
also like not legal to be used as a rodenticide
or as any kind of poison in a lot of countries,

(01:16:03):
so it's only some places in the world that you
can even really easily get access to strick nine. And
then there's also regulations about like you have to have
it be certain colors or things like that to make
it more obvious that it's a poison rather than just
something benign. Yeah, but that is the horrible tarophin that
is strict nine.

Speaker 2 (01:16:24):
Yes, the end.

Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
The end. Sources, Okay, I read, There are some papers,
but mostly I relied on books for this. There's, of
course the book Bitter Nemesis, The Intimate History of Strych
nine by John Buckingham, And then there's Who Killed Jane Stanford?
A Gilded Age Tale of murdered deceit, Spirits and the
Birth of a University by Richard White. And then of

(01:16:48):
course I got to throw in the Mysterious Affair at
Styles by Agatha Christy love It.

Speaker 3 (01:16:55):
I had a number of papers, not that many papers.
These were pretty nice overview papers. There was one by
palat Nick at All nineteen ninety nine in Clinical Toxicology
called Toxicokinetics of Acute stric nine poisoning. The paper that
I mentioned that was from my hospital was published in
the American Journal of Emergency Medicine in twenty twenty three

(01:17:16):
by Hardin at All. There was a chapter from a book.
The book was called Handbook of Toxicology of Chemical Warfare
Agents from twenty twenty and I read the chapter on
Strict nine in that which was also helpful. And then
I also cited those twenty twenty three and the twenty
twenty two if you're interested, Annual Report of the National
Poison Data System. But there's more sources as always for

(01:17:38):
this episode, and all of our episodes got that evolution
paper too, It's all there on our website this podcast
will kill you dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
Yes, thank you to Bloodmobile and Strict Strict nine providing
the music for this episode. I will also I forgot
to mention that song. I don't know if this is
even relevant because I'm going to try to find out
a way if I can post this or not, like
so people can listen to the whole song if they
want the full eight minutes. It's called Afterlife and it's

(01:18:06):
by Strick nine, starring John Vallata and other band members.
I'm going to get flat because I don't remember who's
in the band. The fifteen year old John Valata on drums.

Speaker 2 (01:18:18):
I love it. Why don't you guys have a drum
set in your house.

Speaker 1 (01:18:22):
I've been trying to get him to get like an
electronic one. But yes, just isn't that big?

Speaker 3 (01:18:26):
Okay, well you can have room for it in his
little office. That's what I keep a corner. Yeah, yeah, okay.
Thank you also to Tom and Leanna and Brent and
Pete and everyone else. I'd exactly right for all that
you do for us, Jess, Thank you, love us.

Speaker 1 (01:18:41):
Thank you, thank you without you really really, and thank
you to our listeners. We also couldn't do it without you.
Thanks for listening. What you think?

Speaker 3 (01:18:51):
Yeah, we enjoyed this episode. We hope that you did too,
And as always, as special shout out to our patrons.
Thank you so so so much for your support. It
really does mean the word to us.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
It does well. Until next time, wash your hands.

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
You filthy animals.

Speaker 5 (01:19:11):
Um um