September 24, 2015 • 49 mins
Perhaps you've heard of wolf's bane as curative or even causal agent in the mythology of lycanthropy, yet the appeal of this very real plant reaches far beyond the realm of werewolves. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Christian consider the role of wolf's bane in traditional Chinese medicine, early biological warfare and natural insect defenses.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager.
And today before we get the episodes started, there's a
few things that we want to let you our audience
know about up top that are coming up in the
(00:23):
month of October, which is one of our favorite months here.
First of all, we are going to start doing listener
mail episodes over periscope. We're going to attempt this. If
you've ever used the periscope apt before, it's connected to Twitter.
We've been been getting so much listener mail lately that
we don't really feel like we could do it justice
in one podcast episode, so we figured we'd give this
(00:45):
periscope thing a try, and we're going to try it
out on Friday, October. The second thing that we want
to let you know about is the return of Monster Science. Now,
if you're a listener of the podcast but you've never
seen any of the videos before, I have to recommend
the you check these out. I wasn't involved in the
original ones, and it's one of my favorite things that
we've ever produced here at How Stuff Works. Robert, you
(01:06):
want to talk a little bit more about it. Yeah,
we have four new episodes coming at you. In each one,
Dr Anton Jessup discusses uh the fictional world of monsters
as well as the real world, the real natural world
of biology, and finds the comparisons to make between the two.
So it's it's always a fun video. It's great. Yeah,
and it has so much value to like the effects
(01:28):
that are in it that our producer Tyler throws in
and also like some really cool background props and items
that you guys get to work with. So if you're
into horror, if you're excited about Halloween and October, and
you love science like we do, you should totally check
out Monster Science. It's already the first two seasons are
already on YouTube, and if you follow us on Facebook,
we're gonna be posting at least one or two episodes
(01:49):
a week directly there for the next couple of weeks
leading up to Halloween in the new season. Yeah, so
you can sort of follow the very loose narrative that
that goes through all of these yeah, and and and
real quick before we get started, just you know, if
you want to find out any of this stuff, and
you're a fan of the show, and you haven't you
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you know, follow us on social media. We're on Facebook,
(02:12):
We're on Twitter, and Tumbler, all those platforms were blow
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your mind dot com, which is full of blog posts
that Robert and I and Joe work on, and videos
older videos that Robert and Julie used to do, and
including all the monster science stuff. So definitely just give
it a shot. And speaking of monsters, today, we are
(02:33):
talking about a topic that has definite ties into the
mythological world of monsters, but also uh ties in very
nicely to themes of biological and chemical weapons and to
uh into themes of just natural biology and of course
natural medicine. Yeah, this is a topic that you know,
(02:53):
if you had asked me about a week ago, before
I'd done the research, I would have just had some vague,
sort of universal pick sure's ideas about what this means.
So of course we're talking about wolf Spain, yes, and
I honestly I wasn't completely sure it was real and
very recently me you see it, you hear it mentioned,
it sounds a little bit too cute, right, you know,
(03:14):
And how do you fight off a werewolf for potentially
make awarewolf? It gets convoluted. Um, well you find this, uh,
this this plant, this little flower that's occurring, and it's
called wolf Spain, ironically enough, and it can be used
against the creature. Yeah. And it turns out this is
a real thing, very real and very prominent in Northern
Europe and has a real deep history with a lot
(03:37):
of interesting sort of connections to how it's used in
the variations in which people have used it to heal
and to hurt one another. Uh. And the werewolf thing
is fascinating. But I also think that it's just it's
got like a very odd kind of horticultural background to
something that I'd never heard of, maybe because I've you know,
I'm not like one foot in the botany world the
(03:59):
way I'm on foot into the horror world. Yeah, like it.
It definitely has deep roots, if you will, in the
in the botany world, and also also in the world
of traditional medicines, especially traditional Chinese medicine. Yeah. Yeah, so
all right, what are we actually talking about here? Wolf
Spain is what exactly. Well, we're talking about the perennial
herbs of the buttercut family rannow cool, let's say, and
(04:22):
that's divided into two genera, a contum and Erathus. Yeah,
and so h Latin is going to be a major
thing that pops up here in terms of like the
naming conventions surrounding these plants. And I think there's something
like sixty sixty different subspecies of these, So forgive us
if our Latin isn't up to par and we're not
(04:43):
pronouncing these exactly right. But the main thing to know
is that this is largely referred to as a conatum,
and we'll also be talking about a con night, which
is this deadly poisonous alkaloid that is emitted from the plant,
primarily from its roots. Yeah, I mean it's present all
through the plant, but in its roots and root tubers
(05:04):
that's where you find the highest concentrations. But it's it's
also in the in the in the leaves, it's in
the flowers, it's in the it's in high levels in
the pollen. It's crazy dangerous and this is one of
the things one of the reasons why after doing this research,
I was like why don't we all know about this
because this seems like this incredibly dangerous thing that we
(05:24):
just refer about casually in werewolf movies. Yeah, we'll discuss
some of the dangers that have But you you find
it throughout the northern hemisphere, um in in in America,
you find it throughout Eurasia, and accidents do occur, and
it's mostly native to mountains. It's known as a rock
flower and some uh, some parts of the world because
it grows up out of spaces in between rocks. But
(05:47):
there's primarily two sort of informal categories. There's monkshood and
there's wolf spain. Uh. And it's called monkshood because of
its shape, So it has this U shape to it.
They call it the sepals. I guess those are like
the upper petals um that kind of curve over and
look like the hood over like I guess like a
capuchin monk or something like that. Um. And there's different colors, right,
(06:10):
So the monks hoods usually are like dark blues or
purple's sometimes that you'll find them in white variations, whereas
like wolf spain is usually yellow. Sometimes it's lavender or pink,
and those are commonly grown in the Alps of Switzerland, actually,
which again I didn't I had no idea. Yeah, the
hills are alive and uh and it's it's important to
(06:32):
to to drive home to here that the reason that this, uh,
this thing is just so filled with toxic alkaloids is
because it's it's in essence, the chemical prodect protection against herbivores. Yeah,
I mean some of the not just some of the
ways that this has been used against humans, but also
animals I thought was uh, pretty mortifying. But I guess,
(06:53):
you know, maybe I'm coming at it from a modern
day standpoint where I wouldn't purposely poison horses, for instance.
But we'll get into that. So, okay, there's a there's
an interesting etymology behind this particular flower. So the name
is thought to be derived from the Greek word I
think it's a conaton, which means without struggle. But there's
(07:14):
also an idea that it also comes from the Greek
word a con which is word for dart or javelin,
And we'll talk about that later. But it primarily has
to do with this substance being coded on those weapons
us more essentially a chemical weapon. It's also thought to
come from the word Akona, which is a word connected
(07:35):
to rocky grounds, like I just said, like it grows
up in mountainous regions. And actually Pliny the Elder talked
about it and some of his writings, and he said
that it might be connected to the port of Akina,
which was apparently a place known for evil repute um.
And that's you know, again connected to it because of
the whole poison in the Aconite thing. So the last
one apparently acon All those kinds of iterations within Greek
(08:00):
all have kind of deadly meanings. So a wet stone
is apparently pronounced at home in Greek. And uh, that's
so if you don't know, that's the like the thing
that you used to sharpen a sword, basically, and they
think that that might also be in origin for it.
Because it's like a wet stone, it makes a blade
even deadlier. So how do people end up finding them
(08:22):
self poisoned by wolf spain? Uh? They're basically two ways.
And it depends on where you are in the world.
If you if you reside in the East, if particularly
if you're if you're in China, then there's a very
good chance that you might encounter it through traditional medicine.
And if the proportions are long, if it are wrong,
if it hasn't been prepared properly, or you take too
(08:43):
much of it, uh and it's prepared form, then you
can become poisoned by the aconite. Yeah, and it's nasty stuff.
And and then you know there's just the casual like
walking by it or accidentally putting it to your lips,
to which you know, surprisingly happens more often then you think.
In fact, last year, there was a thirty three year
old gardener named Nathan Greenaway and he worked He worked
(09:07):
at this place called mill Court House, which was owned
by like a retired ventured capitalist named Christopher Ogilvy Thompson uh.
And apparently they had wolfspand growing in their giant garden
and Nathan didn't know this. He brushed up against it
and it killed him within a day. Um. And some
people speculate, you know, it's it's worse if you have
(09:28):
like open wounds on your hands. Apparently this guy wasn't
wearing gloves at the time. But it's pretty dangerous. In fact,
some people over the years have even mistaken it for
horse radish and put their roots in their mouth and
died from it, so it leads to bad results. Um.
And before we get into the werewolves and the poisons
and the herbology and all that stuff. Um, we'll just
(09:48):
kind of briefly talk about why this thing is so toxic.
So we know that the roots and the tubers are
especially toxic. It's really prevalent, especially you know, it can
be absorbed through your skin, and how to be handled
with extreme care because of those alkaloids that we were
talking about before. Um. But but what is the actual
effect of this thing? Right? So it produces a topical
(10:10):
tingling at first, kind of like an anesthetic, I'm assuming, uh,
and followed by I guess like it's an altered state.
I wouldn't call it hallucinating, but it's kind of like
your mind is affected. And we'll talk about different ways
in which people have used it purposely to affect their
own minds. But it sounds to me like it's sort
of like a a state that slows down the mind
(10:33):
and sort of puts most things out of your your
thoughts so you can focus singularly. Yeah, And there's a
there's a lot of mention in the in the literature
about particularly when we get into its use with a
poison that that it you remain very clear headed until
the very ends, kind of adding to the nefarious nature
of it as a weapon. Having just gone under anesthetic yesterday,
(10:56):
I can I can imagine what the effects are like.
But yeah, so all you need is three to six
milligrams of aconite to kill a healthy adult Like this
stuff is so potent, just like a few grams of
the plant matter touching your hands or obviously being ingested
is super dangerous. Uh. And I found there's an old
(11:18):
nineteen eleven Encyclopedia Britannica entry that mentioned that some people
purposely put the pedal or the roots to their lips
to produce like a numbness or a tingling. I guess
it's like the whippets of the Turn of the Sectary. Yeah,
a very dangerous um practice indeed, though, because you need
(11:39):
to make sure you just get enough of it to
to inspire tingling and numbness and not you know, poison
you to death. Yeah. Absolutely, um. And this is the
horse thing, which I found unfortunate, but apparently horse dealers
used to use this. They'd feed it to their horses
before they brought their animals to market, and the reason
why was it works the opposite on horses. It stimulates
(12:02):
horses and makes them lively. So if you had an old,
tired horse and you're trying to get rid of it,
you give it a little bit of wolf spain, bring
it to market, and it appears more lively and you're
more likely to sell it. And then you know, the
person who buys it gets at home and realize that
this is a very tired horse. All right, Well, let's
let's get into the werewolf mythology a little bit. And
I think like one of the key things here that
(12:23):
we keep finding is that you see wolf spain mentioned
as both a preventative measure and uh and and also
the cause of leokanthropy. Yeah, that was the thing that
was confusing to me. So before going into this, I
had always heard of it through the myths, I guess,
or the fiction that I had encountered as being the
thing that you use. It's like other than a silver bullet,
it's like the only thing that can stop a werewolf, right. Uh.
(12:46):
And I think there's like a Marvel Comics like X
Men character whose name I don't think, I know. There's
a there's an X Men character named wolf Spain. The
name doesn't really make sense because as you suspect her
powers that she transforms into a werewolf. So what, like,
I don't understand. I guess why there's the divergence in
(13:07):
the mythos there of like it's the thing that will
kill a werewolf, but it's also the thing that will
turn you into a werewolf. Yeah, I don't know. It's
just so tied to how a werewolf works that you
can be Yeah, I mean, it's it's kind of it
kind of represents the dual nature of the of the
substance itself, right and incorrect proportions. It can be used
(13:27):
as a medicine and in um strong enough dosus and
or you know which doesn't doesn't take very much. As
we've already discussed, you have a dire weapon on your hands,
you know what. That's a really good point actually, And
so there's definitely historical connections to the poison part because Akinaton,
like I'm going to pronounce this wrong, like a tonum
(13:50):
uh is this is the genus that's essentially uh the
wolf Spain, the like prominent wolf Spain. It was originally
used as a way to kill panthers and wolves and
other quote wild beasts. Uh, and it was considered deadly
to them. One of the quotes that I read from
an old textbook said it kills them in the same
day if you put the root or the leaf on
(14:11):
the animals genitals. So I don't know, I don't know
how they're grabbing a wolf and and rubbing the leaves
of wolf spain on its genitals. But the other thing
that I heard was that they used to lure wolves out,
but they would take like chunks of raw meat and
they would mix in wolf spain juice a sense essentially
into this stuff, throw it out. Everybody would go into
(14:32):
their homes. The wolves would come out and eat the
stuff and be dead like a day later. Yeah, it's
it's it's interesting to see the connection here between wolf
spaane and the and using it as a a turrent
against wolves and they're they're likewise. There are some arguments
that the werewolf myth has its roots, So you know,
I don't not only in sort of the dual nature
(14:53):
of man is you know, a beast but also you know,
a higher animal, but but also in our older struggles
against wolves where we were having to compete against wolves
for resources. Yeah, it's not something that we run into
on a daily basis now, or at least I guess
maybe in our culture we don't. But but yeah, I
was thinking about this, like, as I was doing the research,
(15:15):
my dog often hangs out next to my office desk
and just kind of you know, looks up at me,
and occasionally I pat him and stuff. And I thought, well,
we have a very different relationship with these animals today. Yeah,
I mean you look. I mean, of course, you can
look at very recent history and the United States even
with the poisoning of wolves and very large numbers to
the point where we we've had to to help bring
(15:38):
the numbers back up in the wild. Uh So, yeah,
we have a very troubled history with with the canines.
But so there's there's there's a lot of folklore connected
to this, and I think you're right to say that
it it comes from the sort of dual nature of
it being both a poison and a cure. Yeah. I
was looking in the Larust Dictionary of World Folklore, and
(15:59):
it's pointed out there that according to some folk police
that if you apply to fatal dose wolf bane would
repel a werewolf, which which seems kind of like a
no brainer. It would repel anything like this is a
powerful poison, so I should hope it would work against
the werewolf that's threatening my village. Right. If it doesn't,
then I'm I'm kind of boned, right, Yeah, I mean,
(16:19):
even in the horse case, I think it's still poisonous. Yeah,
it just has different sort of side effects and uh.
And in the Lorusa Dictionary World Folklore also mentioned that
as an ointment, it could transform a sorcerer into a werewolf,
though obviously a very careful dosage would be needed to
avoid certain death um this uh And it's also mentioned
(16:42):
that it's possible that like a correct dosage level might
have created or helped to create an allucinogenic effect um,
which I'm not as sure about based on our reading,
especially you know, the descriptions of aconite poisoning keeping you
pretty uh stable in the mind up until the very end,
(17:02):
with some possible effects on how you're perceiving the world,
but not like a strong hallucinatory effect. So I'm not
so sure about sorcerers taken aconite and having a werewolf
paranormal experience, unless they are combining, say the physical numbers
with some other agent. Yeah. I might be jumping a
little bit ahead here, but I think I have a
(17:23):
theory for where this werewolf thing came from it and
maybe not the sorcerer's standpoint, from the people watching somebody
proclaiming themselves to be a sorcerer taking this stuff. So
there's two things. First of all, when you're poisoned by this, uh,
a lot of times you end up foaming at the mouth. Um,
So there's clearly a connection there. In fact, there's a
(17:44):
there's a connection to the hellhound Cerebrius that we'll talk
about in a moment, But there's you know, also this
idea apparently that German berserkers used to take it right
before they would go into battle, because they wanted to
be mindless right before they went into a fight. And
again they would foam at the mouth, supposedly, So you
(18:05):
have these German berserkers running at you, foaming at the mouth,
and I can see where folklore would spin out from
that that like these men had turned themselves into beasts,
you know, somehow, and they're sacrificing their their humanity in
order to win the war. Remembering some of the various
symptoms of aconite poisoning. Though, It's like I'm imagining this
(18:26):
berserker running into battle. He's foaming at the mouth, he's
kind of numb all over, fierce diarrhea like you know,
so I guess vomiting, yeah, and then and then collapsing
and twitter. Yeah, it's definitely like, if you're going to
take this stuff, it's like a comic coze maneuver, right,
because there's no way you're coming back from that fight. Yeah,
I mean it seems like now in terms of causing werewolves.
(18:49):
So you know, we're not going to spend too much
more time on this podcast talking about werewolves, but I
did want to run through, uh many some of the
many ways you can turn into a werewolf according to
world folklore, and these come from Carol Rose is always
excellent Giants, Monsters and Dragons, Encyclopedia, Folklore, legend and myth.
So let's just let's just roll back and back and
(19:10):
forth on this list here. First up, classic lunar induced transformation,
full moon pops out right turns into a wolf. And
then there's of course the curse, like somebody curses you
and you become a werewolf. Right. Then there's magical pelt
induced transformation, which we don't see enough of. You know,
work you wear the pelt of the wolf. Yeah, you
have like a magical wolf pelt. Put it on, and
(19:32):
then you become a wolf. All right. And then there's
something called new moon conception induced transformation. What's that? Just
when the moon is new you're going to see you
hearing a new moon, and then obviously you're gonna be
born a worlf. Oh interesting, okay, all right, here's a
here's a variation on that Friday full moon slumber induced transformation.
(19:52):
So um, this one is basically, there's a full moon
on a Friday, you sleep during it, Boom, your werewolf.
I would be in werewolf trouble done because that happens
a lot. Uh. And then there's of course, if a
wolf touched the water that you're consuming, that's something that
would theoretically turn you into a werewolf. Yeah, yeah, that
one that makes sense. It makes sense. Yeah, just you're
(20:14):
coming into sort of contact with the beast wolf. Brain
consumption induced transformation. So you eat the brain of a
wolf and then you you take on partially that the
mind and spirit of a wolf. And then so this
next one, it sounds like it's a wolf and human
flesh combined. You eat it, and then you become by
eating the two things together, you merge them so that
(20:34):
you're sort of a bipedal wolf creature. Yeah, okay, then
that's ancient Greek. Yeah, that's an ancient Greek one. They're
then besality induced transformation also makes sense. You're laying with
the beast, and therefore you're becoming partially beast. So Catherine
the Great would then like be half horse. I mean
if you buy into those smiths, right, Yeah, well I
(20:55):
buy into the wolf brain consumption one. Why wouldn't And oh,
well we've got you know, we've also got over zealous
Zeus worship transformation. So if you're you're two into Zeus,
there's a certain amount of worshiping Zeus that works. But
if you're too into Zeus, you can turn into a werewolf. Yes,
and that comes from the Greek myth of like canon
(21:17):
and uh, and there's some other details going on in
that story too, but essentially the route there is he
was just really over those Yeah. Uh, there's seasonal feast
induced transformation. M Herodotus talks about this a little bit
in his writings that they were uh Neru tribal sorcerers
who would just turn it the occasional you know, seasonal feast.
(21:38):
And of course there's witchcraft, which is similar to the
curse thing. We've we've seen that as an origin story.
I think in some of the sort of modern fiction, right, Yeah,
that it's a curse. They're creating sort of a I
don't know, like a beastial bodyguard or something, or cursing
an enemy. And you see that popping up in a
witchcraft trial accounts as well, Like this guy here, he
clearly turned into a wolf and he was killing pool
(22:00):
in the in the area. So we're going to take
care of him and then finally have by having eaten
certain certain herbs, namely wolf spain. So they didn't list
the one that I think of as like the primary method,
which is being bitten or clawed at by a werewolf. Yeah,
she didn't mention that in the werewolf entry, which makes
me wonder to what extent that was just uh borrowed
(22:24):
from the vampire mythology. Yea, for Hollywood purposes. It's an
easy way to make a werewolf in in a movie. Uh,
and then you've got you you end up tracing it
back to a kind of chicken or egg type situation, right,
like how did how did the first werewolf become a werewolf?
So it's gonna be one of those things that we
can mentioned because anytime you can introduce a contagion into
your your horror story or your monster mythology, you know,
(22:47):
it makes it, It makes it all the more pervasive. Yeah,
so we mentioned um Cerebus earlier. Yeah, so okay, so
the service thing is really interesting. The idea here is
from Greek myth and I think it's Hercules was fighting
Cerebrus or dragging it up. He drag it up um
him her Yeah, I think it's male in the mythos,
(23:12):
but I'm not a percent sure about that. But uh.
And then as he was dragging it up from from Hades,
Cerberus was drooling as three headed dogs do, and the
drool fell on the ground. And where it fell is
where wolf spane first started to grow or aconite. And
that sounds logical. You have a magical beast, it's coming up,
(23:33):
it's drooling all over the place. Natural things are gonna happen. Yeah,
I mean, just as logical as like drinking the same
water as a wolf would turn you into a whirl wolf.
So yeah, I follow it. It's a good story though.
I this is one of those like when Hercules did
like the various labors, right, yeah, this was definitely one
of the labors. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, thanks Hercules,
(23:54):
thanks for Yeah, you got popular, Hercules, and you were
able to prove that you're a legend and the rest
of us got werewolves. Yeah. And poisoning, so okay, wolf Spain.
We've talked about how poisonous this stuff is and how
it's so reviled that it's connected to this long lore
of werewolves in uh, most cultures. Right, whether it's whether
(24:17):
it's a cure or whether it's a poison to werewolves,
it's connected to them somehow. So how is it People
have used it though as medicine for centuries as well,
And we think that that maybe where the sort of
cure for werewolf is um comes from. Yes, certainly like cantherropy. Yeah,
let's use the D and D language here. Yeah, certainly
(24:38):
in in western traditions and uh and there and something
too that you have medieval witches that you know, at
least those individuals who are actually tied to traditional um
traditions of using native verbs in the treatment of maladies
UM as opposed to individuals who are just caught up
in the storm of which gap persecution those individuals, I'd
(25:00):
have utilized wolf Spain for its curative properties or even
you know, in some cases it's destructive properties. Yeah, even
outside of the whole wolf span thing. Again, remember there's
two sort of subclassifications here in Monkshood as one of them,
and Monkshood was also associated with black magic and dark medicines,
and you know, obviously because of its poisonous trades. Meanwhile,
(25:21):
over you know, across the continent and the relatively werewolf
free region of China, you see aconite used for about
two thousand years UM as an essential drug and traditional
Chinese medicine. Uh. And a number of these details about
this got this from an article published in the two
thousand and nine edition of the Journal of ethno Pharmacology
(25:43):
titled Aconitum in Traditional Chinese Medicine Valuable drug or an
unpredictable risk question mark because because because it all comes
down to, uh, you know, the the toxicity levels that
we're still debating this, Yeah, that we're still like, yeah,
maybe I mentioned this to a friend of mine this morning,
and he compared it to chemotherapy. He was like, well, yeah,
(26:05):
I mean think about it. It's you know, a thing
that's like really you know, ultimately like causing you pain
and is really dangerous to your body. But yeah, I
mean when you look at a lot of a lot
of the the naturally occurring agents that we use in
traditional medicines or even just call it for culinary use, spices,
uh at a at A at an appropriate levels, these
(26:26):
can add flavor to your dish. At at higher levels,
they can prove toxic to your body. And uh, and
that's just that kind of ties into what they're originally
there for. There there is a plant's chemical defense system,
and we've found ways to hijack a lot of these
defense systems for our own benefit. Yeah, that's kind of
the miraculous thing, right of like how human cultures over
(26:48):
the years figured all these things out, Like how many
people had to like touch it to their lips and
die or eat a certain quantity before they figured out
exactly the right amount that they could use from medicinal purposes.
And in this in this Chinese usage, uh, it's it's
very clear that they have to process it in an
elaborate way for it to be safe. That's right. There's
(27:09):
there are these traditional Chinese processing methods referred to as
pal z, which play an essential role in detoxifying the aconite.
So typically the pal z consists of, you know, several
different methods of heating the substance, So you're roasting it
your honey, frying at your wine, frying at earth, frying
(27:31):
at vinegar, frying at or various other means. And uh,
and and we also have additional modern methods which basically
boil down to the same thing, using heat to detoxify
it to a level to where you can can consume it.
So we're like burning off the alkaloid content. Yeah, basic basically, yeah,
boiling it down, burning it off to the level where
(27:52):
you can take advantage of the benefits without having to
worry as much about poisoning yourself. And all told, the
the palsy process reduces the alkaloid content by up to Wow. Wow,
that's interesting, Uh, because I don't really recall like a
process like that in the literature on the European usages.
(28:13):
It's more like tintshare type stuff that they're making. Yeah,
you're more playing with fire. Yeah, it's like one part
per It's in the notes, but it's like one part
per fifty or something like that is what you do.
So okay, so they've got this elaborate process they reduce
the amount of alkaloids that's in there. Uh, what are
they using it for in particular? Like, what is it
a cure for? Well, not a cure, but I guess
(28:35):
a remedy. Well, first of all, I should I should
draw a finer line on on how it actually works. Uh,
so everyone can get an idea here. So it acts
on the voltage sensitive sodium channels of the cell membranes
of excitable tissues, including tissue with the heart, nerves, and muscles. Um,
So it stimulates and then and then if the dosages
(28:56):
sign up later paralyzes the nerves. And if it's a
I had to broken skin, the initial tangling becomes a
kind of an anesthetic. Yeah. So that's what I recalled
reading about the European variations. And but one of the
things was that they never ingested. It's always used as
like an ointment or something like that, because ingestion would
(29:17):
obviously increase the amount of risk that this alkaloid is
going to be interacting with your cells. So I'm assuming
that this Chinese variation is also not eaten. Yeah, I
believe so, especially based on on that that significant detoxification.
Again the ideal to detoxification, because the vast majority of
(29:38):
aconite poisonings that still occur in China and India, um
throughout Asia are due to um incorrect levels medicine. Yeah. Yeah,
so presumably, I mean, even though you're burning off n
of it during that process, if you take enough of it,
you're going to be poisoning. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, Okay,
So it's used homeopathically, right, Yeah, you see homeopathic uses
(30:02):
of aconite to treat stress, um stress, you see. You
see it as a treatment for stress and in various
stuff not used to Chinese culture, but also a cold relief,
pain relief, aches and pain. Yeah. I read that the
Greeks used to use it specifically for eye pain, and
so I'm curious about that because do you do you
make like eye drops and drop it in there or
(30:24):
do you And it's particularly uh, you know, as we
were talking about that gardener earlier who has hurt, it's
particularly bad if you get the alkaloid directly in your eye. Um,
so that that was curious to me. But you know, yeah,
in all cultures in the European and Chinese uses, uh,
they're using it to treat pains, agitation, indigestion, all kinds
(30:46):
of conditions. Um, I read facial paralysis is one. Uh
in particular, Uh, it's used for um neuralgia. So if
you have like facial neuralgia, you take an ointment of
this and you rub it on the area until it's
numb so that you're no longer feeling pain. So it's
a pain killer. So yeah, yeah, yeah. In addition to
(31:08):
to facial processes, you used to joint pain, gout, finger numbness,
cold hands and feet, which granted would be due to
other conditions and not just feeling kind of cold, drafting
socks on. Why don't we take some poison, inflammation, painful
breathing fluid in the space surrounding the lungs, certain heart problems, fever,
(31:29):
skin diseases, hair loss, even which seems like a stretch.
But but yeah, I mean, I guess the thing is
it's basic numbing feature, Like it's something you can definitely
you can definitely feel feel. An aconite derived medication working
in your system. So even if you're just going to
apply to Polsebo effect, you can say, oh, I feel different,
and maybe that that difference on feeling is treating it.
(31:52):
I would imagine that it works somewhat like a tranquilizer
in certain doses. Right, So I know that in some
of the instances they use it to treat anxiety and
nervous disorders, especially like what we would today called post
traumatic stress disorder. But like if you had a traumatic
event in your life and you were subsequently having trouble
dealing with it, they would give you this because of
(32:14):
that what we were talking about, that clear headed, kind
of mind numbing feeling of it that the German berserkers
would use for a very different effect. Yeah, so even
if it's not able to directly treat the condition that's
ailing you, it could at least have some effect on
your stress level surrounding that condition. So but I'm curious,
(32:36):
like the literature made it sound like there are places
in the world right now that people are still using
it ways, uh, through throughout throughout China and India. Um,
and then you see it used homeopathically here in the West.
I wonder if anybody out there who's listening as has
used it before, and if they have, I'd love to
hear from you what the effects are like. Is it
(32:58):
just like you know, tranquilized are kind of anesthetic or
is it different? But it you know, that's the that's
the curative side, that's the medicinal side. Now let's get
into the nasty because we would also love to hear
from any listeners who have been shot with an aconite
laced arrow. Yeah, yeah, anybody out there who's used it
as a biological weapon. And that was one of the
(33:19):
things that I kept thinking about when I was looking
at this research, was like, Wow, like, I'm surprised that
there aren't more like poison assassination kind of attempts regarding
this because from what I was reading, uh, it essentially
just looks like the person is fixiated. There aren't traces
of this stuff after it's been ingested, Yeah, because it
(33:39):
seems it's it's relatively easy to cultivate and acquire, so
you would think there would be more cases of nefarious
agonite poisoning. Maybe there are, Maybe there are, and we
just don't know because because it doesn't leave that much
of a trace behind. But Uh. It has been considered
the most dangerous and poisonous plant in all of Europe
(34:00):
though for a long time, and in European art it's
been depicted as a symbol of death uh and used
in rich as ritual poison in certain societies. So kind
of Jim Jones kool aid type thing. It sounds like
it's crazy, how so much of this is lost beneath
the you know, vague mentions in werewolf myths, because again
it sounds like just this fanciful thing that oh it
(34:22):
it has. It almost sounds like it would have no
effect on anything but a werewolf. But in in effect,
it's like saying, oh, you need to kill a werewolf,
why don't you try using dynamite, which would work against
most things, right, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, So, um, how does
it kill you? Yeah? I'm assuming the way that it
kills you is the same way that it makes you
(34:44):
feel numb, right, basically just an enhanced version, enhanced version
of that. Yeah. So based on another research we were
doing it, it it seems like it would roll out like this.
First of all, your poisoned in some way. Either you're
either say the enemy has has poisoned the well and
your drinking poison water or you've been shot, stabbed, or
(35:04):
or bludgeoned with with a wolf vane laced weapon. Right,
so after that shock, you're gonna get a station of burning, tingling,
numb just in the mouth, which I guess might be
kind of nice at first, since you're not feeling that
arrow poking on your exactly. Then there's a burning in
your abdomen, and it said that death usually supervenes at
(35:26):
this point before the numbing effect on the intestine can
be observed. But but that's where it goes next, right,
and pretty soon you're vomiting. Yeah, And so to clarify,
like the same thing, like this neurotoxin is opening up
sodium channels inside your body, which caused the tingling, but
it also spreads throughout your entire body. Right, it's essentially
(35:49):
paralyzing your circulatory and respiratory system, and that's what leads
to death. Yeah. Yeah, you end up dying from asphyxia
and and through all this though you're supposedly conscious and
clear minded to the last. So you're standing set, you're
laying there on the battlefield staring at this arrow protruding
(36:10):
from your shoulder, and you're thinking, oh, well, I'm not
really feeling this arrow all that much. Um, I'm kind
of numb. Must be the aconite, must be the wolf spane. Um,
I guess I'm not long for this world. Uh yeah,
And it's just, uh, you know, it basically sounds like
all of the symptoms of like the worst possible cold
(36:32):
hitting you suddenly right, or like flue right. Like You're
you're dizzy, you're nauseous, you're vomiting, your motor skills start
slowing down and becoming weak. You your circulatory system slows down,
your respiration slows down, and then boom that leads to
you being unconscious and then followed up by you're dead.
Because within an hour of consuming it, it can kill somebody. Uh.
(36:56):
And like we said, it's it's, you know, the death
for the most part, from the asphyxia, not from the
arrow wound or the knife wound or whatever however it's delivered. Uh.
And the only post mortem signs are from asphyxia. UM.
And there aren't a lot of ways to treat this.
UM that nineteen eleven Encyclopedia Britannic I was looking at.
(37:20):
They suggested emptying the stomach by tube, which I don't
know is is necessarily how we'd handle it today. Um,
but they did that. There are a couple of antidotes, atropine,
digitalent and strophantathine. All of those, if they're injected subcutaneously,
I think can counteract these effects. Uh. And then this
(37:40):
was the old like the old wives tail remedy that
I found that was listed was that you take olive
oil and you mix it with laurel berries and the
corpses of several dozen flies. But they have to be
flies that have fed on the foliage of aconite. So
you have to have this brood ahead of time basically exactly,
and you have to cultivate uh wolf spane in order
(38:03):
to harvest the flies and therefore remain in fairly close
contact with the poisonous substance exactly. Yeah, So it's not
this is probably not going to be a remedy that's
on the hand. Within the hour you've got to live basically,
unless you've got like a uh you know, some kind
of witch doctor medicine woman in town who just happens
(38:24):
to have this concoction pre made. Yeah, or if you
happen to have some some on the battlefield with you,
because we see, for instance in Nepaul, where you have
a particularly poisonous variety of wolf spaane um. Uh. There
there was a long history of warriors using it, using
the flower to tip their arrows or poison enemy wells.
And interestingly enough, the Odyssey mentions Ulysses traveling to Eperos
(38:47):
to collect arrow poison, and some people believe that some
historians believe that this was aconite. Yeah, uh yeah, And
I mean it's just been used throughout history in a
lot of different way, is right. Obviously the Greeks have
a history of you you mentioned Nepaul, China, but then
there's also apparently the Nazis were looking at ways to
(39:10):
use it to lace bullets. Yeah. This, uh, this comes
out of the concentration camp experiments. So it's mentioned in
the Nuremberg trial proceedings um quote. On eleventh of September,
in the presence of ss uh Strum Bunfu, Dr Ding,
Dr Woodman and the undersigned, experiments with aconite nitrate bullets
(39:34):
were carried out on five persons who had been sentenced
to death. The caliber of the bullets used was seven
point sixty five millimeters and they were filled with poison
and crystal form. Each subject of the experiment received one
shot in the upper part of the left thigh while
in a horizontal position. In the case of two persons,
the bullets passed clean through the upper part of the thigh.
(39:54):
Even later, no effect from the poison could be seen.
These two subjects were therefore rejected, so essentially it was
a failed experiment. It didn't seem to have anything. You
hear about these Nazi like science experiments that were conducted
on human prisoners and it's it's mind blowing, but this,
this one in particular, I just can't imagine, I mean
(40:16):
knowing even like from the nineteen eleven Britannica Encyclopedia that
I was reading from her earlier, it pretty clearly understood
the effects of it and how it worked. So filling
a bullet with crystallized wolf spain seems like it wouldn't
work to me, because how is it gonna come in
contact with your your your skin, or your circulation, even
(40:39):
if it's going through your body still protected by a
metal casing. Yeah, I mean, you can say this for
a lot of the experiments it took case that took
place under these circumstances, though it seems very misguided because
it's you're taking an old notion of of of poisoned
weaponry and trying to apply it to modern ballistics in
a way it doesn't really match it out. Like I know,
there have been other experiments into poisoning bullets in various ways,
(41:04):
but I can't think of a single one offhand where
where there was any real level of success with poison munitions. Yeah,
and it just sounds to me too like it was
even something like they probably knew it wasn't going to work,
but it was just sort of a sick way to
torture these people, you know, slowly, but it's it's there there,
It is on the record. It was absolutely used in
(41:26):
the history books. Yeah, but again they were clearly inspired
by the long use of aconite as a weapon, particularly
in in Chinese botany where there were five different species
that were particularly used for arrow poison. Right. It is
a species of the of the plant itself. They're laced
on the arrows, and apparently in ancient Greece they did
(41:47):
the same thing. They would the shepherds would actually take arrows,
lace them with this stuff and bait as well. Like
I was talking about earlier, and again use them to
kill wolves. So we see, like there's a lot of
iterations of using this to kill wolves that trace back
to that werewolf stuff we're talking about earlier. But it okay,
(42:09):
I guess I can see like you coat it with
an arrow, it goes in your body. That's gonna work, right,
because the poison is coming into contact with with your
internal organs. But the bullet transition is where I get lost.
Nazi logic not not not not real tight. But you know,
outside of the world of human warfare and human medicine
(42:34):
and accidental human poisonings, you do have some organisms that
regularly and in one case exclusively feed on wolf spain
and and have a extremely high tolerance for aconite. Yeah,
this gives you, like a I think this is a
great example of just how different our biological systems work
(42:57):
from from insects that like, Yeah, I talked about the
US earlier and that the side effects made it a
little lively as compared to like numbing and the dozen
humans or or wolves, I guess, but uh, the tiger
moths and uh certain kinds of bees, right, yeah, eating
one one bee in particular, and Alco had mentioned this
(43:17):
one first because this is a this is an example
of you have you have, you have this plan, and
it's it's highly toxic, as we've discussed, and it ends
up being visited by a number of different bees, different pollinators,
and it needs to be pollinated, so it it can't
just be completely isolation. It's right, it can't just poison
everything that comes near it. Keep the cows away, sure,
(43:41):
but the bees need to get in and u And
while the pollen has a fairly high levels of toxicity,
the nectar itself has low levels of alkaloids, so it's uh,
it's different, and it's difficult to acquire um that nectar
without specialized mouthparts. So you end up with a situation
(44:02):
where um, where the plant itself encourages specialist pollinators. And
in this case, we see the so called Old world
bumblebee or bumbus console brynus uh. And you see this uh,
this uh, this particular bee throughout Eurasia and it has
simply evolved into that niche where this is a very
(44:23):
dangerous plant to to deal with, but it can deal
with it delicately. And and as such as they they
play a vital role in each other's life cycles. Yeah,
so it sounds like the old world bumblebee and and
these plants co evolved, right, so that they adapted uh,
survival mechanisms together. I was looking at a study does
(44:44):
a certain type of econome chemically protect floral rewards to
the advantage of specialist bumblebees and the two thousand thirteen
UM study from Ecological entomology and uh, and they were
looking at like at the levels of aconite in the
bodies of both the special bees and the journalist bees. Um. Yeah,
and it really did seem to drive home that the
(45:06):
the specialist is where it's at for this particular plan. Yeah,
that's that's fascinating. So it's not just like it would
be easy for me to say, oh, well, insects are
fine with it, but but mammals are not or whatever.
But it's a very particular kind of of be that
can do this. But then there's also the moths, right,
And and this is relatively recent. I think this study
(45:28):
popped up on her radar this year, didn't it. Yeah,
this is a two thousand fifteen Russian study that came
out and pointed out first that they're eighteen species of
butterflies and moths that are known aconite fears as caterpillars
of course, um, and this includes the rare many trees
tiger moth and it feeds on the red aconite. So
(45:49):
if I remember correctly from reading the press release that
we saw when this story originally came out, this this
moth is like when we say rare, it's extremely rare, right,
Like it hasn't been in like twenty or thirty years,
I think. And then like this recent sighting in not
only did they see the moth, but they also saw
(46:11):
it's young, like actually eating the flower. So that's why
they know this now, is that like they know that
they're kind of uh living in tandem. Yeah, and they
theorize that the caterpillars are possibly consuming the alkaloids for
protection of overwintering larva against fungal and bacterial diseases. And
(46:32):
this is it's interesting to to look again at that
bumble bee study where they pointed out that you see
aconite levels not only in the bees that are actually
visiting uh, the the the aconite laced plants, but also
in their young. So there's like this residual level of
aconite just in the species itself based on their primary
food source. Okay, so here's my like totally unscientific, dumb
(46:55):
question to ask of I don't know if you'll know
the answer to this, but maybe somebody out in the
audience knows. If an Old World bumblebee consumes enough aconite
and then subsequently stings a human being, will that aconite
be passed onto the human being and then would that
be enough of a dosage to poison you? Based on
what I read here, I would say no, because they
(47:17):
didn't even get into stinging or anything. So yeah, I
don't know to what degree. For for all I know,
this might be a non stinging species, but but they
said that the level the toxicity levels within the creature
itself was not significant, So I think it would just
be like a little bit of numbness, maybe even if
it was passed through the stinger, but it probably wouldn't. Yeah,
(47:39):
I get the sense that you you would not get
any any sensation at all, aside from of course the stain. Yeah.
All right, so there you have it. Wolf Spain, from
werewolves to Nazis, from traditional Chinese medicine to poisoned arrows
and Old World bumble That's that's the thing about this
(48:00):
particular subject that I think is so interesting is it's
just you know, you say, again, like I said at
the top, you say wolf span and you go, right, yeah,
that's in some like a goofy werewolf movie. But it's
got this like fascinating history that just goes back hundreds
and hundreds of years and it's not common knowledge, or
maybe at least it's just not to us. I didn't
I didn't learn this at any time in my education. Yeah,
(48:22):
but based on the the accounts of poisoning still occurring
both in North and North America and Europe and in Asia,
people can stand to be a little more educated. Yeah,
maybe we need to add a wolf Span one oh
one to the the hogworks of the syllabus. Indeed, all right,
so there you have it again. If you want to
(48:42):
check out more topics from Stuff to Blow your Mind,
hand on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's where you'll find all the podcast episodes, uh, from
the very ancient episodes up until than the newest. If
you want to see just be right there on the
cutting edge of what's coming out, that's the place to go. Yeah,
And like I said at the top of the episode,
you know, we are going to start hopefully periscoping at
(49:03):
the end of October, so you can find out more
information about when we'll be doing those and where you
can find those episodes. Obviously on Twitter, but also on
our Facebook and Tumbler pages, which are blow the Mind. Uh.
That's that's the handle that we use on all of those. Uh.
And we've got videos as well, the Monster Science stuff
that will be on all those channels, and they're already
(49:24):
on our YouTube channel. Yeah, so check it out. And hey,
in the meantime, where can people send those accounts of
accidental and intentional aconite point? Yeah, yeah, definitely write us
in if you've got some stories on this. So it's
blow the Mind at how stuff Works dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
(49:45):
how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Christian Sager.
And today before we get the episodes started, there's a
few things that we want to let you our audience
know about up top that are coming up in the
(00:23):
month of October, which is one of our favorite months here.
First of all, we are going to start doing listener
mail episodes over periscope. We're going to attempt this. If
you've ever used the periscope apt before, it's connected to Twitter.
We've been been getting so much listener mail lately that
we don't really feel like we could do it justice
in one podcast episode, so we figured we'd give this
(00:45):
periscope thing a try, and we're going to try it
out on Friday, October. The second thing that we want
to let you know about is the return of Monster Science. Now,
if you're a listener of the podcast but you've never
seen any of the videos before, I have to recommend
the you check these out. I wasn't involved in the
original ones, and it's one of my favorite things that
we've ever produced here at How Stuff Works. Robert, you
(01:06):
want to talk a little bit more about it. Yeah,
we have four new episodes coming at you. In each one,
Dr Anton Jessup discusses uh the fictional world of monsters
as well as the real world, the real natural world
of biology, and finds the comparisons to make between the two.
So it's it's always a fun video. It's great. Yeah,
and it has so much value to like the effects
(01:28):
that are in it that our producer Tyler throws in
and also like some really cool background props and items
that you guys get to work with. So if you're
into horror, if you're excited about Halloween and October, and
you love science like we do, you should totally check
out Monster Science. It's already the first two seasons are
already on YouTube, and if you follow us on Facebook,
we're gonna be posting at least one or two episodes
(01:49):
a week directly there for the next couple of weeks
leading up to Halloween in the new season. Yeah, so
you can sort of follow the very loose narrative that
that goes through all of these yeah, and and and
real quick before we get started, just you know, if
you want to find out any of this stuff, and
you're a fan of the show, and you haven't you
haven't had the opportunity to learn about these yet. Definitely,
you know, follow us on social media. We're on Facebook,
(02:12):
We're on Twitter, and Tumbler, all those platforms were blow
the mind. There's also the home page stuff to blow
your mind dot com, which is full of blog posts
that Robert and I and Joe work on, and videos
older videos that Robert and Julie used to do, and
including all the monster science stuff. So definitely just give
it a shot. And speaking of monsters, today, we are
(02:33):
talking about a topic that has definite ties into the
mythological world of monsters, but also uh ties in very
nicely to themes of biological and chemical weapons and to
uh into themes of just natural biology and of course
natural medicine. Yeah, this is a topic that you know,
(02:53):
if you had asked me about a week ago, before
I'd done the research, I would have just had some vague,
sort of universal pick sure's ideas about what this means.
So of course we're talking about wolf Spain, yes, and
I honestly I wasn't completely sure it was real and
very recently me you see it, you hear it mentioned,
it sounds a little bit too cute, right, you know,
(03:14):
And how do you fight off a werewolf for potentially
make awarewolf? It gets convoluted. Um, well you find this, uh,
this this plant, this little flower that's occurring, and it's
called wolf Spain, ironically enough, and it can be used
against the creature. Yeah. And it turns out this is
a real thing, very real and very prominent in Northern
Europe and has a real deep history with a lot
(03:37):
of interesting sort of connections to how it's used in
the variations in which people have used it to heal
and to hurt one another. Uh. And the werewolf thing
is fascinating. But I also think that it's just it's
got like a very odd kind of horticultural background to
something that I'd never heard of, maybe because I've you know,
I'm not like one foot in the botany world the
(03:59):
way I'm on foot into the horror world. Yeah, like it.
It definitely has deep roots, if you will, in the
in the botany world, and also also in the world
of traditional medicines, especially traditional Chinese medicine. Yeah. Yeah, so
all right, what are we actually talking about here? Wolf
Spain is what exactly. Well, we're talking about the perennial
herbs of the buttercut family rannow cool, let's say, and
(04:22):
that's divided into two genera, a contum and Erathus. Yeah,
and so h Latin is going to be a major
thing that pops up here in terms of like the
naming conventions surrounding these plants. And I think there's something
like sixty sixty different subspecies of these, So forgive us
if our Latin isn't up to par and we're not
(04:43):
pronouncing these exactly right. But the main thing to know
is that this is largely referred to as a conatum,
and we'll also be talking about a con night, which
is this deadly poisonous alkaloid that is emitted from the plant,
primarily from its roots. Yeah, I mean it's present all
through the plant, but in its roots and root tubers
(05:04):
that's where you find the highest concentrations. But it's it's
also in the in the in the leaves, it's in
the flowers, it's in the it's in high levels in
the pollen. It's crazy dangerous and this is one of
the things one of the reasons why after doing this research,
I was like why don't we all know about this
because this seems like this incredibly dangerous thing that we
(05:24):
just refer about casually in werewolf movies. Yeah, we'll discuss
some of the dangers that have But you you find
it throughout the northern hemisphere, um in in in America,
you find it throughout Eurasia, and accidents do occur, and
it's mostly native to mountains. It's known as a rock
flower and some uh, some parts of the world because
it grows up out of spaces in between rocks. But
(05:47):
there's primarily two sort of informal categories. There's monkshood and
there's wolf spain. Uh. And it's called monkshood because of
its shape, So it has this U shape to it.
They call it the sepals. I guess those are like
the upper petals um that kind of curve over and
look like the hood over like I guess like a
capuchin monk or something like that. Um. And there's different colors, right,
(06:10):
So the monks hoods usually are like dark blues or
purple's sometimes that you'll find them in white variations, whereas
like wolf spain is usually yellow. Sometimes it's lavender or pink,
and those are commonly grown in the Alps of Switzerland, actually,
which again I didn't I had no idea. Yeah, the
hills are alive and uh and it's it's important to
(06:32):
to to drive home to here that the reason that this, uh,
this thing is just so filled with toxic alkaloids is
because it's it's in essence, the chemical prodect protection against herbivores. Yeah,
I mean some of the not just some of the
ways that this has been used against humans, but also
animals I thought was uh, pretty mortifying. But I guess,
(06:53):
you know, maybe I'm coming at it from a modern
day standpoint where I wouldn't purposely poison horses, for instance.
But we'll get into that. So, okay, there's a there's
an interesting etymology behind this particular flower. So the name
is thought to be derived from the Greek word I
think it's a conaton, which means without struggle. But there's
(07:14):
also an idea that it also comes from the Greek
word a con which is word for dart or javelin,
And we'll talk about that later. But it primarily has
to do with this substance being coded on those weapons
us more essentially a chemical weapon. It's also thought to
come from the word Akona, which is a word connected
(07:35):
to rocky grounds, like I just said, like it grows
up in mountainous regions. And actually Pliny the Elder talked
about it and some of his writings, and he said
that it might be connected to the port of Akina,
which was apparently a place known for evil repute um.
And that's you know, again connected to it because of
the whole poison in the Aconite thing. So the last
one apparently acon All those kinds of iterations within Greek
(08:00):
all have kind of deadly meanings. So a wet stone
is apparently pronounced at home in Greek. And uh, that's
so if you don't know, that's the like the thing
that you used to sharpen a sword, basically, and they
think that that might also be in origin for it.
Because it's like a wet stone, it makes a blade
even deadlier. So how do people end up finding them
(08:22):
self poisoned by wolf spain? Uh? They're basically two ways.
And it depends on where you are in the world.
If you if you reside in the East, if particularly
if you're if you're in China, then there's a very
good chance that you might encounter it through traditional medicine.
And if the proportions are long, if it are wrong,
if it hasn't been prepared properly, or you take too
(08:43):
much of it, uh and it's prepared form, then you
can become poisoned by the aconite. Yeah, and it's nasty stuff.
And and then you know there's just the casual like
walking by it or accidentally putting it to your lips,
to which you know, surprisingly happens more often then you think.
In fact, last year, there was a thirty three year
old gardener named Nathan Greenaway and he worked He worked
(09:07):
at this place called mill Court House, which was owned
by like a retired ventured capitalist named Christopher Ogilvy Thompson uh.
And apparently they had wolfspand growing in their giant garden
and Nathan didn't know this. He brushed up against it
and it killed him within a day. Um. And some
people speculate, you know, it's it's worse if you have
(09:28):
like open wounds on your hands. Apparently this guy wasn't
wearing gloves at the time. But it's pretty dangerous. In fact,
some people over the years have even mistaken it for
horse radish and put their roots in their mouth and
died from it, so it leads to bad results. Um.
And before we get into the werewolves and the poisons
and the herbology and all that stuff. Um, we'll just
(09:48):
kind of briefly talk about why this thing is so toxic.
So we know that the roots and the tubers are
especially toxic. It's really prevalent, especially you know, it can
be absorbed through your skin, and how to be handled
with extreme care because of those alkaloids that we were
talking about before. Um. But but what is the actual
effect of this thing? Right? So it produces a topical
(10:10):
tingling at first, kind of like an anesthetic, I'm assuming, uh,
and followed by I guess like it's an altered state.
I wouldn't call it hallucinating, but it's kind of like
your mind is affected. And we'll talk about different ways
in which people have used it purposely to affect their
own minds. But it sounds to me like it's sort
of like a a state that slows down the mind
(10:33):
and sort of puts most things out of your your
thoughts so you can focus singularly. Yeah, And there's a
there's a lot of mention in the in the literature
about particularly when we get into its use with a
poison that that it you remain very clear headed until
the very ends, kind of adding to the nefarious nature
of it as a weapon. Having just gone under anesthetic yesterday,
(10:56):
I can I can imagine what the effects are like.
But yeah, so all you need is three to six
milligrams of aconite to kill a healthy adult Like this
stuff is so potent, just like a few grams of
the plant matter touching your hands or obviously being ingested
is super dangerous. Uh. And I found there's an old
(11:18):
nineteen eleven Encyclopedia Britannica entry that mentioned that some people
purposely put the pedal or the roots to their lips
to produce like a numbness or a tingling. I guess
it's like the whippets of the Turn of the Sectary. Yeah,
a very dangerous um practice indeed, though, because you need
(11:39):
to make sure you just get enough of it to
to inspire tingling and numbness and not you know, poison
you to death. Yeah. Absolutely, um. And this is the
horse thing, which I found unfortunate, but apparently horse dealers
used to use this. They'd feed it to their horses
before they brought their animals to market, and the reason
why was it works the opposite on horses. It stimulates
(12:02):
horses and makes them lively. So if you had an old,
tired horse and you're trying to get rid of it,
you give it a little bit of wolf spain, bring
it to market, and it appears more lively and you're
more likely to sell it. And then you know, the
person who buys it gets at home and realize that
this is a very tired horse. All right, Well, let's
let's get into the werewolf mythology a little bit. And
I think like one of the key things here that
(12:23):
we keep finding is that you see wolf spain mentioned
as both a preventative measure and uh and and also
the cause of leokanthropy. Yeah, that was the thing that
was confusing to me. So before going into this, I
had always heard of it through the myths, I guess,
or the fiction that I had encountered as being the
thing that you use. It's like other than a silver bullet,
it's like the only thing that can stop a werewolf, right. Uh.
(12:46):
And I think there's like a Marvel Comics like X
Men character whose name I don't think, I know. There's
a there's an X Men character named wolf Spain. The
name doesn't really make sense because as you suspect her
powers that she transforms into a werewolf. So what, like,
I don't understand. I guess why there's the divergence in
(13:07):
the mythos there of like it's the thing that will
kill a werewolf, but it's also the thing that will
turn you into a werewolf. Yeah, I don't know. It's
just so tied to how a werewolf works that you
can be Yeah, I mean, it's it's kind of it
kind of represents the dual nature of the of the
substance itself, right and incorrect proportions. It can be used
(13:27):
as a medicine and in um strong enough dosus and
or you know which doesn't doesn't take very much. As
we've already discussed, you have a dire weapon on your hands,
you know what. That's a really good point actually, And
so there's definitely historical connections to the poison part because Akinaton,
like I'm going to pronounce this wrong, like a tonum
(13:50):
uh is this is the genus that's essentially uh the
wolf Spain, the like prominent wolf Spain. It was originally
used as a way to kill panthers and wolves and
other quote wild beasts. Uh, and it was considered deadly
to them. One of the quotes that I read from
an old textbook said it kills them in the same
day if you put the root or the leaf on
(14:11):
the animals genitals. So I don't know, I don't know
how they're grabbing a wolf and and rubbing the leaves
of wolf spain on its genitals. But the other thing
that I heard was that they used to lure wolves out,
but they would take like chunks of raw meat and
they would mix in wolf spain juice a sense essentially
into this stuff, throw it out. Everybody would go into
(14:32):
their homes. The wolves would come out and eat the
stuff and be dead like a day later. Yeah, it's
it's it's interesting to see the connection here between wolf
spaane and the and using it as a a turrent
against wolves and they're they're likewise. There are some arguments
that the werewolf myth has its roots, So you know,
I don't not only in sort of the dual nature
(14:53):
of man is you know, a beast but also you know,
a higher animal, but but also in our older struggles
against wolves where we were having to compete against wolves
for resources. Yeah, it's not something that we run into
on a daily basis now, or at least I guess
maybe in our culture we don't. But but yeah, I
was thinking about this, like, as I was doing the research,
(15:15):
my dog often hangs out next to my office desk
and just kind of you know, looks up at me,
and occasionally I pat him and stuff. And I thought, well,
we have a very different relationship with these animals today. Yeah,
I mean you look. I mean, of course, you can
look at very recent history and the United States even
with the poisoning of wolves and very large numbers to
the point where we we've had to to help bring
(15:38):
the numbers back up in the wild. Uh So, yeah,
we have a very troubled history with with the canines.
But so there's there's there's a lot of folklore connected
to this, and I think you're right to say that
it it comes from the sort of dual nature of
it being both a poison and a cure. Yeah. I
was looking in the Larust Dictionary of World Folklore, and
(15:59):
it's pointed out there that according to some folk police
that if you apply to fatal dose wolf bane would
repel a werewolf, which which seems kind of like a
no brainer. It would repel anything like this is a
powerful poison, so I should hope it would work against
the werewolf that's threatening my village. Right. If it doesn't,
then I'm I'm kind of boned, right, Yeah, I mean,
(16:19):
even in the horse case, I think it's still poisonous. Yeah,
it just has different sort of side effects and uh.
And in the Lorusa Dictionary World Folklore also mentioned that
as an ointment, it could transform a sorcerer into a werewolf,
though obviously a very careful dosage would be needed to
avoid certain death um this uh And it's also mentioned
(16:42):
that it's possible that like a correct dosage level might
have created or helped to create an allucinogenic effect um,
which I'm not as sure about based on our reading,
especially you know, the descriptions of aconite poisoning keeping you
pretty uh stable in the mind up until the very end,
(17:02):
with some possible effects on how you're perceiving the world,
but not like a strong hallucinatory effect. So I'm not
so sure about sorcerers taken aconite and having a werewolf
paranormal experience, unless they are combining, say the physical numbers
with some other agent. Yeah. I might be jumping a
little bit ahead here, but I think I have a
(17:23):
theory for where this werewolf thing came from it and
maybe not the sorcerer's standpoint, from the people watching somebody
proclaiming themselves to be a sorcerer taking this stuff. So
there's two things. First of all, when you're poisoned by this, uh,
a lot of times you end up foaming at the mouth. Um,
So there's clearly a connection there. In fact, there's a
(17:44):
there's a connection to the hellhound Cerebrius that we'll talk
about in a moment, But there's you know, also this
idea apparently that German berserkers used to take it right
before they would go into battle, because they wanted to
be mindless right before they went into a fight. And
again they would foam at the mouth, supposedly, So you
(18:05):
have these German berserkers running at you, foaming at the mouth,
and I can see where folklore would spin out from
that that like these men had turned themselves into beasts,
you know, somehow, and they're sacrificing their their humanity in
order to win the war. Remembering some of the various
symptoms of aconite poisoning. Though, It's like I'm imagining this
(18:26):
berserker running into battle. He's foaming at the mouth, he's
kind of numb all over, fierce diarrhea like you know,
so I guess vomiting, yeah, and then and then collapsing
and twitter. Yeah, it's definitely like, if you're going to
take this stuff, it's like a comic coze maneuver, right,
because there's no way you're coming back from that fight. Yeah,
I mean it seems like now in terms of causing werewolves.
(18:49):
So you know, we're not going to spend too much
more time on this podcast talking about werewolves, but I
did want to run through, uh many some of the
many ways you can turn into a werewolf according to
world folklore, and these come from Carol Rose is always
excellent Giants, Monsters and Dragons, Encyclopedia, Folklore, legend and myth.
So let's just let's just roll back and back and
(19:10):
forth on this list here. First up, classic lunar induced transformation,
full moon pops out right turns into a wolf. And
then there's of course the curse, like somebody curses you
and you become a werewolf. Right. Then there's magical pelt
induced transformation, which we don't see enough of. You know,
work you wear the pelt of the wolf. Yeah, you
have like a magical wolf pelt. Put it on, and
(19:32):
then you become a wolf. All right. And then there's
something called new moon conception induced transformation. What's that? Just
when the moon is new you're going to see you
hearing a new moon, and then obviously you're gonna be
born a worlf. Oh interesting, okay, all right, here's a
here's a variation on that Friday full moon slumber induced transformation.
(19:52):
So um, this one is basically, there's a full moon
on a Friday, you sleep during it, Boom, your werewolf.
I would be in werewolf trouble done because that happens
a lot. Uh. And then there's of course, if a
wolf touched the water that you're consuming, that's something that
would theoretically turn you into a werewolf. Yeah, yeah, that
one that makes sense. It makes sense. Yeah, just you're
(20:14):
coming into sort of contact with the beast wolf. Brain
consumption induced transformation. So you eat the brain of a
wolf and then you you take on partially that the
mind and spirit of a wolf. And then so this
next one, it sounds like it's a wolf and human
flesh combined. You eat it, and then you become by
eating the two things together, you merge them so that
(20:34):
you're sort of a bipedal wolf creature. Yeah, okay, then
that's ancient Greek. Yeah, that's an ancient Greek one. They're
then besality induced transformation also makes sense. You're laying with
the beast, and therefore you're becoming partially beast. So Catherine
the Great would then like be half horse. I mean
if you buy into those smiths, right, Yeah, well I
(20:55):
buy into the wolf brain consumption one. Why wouldn't And oh,
well we've got you know, we've also got over zealous
Zeus worship transformation. So if you're you're two into Zeus,
there's a certain amount of worshiping Zeus that works. But
if you're too into Zeus, you can turn into a werewolf. Yes,
and that comes from the Greek myth of like canon
(21:17):
and uh, and there's some other details going on in
that story too, but essentially the route there is he
was just really over those Yeah. Uh, there's seasonal feast
induced transformation. M Herodotus talks about this a little bit
in his writings that they were uh Neru tribal sorcerers
who would just turn it the occasional you know, seasonal feast.
(21:38):
And of course there's witchcraft, which is similar to the
curse thing. We've we've seen that as an origin story.
I think in some of the sort of modern fiction, right, Yeah,
that it's a curse. They're creating sort of a I
don't know, like a beastial bodyguard or something, or cursing
an enemy. And you see that popping up in a
witchcraft trial accounts as well, Like this guy here, he
clearly turned into a wolf and he was killing pool
(22:00):
in the in the area. So we're going to take
care of him and then finally have by having eaten
certain certain herbs, namely wolf spain. So they didn't list
the one that I think of as like the primary method,
which is being bitten or clawed at by a werewolf. Yeah,
she didn't mention that in the werewolf entry, which makes
me wonder to what extent that was just uh borrowed
(22:24):
from the vampire mythology. Yea, for Hollywood purposes. It's an
easy way to make a werewolf in in a movie. Uh,
and then you've got you you end up tracing it
back to a kind of chicken or egg type situation, right,
like how did how did the first werewolf become a werewolf?
So it's gonna be one of those things that we
can mentioned because anytime you can introduce a contagion into
your your horror story or your monster mythology, you know,
(22:47):
it makes it, It makes it all the more pervasive. Yeah,
so we mentioned um Cerebus earlier. Yeah, so okay, so
the service thing is really interesting. The idea here is
from Greek myth and I think it's Hercules was fighting
Cerebrus or dragging it up. He drag it up um
him her Yeah, I think it's male in the mythos,
(23:12):
but I'm not a percent sure about that. But uh.
And then as he was dragging it up from from Hades,
Cerberus was drooling as three headed dogs do, and the
drool fell on the ground. And where it fell is
where wolf spane first started to grow or aconite. And
that sounds logical. You have a magical beast, it's coming up,
(23:33):
it's drooling all over the place. Natural things are gonna happen. Yeah,
I mean, just as logical as like drinking the same
water as a wolf would turn you into a whirl wolf.
So yeah, I follow it. It's a good story though.
I this is one of those like when Hercules did
like the various labors, right, yeah, this was definitely one
of the labors. Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, thanks Hercules,
(23:54):
thanks for Yeah, you got popular, Hercules, and you were
able to prove that you're a legend and the rest
of us got werewolves. Yeah. And poisoning, so okay, wolf Spain.
We've talked about how poisonous this stuff is and how
it's so reviled that it's connected to this long lore
of werewolves in uh, most cultures. Right, whether it's whether
(24:17):
it's a cure or whether it's a poison to werewolves,
it's connected to them somehow. So how is it People
have used it though as medicine for centuries as well,
And we think that that maybe where the sort of
cure for werewolf is um comes from. Yes, certainly like cantherropy. Yeah,
let's use the D and D language here. Yeah, certainly
(24:38):
in in western traditions and uh and there and something
too that you have medieval witches that you know, at
least those individuals who are actually tied to traditional um
traditions of using native verbs in the treatment of maladies
UM as opposed to individuals who are just caught up
in the storm of which gap persecution those individuals, I'd
(25:00):
have utilized wolf Spain for its curative properties or even
you know, in some cases it's destructive properties. Yeah, even
outside of the whole wolf span thing. Again, remember there's
two sort of subclassifications here in Monkshood as one of them,
and Monkshood was also associated with black magic and dark medicines,
and you know, obviously because of its poisonous trades. Meanwhile,
(25:21):
over you know, across the continent and the relatively werewolf
free region of China, you see aconite used for about
two thousand years UM as an essential drug and traditional
Chinese medicine. Uh. And a number of these details about
this got this from an article published in the two
thousand and nine edition of the Journal of ethno Pharmacology
(25:43):
titled Aconitum in Traditional Chinese Medicine Valuable drug or an
unpredictable risk question mark because because because it all comes
down to, uh, you know, the the toxicity levels that
we're still debating this, Yeah, that we're still like, yeah,
maybe I mentioned this to a friend of mine this morning,
and he compared it to chemotherapy. He was like, well, yeah,
(26:05):
I mean think about it. It's you know, a thing
that's like really you know, ultimately like causing you pain
and is really dangerous to your body. But yeah, I
mean when you look at a lot of a lot
of the the naturally occurring agents that we use in
traditional medicines or even just call it for culinary use, spices,
uh at a at A at an appropriate levels, these
(26:26):
can add flavor to your dish. At at higher levels,
they can prove toxic to your body. And uh, and
that's just that kind of ties into what they're originally
there for. There there is a plant's chemical defense system,
and we've found ways to hijack a lot of these
defense systems for our own benefit. Yeah, that's kind of
the miraculous thing, right of like how human cultures over
(26:48):
the years figured all these things out, Like how many
people had to like touch it to their lips and
die or eat a certain quantity before they figured out
exactly the right amount that they could use from medicinal purposes.
And in this in this Chinese usage, uh, it's it's
very clear that they have to process it in an
elaborate way for it to be safe. That's right. There's
(27:09):
there are these traditional Chinese processing methods referred to as
pal z, which play an essential role in detoxifying the aconite.
So typically the pal z consists of, you know, several
different methods of heating the substance, So you're roasting it
your honey, frying at your wine, frying at earth, frying
(27:31):
at vinegar, frying at or various other means. And uh,
and and we also have additional modern methods which basically
boil down to the same thing, using heat to detoxify
it to a level to where you can can consume it.
So we're like burning off the alkaloid content. Yeah, basic basically, yeah,
boiling it down, burning it off to the level where
(27:52):
you can take advantage of the benefits without having to
worry as much about poisoning yourself. And all told, the
the palsy process reduces the alkaloid content by up to Wow. Wow,
that's interesting, Uh, because I don't really recall like a
process like that in the literature on the European usages.
(28:13):
It's more like tintshare type stuff that they're making. Yeah,
you're more playing with fire. Yeah, it's like one part
per It's in the notes, but it's like one part
per fifty or something like that is what you do.
So okay, so they've got this elaborate process they reduce
the amount of alkaloids that's in there. Uh, what are
they using it for in particular? Like, what is it
a cure for? Well, not a cure, but I guess
(28:35):
a remedy. Well, first of all, I should I should
draw a finer line on on how it actually works. Uh,
so everyone can get an idea here. So it acts
on the voltage sensitive sodium channels of the cell membranes
of excitable tissues, including tissue with the heart, nerves, and muscles. Um,
So it stimulates and then and then if the dosages
(28:56):
sign up later paralyzes the nerves. And if it's a
I had to broken skin, the initial tangling becomes a
kind of an anesthetic. Yeah. So that's what I recalled
reading about the European variations. And but one of the
things was that they never ingested. It's always used as
like an ointment or something like that, because ingestion would
(29:17):
obviously increase the amount of risk that this alkaloid is
going to be interacting with your cells. So I'm assuming
that this Chinese variation is also not eaten. Yeah, I
believe so, especially based on on that that significant detoxification.
Again the ideal to detoxification, because the vast majority of
(29:38):
aconite poisonings that still occur in China and India, um
throughout Asia are due to um incorrect levels medicine. Yeah. Yeah,
so presumably, I mean, even though you're burning off n
of it during that process, if you take enough of it,
you're going to be poisoning. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, Okay,
So it's used homeopathically, right, Yeah, you see homeopathic uses
(30:02):
of aconite to treat stress, um stress, you see. You
see it as a treatment for stress and in various
stuff not used to Chinese culture, but also a cold relief,
pain relief, aches and pain. Yeah. I read that the
Greeks used to use it specifically for eye pain, and
so I'm curious about that because do you do you
make like eye drops and drop it in there or
(30:24):
do you And it's particularly uh, you know, as we
were talking about that gardener earlier who has hurt, it's
particularly bad if you get the alkaloid directly in your eye. Um,
so that that was curious to me. But you know, yeah,
in all cultures in the European and Chinese uses, uh,
they're using it to treat pains, agitation, indigestion, all kinds
(30:46):
of conditions. Um, I read facial paralysis is one. Uh
in particular, Uh, it's used for um neuralgia. So if
you have like facial neuralgia, you take an ointment of
this and you rub it on the area until it's
numb so that you're no longer feeling pain. So it's
a pain killer. So yeah, yeah, yeah. In addition to
(31:08):
to facial processes, you used to joint pain, gout, finger numbness,
cold hands and feet, which granted would be due to
other conditions and not just feeling kind of cold, drafting
socks on. Why don't we take some poison, inflammation, painful
breathing fluid in the space surrounding the lungs, certain heart problems, fever,
(31:29):
skin diseases, hair loss, even which seems like a stretch.
But but yeah, I mean, I guess the thing is
it's basic numbing feature, Like it's something you can definitely
you can definitely feel feel. An aconite derived medication working
in your system. So even if you're just going to
apply to Polsebo effect, you can say, oh, I feel different,
and maybe that that difference on feeling is treating it.
(31:52):
I would imagine that it works somewhat like a tranquilizer
in certain doses. Right, So I know that in some
of the instances they use it to treat anxiety and
nervous disorders, especially like what we would today called post
traumatic stress disorder. But like if you had a traumatic
event in your life and you were subsequently having trouble
dealing with it, they would give you this because of
(32:14):
that what we were talking about, that clear headed, kind
of mind numbing feeling of it that the German berserkers
would use for a very different effect. Yeah, so even
if it's not able to directly treat the condition that's
ailing you, it could at least have some effect on
your stress level surrounding that condition. So but I'm curious,
(32:36):
like the literature made it sound like there are places
in the world right now that people are still using
it ways, uh, through throughout throughout China and India. Um,
and then you see it used homeopathically here in the West.
I wonder if anybody out there who's listening as has
used it before, and if they have, I'd love to
hear from you what the effects are like. Is it
(32:58):
just like you know, tranquilized are kind of anesthetic or
is it different? But it you know, that's the that's
the curative side, that's the medicinal side. Now let's get
into the nasty because we would also love to hear
from any listeners who have been shot with an aconite
laced arrow. Yeah, yeah, anybody out there who's used it
as a biological weapon. And that was one of the
(33:19):
things that I kept thinking about when I was looking
at this research, was like, Wow, like, I'm surprised that
there aren't more like poison assassination kind of attempts regarding
this because from what I was reading, uh, it essentially
just looks like the person is fixiated. There aren't traces
of this stuff after it's been ingested, Yeah, because it
(33:39):
seems it's it's relatively easy to cultivate and acquire, so
you would think there would be more cases of nefarious
agonite poisoning. Maybe there are, Maybe there are, and we
just don't know because because it doesn't leave that much
of a trace behind. But Uh. It has been considered
the most dangerous and poisonous plant in all of Europe
(34:00):
though for a long time, and in European art it's
been depicted as a symbol of death uh and used
in rich as ritual poison in certain societies. So kind
of Jim Jones kool aid type thing. It sounds like
it's crazy, how so much of this is lost beneath
the you know, vague mentions in werewolf myths, because again
it sounds like just this fanciful thing that oh it
(34:22):
it has. It almost sounds like it would have no
effect on anything but a werewolf. But in in effect,
it's like saying, oh, you need to kill a werewolf,
why don't you try using dynamite, which would work against
most things, right, Yeah, exactly. Yeah, So, um, how does
it kill you? Yeah? I'm assuming the way that it
kills you is the same way that it makes you
(34:44):
feel numb, right, basically just an enhanced version, enhanced version
of that. Yeah. So based on another research we were
doing it, it it seems like it would roll out like this.
First of all, your poisoned in some way. Either you're
either say the enemy has has poisoned the well and
your drinking poison water or you've been shot, stabbed, or
(35:04):
or bludgeoned with with a wolf vane laced weapon. Right,
so after that shock, you're gonna get a station of burning, tingling,
numb just in the mouth, which I guess might be
kind of nice at first, since you're not feeling that
arrow poking on your exactly. Then there's a burning in
your abdomen, and it said that death usually supervenes at
(35:26):
this point before the numbing effect on the intestine can
be observed. But but that's where it goes next, right,
and pretty soon you're vomiting. Yeah, And so to clarify,
like the same thing, like this neurotoxin is opening up
sodium channels inside your body, which caused the tingling, but
it also spreads throughout your entire body. Right, it's essentially
(35:49):
paralyzing your circulatory and respiratory system, and that's what leads
to death. Yeah. Yeah, you end up dying from asphyxia
and and through all this though you're supposedly conscious and
clear minded to the last. So you're standing set, you're
laying there on the battlefield staring at this arrow protruding
(36:10):
from your shoulder, and you're thinking, oh, well, I'm not
really feeling this arrow all that much. Um, I'm kind
of numb. Must be the aconite, must be the wolf spane. Um,
I guess I'm not long for this world. Uh yeah,
And it's just, uh, you know, it basically sounds like
all of the symptoms of like the worst possible cold
(36:32):
hitting you suddenly right, or like flue right. Like You're
you're dizzy, you're nauseous, you're vomiting, your motor skills start
slowing down and becoming weak. You your circulatory system slows down,
your respiration slows down, and then boom that leads to
you being unconscious and then followed up by you're dead.
Because within an hour of consuming it, it can kill somebody. Uh.
(36:56):
And like we said, it's it's, you know, the death
for the most part, from the asphyxia, not from the
arrow wound or the knife wound or whatever however it's delivered. Uh.
And the only post mortem signs are from asphyxia. UM.
And there aren't a lot of ways to treat this.
UM that nineteen eleven Encyclopedia Britannic I was looking at.
(37:20):
They suggested emptying the stomach by tube, which I don't
know is is necessarily how we'd handle it today. Um,
but they did that. There are a couple of antidotes, atropine,
digitalent and strophantathine. All of those, if they're injected subcutaneously,
I think can counteract these effects. Uh. And then this
(37:40):
was the old like the old wives tail remedy that
I found that was listed was that you take olive
oil and you mix it with laurel berries and the
corpses of several dozen flies. But they have to be
flies that have fed on the foliage of aconite. So
you have to have this brood ahead of time basically exactly,
and you have to cultivate uh wolf spane in order
(38:03):
to harvest the flies and therefore remain in fairly close
contact with the poisonous substance exactly. Yeah, So it's not
this is probably not going to be a remedy that's
on the hand. Within the hour you've got to live basically,
unless you've got like a uh you know, some kind
of witch doctor medicine woman in town who just happens
(38:24):
to have this concoction pre made. Yeah, or if you
happen to have some some on the battlefield with you,
because we see, for instance in Nepaul, where you have
a particularly poisonous variety of wolf spaane um. Uh. There
there was a long history of warriors using it, using
the flower to tip their arrows or poison enemy wells.
And interestingly enough, the Odyssey mentions Ulysses traveling to Eperos
(38:47):
to collect arrow poison, and some people believe that some
historians believe that this was aconite. Yeah, uh yeah, And
I mean it's just been used throughout history in a
lot of different way, is right. Obviously the Greeks have
a history of you you mentioned Nepaul, China, but then
there's also apparently the Nazis were looking at ways to
(39:10):
use it to lace bullets. Yeah. This, uh, this comes
out of the concentration camp experiments. So it's mentioned in
the Nuremberg trial proceedings um quote. On eleventh of September,
in the presence of ss uh Strum Bunfu, Dr Ding,
Dr Woodman and the undersigned, experiments with aconite nitrate bullets
(39:34):
were carried out on five persons who had been sentenced
to death. The caliber of the bullets used was seven
point sixty five millimeters and they were filled with poison
and crystal form. Each subject of the experiment received one
shot in the upper part of the left thigh while
in a horizontal position. In the case of two persons,
the bullets passed clean through the upper part of the thigh.
(39:54):
Even later, no effect from the poison could be seen.
These two subjects were therefore rejected, so essentially it was
a failed experiment. It didn't seem to have anything. You
hear about these Nazi like science experiments that were conducted
on human prisoners and it's it's mind blowing, but this,
this one in particular, I just can't imagine, I mean
(40:16):
knowing even like from the nineteen eleven Britannica Encyclopedia that
I was reading from her earlier, it pretty clearly understood
the effects of it and how it worked. So filling
a bullet with crystallized wolf spain seems like it wouldn't
work to me, because how is it gonna come in
contact with your your your skin, or your circulation, even
(40:39):
if it's going through your body still protected by a
metal casing. Yeah, I mean, you can say this for
a lot of the experiments it took case that took
place under these circumstances, though it seems very misguided because
it's you're taking an old notion of of of poisoned
weaponry and trying to apply it to modern ballistics in
a way it doesn't really match it out. Like I know,
there have been other experiments into poisoning bullets in various ways,
(41:04):
but I can't think of a single one offhand where
where there was any real level of success with poison munitions. Yeah,
and it just sounds to me too like it was
even something like they probably knew it wasn't going to work,
but it was just sort of a sick way to
torture these people, you know, slowly, but it's it's there there,
It is on the record. It was absolutely used in
(41:26):
the history books. Yeah, but again they were clearly inspired
by the long use of aconite as a weapon, particularly
in in Chinese botany where there were five different species
that were particularly used for arrow poison. Right. It is
a species of the of the plant itself. They're laced
on the arrows, and apparently in ancient Greece they did
(41:47):
the same thing. They would the shepherds would actually take arrows,
lace them with this stuff and bait as well. Like
I was talking about earlier, and again use them to
kill wolves. So we see, like there's a lot of
iterations of using this to kill wolves that trace back
to that werewolf stuff we're talking about earlier. But it okay,
(42:09):
I guess I can see like you coat it with
an arrow, it goes in your body. That's gonna work, right,
because the poison is coming into contact with with your
internal organs. But the bullet transition is where I get lost.
Nazi logic not not not not real tight. But you know,
outside of the world of human warfare and human medicine
(42:34):
and accidental human poisonings, you do have some organisms that
regularly and in one case exclusively feed on wolf spain
and and have a extremely high tolerance for aconite. Yeah,
this gives you, like a I think this is a
great example of just how different our biological systems work
(42:57):
from from insects that like, Yeah, I talked about the
US earlier and that the side effects made it a
little lively as compared to like numbing and the dozen
humans or or wolves, I guess, but uh, the tiger
moths and uh certain kinds of bees, right, yeah, eating
one one bee in particular, and Alco had mentioned this
(43:17):
one first because this is a this is an example
of you have you have, you have this plan, and
it's it's highly toxic, as we've discussed, and it ends
up being visited by a number of different bees, different pollinators,
and it needs to be pollinated, so it it can't
just be completely isolation. It's right, it can't just poison
everything that comes near it. Keep the cows away, sure,
(43:41):
but the bees need to get in and u And
while the pollen has a fairly high levels of toxicity,
the nectar itself has low levels of alkaloids, so it's uh,
it's different, and it's difficult to acquire um that nectar
without specialized mouthparts. So you end up with a situation
(44:02):
where um, where the plant itself encourages specialist pollinators. And
in this case, we see the so called Old world
bumblebee or bumbus console brynus uh. And you see this uh,
this uh, this particular bee throughout Eurasia and it has
simply evolved into that niche where this is a very
(44:23):
dangerous plant to to deal with, but it can deal
with it delicately. And and as such as they they
play a vital role in each other's life cycles. Yeah,
so it sounds like the old world bumblebee and and
these plants co evolved, right, so that they adapted uh,
survival mechanisms together. I was looking at a study does
(44:44):
a certain type of econome chemically protect floral rewards to
the advantage of specialist bumblebees and the two thousand thirteen
UM study from Ecological entomology and uh, and they were
looking at like at the levels of aconite in the
bodies of both the special bees and the journalist bees. Um. Yeah,
and it really did seem to drive home that the
(45:06):
the specialist is where it's at for this particular plan. Yeah,
that's that's fascinating. So it's not just like it would
be easy for me to say, oh, well, insects are
fine with it, but but mammals are not or whatever.
But it's a very particular kind of of be that
can do this. But then there's also the moths, right,
And and this is relatively recent. I think this study
(45:28):
popped up on her radar this year, didn't it. Yeah,
this is a two thousand fifteen Russian study that came
out and pointed out first that they're eighteen species of
butterflies and moths that are known aconite fears as caterpillars
of course, um, and this includes the rare many trees
tiger moth and it feeds on the red aconite. So
(45:49):
if I remember correctly from reading the press release that
we saw when this story originally came out, this this
moth is like when we say rare, it's extremely rare, right,
Like it hasn't been in like twenty or thirty years,
I think. And then like this recent sighting in not
only did they see the moth, but they also saw
(46:11):
it's young, like actually eating the flower. So that's why
they know this now, is that like they know that
they're kind of uh living in tandem. Yeah, and they
theorize that the caterpillars are possibly consuming the alkaloids for
protection of overwintering larva against fungal and bacterial diseases. And
(46:32):
this is it's interesting to to look again at that
bumble bee study where they pointed out that you see
aconite levels not only in the bees that are actually
visiting uh, the the the aconite laced plants, but also
in their young. So there's like this residual level of
aconite just in the species itself based on their primary
food source. Okay, so here's my like totally unscientific, dumb
(46:55):
question to ask of I don't know if you'll know
the answer to this, but maybe somebody out in the
audience knows. If an Old World bumblebee consumes enough aconite
and then subsequently stings a human being, will that aconite
be passed onto the human being and then would that
be enough of a dosage to poison you? Based on
what I read here, I would say no, because they
(47:17):
didn't even get into stinging or anything. So yeah, I
don't know to what degree. For for all I know,
this might be a non stinging species, but but they
said that the level the toxicity levels within the creature
itself was not significant, So I think it would just
be like a little bit of numbness, maybe even if
it was passed through the stinger, but it probably wouldn't. Yeah,
(47:39):
I get the sense that you you would not get
any any sensation at all, aside from of course the stain. Yeah.
All right, so there you have it. Wolf Spain, from
werewolves to Nazis, from traditional Chinese medicine to poisoned arrows
and Old World bumble That's that's the thing about this
(48:00):
particular subject that I think is so interesting is it's
just you know, you say, again, like I said at
the top, you say wolf span and you go, right, yeah,
that's in some like a goofy werewolf movie. But it's
got this like fascinating history that just goes back hundreds
and hundreds of years and it's not common knowledge, or
maybe at least it's just not to us. I didn't
I didn't learn this at any time in my education. Yeah,
(48:22):
but based on the the accounts of poisoning still occurring
both in North and North America and Europe and in Asia,
people can stand to be a little more educated. Yeah,
maybe we need to add a wolf Span one oh
one to the the hogworks of the syllabus. Indeed, all right,
so there you have it again. If you want to
(48:42):
check out more topics from Stuff to Blow your Mind,
hand on over to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's where you'll find all the podcast episodes, uh, from
the very ancient episodes up until than the newest. If
you want to see just be right there on the
cutting edge of what's coming out, that's the place to go. Yeah,
And like I said at the top of the episode,
you know, we are going to start hopefully periscoping at
(49:03):
the end of October, so you can find out more
information about when we'll be doing those and where you
can find those episodes. Obviously on Twitter, but also on
our Facebook and Tumbler pages, which are blow the Mind. Uh.
That's that's the handle that we use on all of those. Uh.
And we've got videos as well, the Monster Science stuff
that will be on all those channels, and they're already
(49:24):
on our YouTube channel. Yeah, so check it out. And hey,
in the meantime, where can people send those accounts of
accidental and intentional aconite point? Yeah, yeah, definitely write us
in if you've got some stories on this. So it's
blow the Mind at how stuff Works dot com for
more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it
(49:45):
how stuff works dot com
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