Poisonous Pre-workout & Tainted Treats - Strychnine
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Rooted! For our second episode in the deadly poisons series we’re digging into a plant that’s possibly one of the best known poisons in history- strychnine.
Before we begin, this is your regularly scheduled disclaimer that I am just a lady who loves plants- not a doctor or a pharmacist. Nothing I say in this podcast should be taken as medical advice. Before you make any changes in your personal diet or care routine, you should check in with your care team and do your own research…and also while it is fun to learn about the historical uses of poison, it’s not okay to kill people so don’t do that. Thank you.
While there are a few plants that contain strychnine, today we’re going to be focusing on Strychnos Nux Vomica, or the Strychnine tree. Known best for its hairy discus seeds, this tree is native to India and South East Asia. It’s a member of a notoriously toxic family, the loganiacea family, with poisonous relatives like Rope bush and logania- we might talk about them in a mini episode at some point, but they have very similar methods of action despite containing a few different toxins! If you enjoy learning about obscure poisonous plants, it's absolutely worth a deep dive!
But back to the star of our show, Nux Vomica is a medium sized tree with a short smooth and ash colored stump and dark green oval leaves. As a botanical weirdo it actually blooms when it gets colder- kind of like witch hazel, and when it does it produces light green funnel shaped flowers which apparently REEK. Once it’s done stinking up the place, it produces an apple-sized fruit that is light orange and smooth, with a soft white inner flesh and 5 SUPER poisonous and bitter seeds. Apparently there are a few species of birds and monkeys that DO eat the fruit, but nobody snacks on the seeds- just like last week they are bad for everyone.
If you have ever read any of those old school classic mysteries, you’ve probably heard of strychnine before, and while it IS super poisonous, it wasn’t always *just* used to kill people.
Across time and history Nux Vomica has also been used as a medicine to treat tummy troubles, heart problems, and even as a cancer treatment- though it's important to note that today it is NOT suggested you ingest strychnine for any reason, as even a very small amount can be lethal.
Typically if it was used in medicine it was often leeched in water and/or milk- but its VERY worth noting that strychnine the TOXIN is not water soluble and just barely soluble in alcohol, so odds are decent that in many cases it wasn’t present in the final mix.
In some (misguided or desperate) cases, this was a solution due to the fact that it allows muscles to contract more freely in very small amounts, which made it useful in helping with digestion issues and helping the heart to beat more regularly.
The way it works is that strychnine blocks glycine- a neurotransmitter that basically stops the muscles from moving about all willy-nilly. Strychinine instead kind of throes that baby out with the bathwater and moves right on in, telling your muscles to react to everything- the results are a few moments of being a little twitchy but maybe a little bit jazzed, followed by very intense and painful convulsions, and then finally death.
On the bit about maybe being a little bit more cheery- strychnine was also reportedly used to help give people a bit of a boost in energy, with the most infamous occurrence of this actually happening in the absolutely INSANE 1904 olympic marathon.
Picture it with me- its a hot and humid day in 1904 Saint Louis- Temperatures are in the mid 90’s, and the organizers have plotted a race that is 24.84 miles of pure hell. The roads are entirely made of dirt, littered with large stones and debris, not very well-marked, and oh yeah- there will be no water for over 12 the race. To make matters even more alarming, the dirt road is so dry that it’s kicking up TONS of dust- coating the runners throats and making it even harder to see. 8 miles from the finish, one runner had to quit because he inhaled so much dust it actually ripped his throat and stomach from the dryness.
If that wasn’t chaotic enough, the runners themselves were QUITE the cast of characters- some of them had literally never run a marathon before. One guy got bored and started finding mid-race snacks- starting by yapping with some spectators who gave him peaches, then fully b-lining into an orchard where he ate a bunch of rotten apples and then took a nap.
Another contestant was chased off course by a wild dog and was unable to finish the race after being bitten…but potentially even more wild than these instances is the experience of the winner- American Thomas Hicks.
Hicks received what I would say is probably an unconventional AND unfair amount of support, which at the time was actually permissible (within reason). Hicks coaches were deadset on helping the man win- so much so that at mile 10 they wiped his mouth out with a damp rag (at the time they thought being dehydrated was the key to performing well) and then sent him on his merry way to run 7 MORE miles, were instead of water they were waiting for him with a mixture of egg whites and strichnine…
As you might imagine, this resulted in a VERY interesting final 7 miles for Hicks, who was set to win until a fellow team mate (who secretly hitched a ride) came out of nowhere and sprinted to the finish…feeling defeated, woozy, and honestly over it- hicks wanted to quit.
But hope wasn't lost- almost immediately after the win it was revealed that his teammate cheated and hick’s coaches wasted NO TIME- they literally pulled up next to this guy in the middle of the race- gave him MORE of their messed up pre-workout and THIS TIME they made this man wash it down with BRANDY.
At this point Hicks is NOT doing well- people reported he looked like an actual zombie- his running was mechanical, his jaw was literally just hanging open…oh yeah- and he started hallucinating. At one point he was literally crying and for some reason thought he had 20 miles to go- he begged for food, he begged to stop- but his coaches threw 2 more egg whites in his mouth, scooped him up, and basically weekend at Bernie's him across that finish line- securing his place on that pedestal with a time of roughly 3 hours and 28 minutes…to put it in perspective- the average time to run a marathon is about 4 hours and 30 min, but the slowest time for the male division of the olympic marathon in 2024 was 2 hours and 42 minutes…conditions and techniques have come a LONG was since 1904, and for that we should ALL be grateful.
Obviously usually things end in tragedy vs gold medal- poisoning. As far as symptoms go, strychnine poisoning is probably exactly what you think of with poison- even if you didn't realize it- it makes people feel kind of strange but energetic, then sick- they might even puke. After that they start twitching as their muscles tighten, followed by full on convulsions, and eventually ending in back arching, face twisting death caused typically by the constriction of a person's airways. Symptoms usually start within 15-20 min of ingestion or absorption.
Historically speaking we have no shortage of true crime cases we could cover, with strychnine coming in at number 3 of the top 10 most common poisons.
Starting strong, it's believed that Alexander the Great was actually poisoned when someone slipped strychnine into his wine.
In another case of betrayal by threat, there is the infamous case of the chocolate creams. Creams, of course that had been poisoned by one christiana edmunds in Brighton England in the 1870’s.
According to her own mother, christiana had always been a bit strange. She had a very privileged upbringing, but her father passed away when she was a child and her mother never remarried, which in part led to a hysteria diagnosis in her 20’s.
The 1860s saw christiana falling in love with a local doctor- setting alight a scandal as he was very much married….its not confirmed they were ever truly romantically involved, but Christiana was absolutely in love with the Doctor, going so far as to poison his wife with a strychnine infused chocolate…she did make a full recovery, but this unlocked a kind of morbid fascination in christiana, who would go on to purchase and inject many more chocolates over the course of the next decade
Now- I know what you’re thinking- how did they not catch her? And the answer is simple- she was kind of careful. She would purchase the chocolates, and then return them to the confectioner after having poisoned only one of two in the batch, and then the confectioner would resell them. People would of course get sick, but no one ever died, and most just brushed it off as stress or having eaten something bad…that was until tragically a young boy ate one of the poisoned chocolates and died while on a vacation with his family. This raised suspicions, but of course no one could trace it back to her- the death was ruled an accident and everyone kind of moved on.
While she had been careful to craft a cover story that she was buying strychnine to get rid of stray cats, christiana decided she needed to be even more cautious and started to pay the young boy in her neighborhood to buy it for her.
This went on for YEARS, but eventually the thrill of someone random getting a little sick wore off, so she started sending these chocolates as gifts to prominent figures of the time..making sure to ALSO send some to herself and report it to the police in the hopes of framing the chocolate maker- messed up I KNOW.
However, this plan didn't work, as before long her former flame/staking victim Dr. Burns informed the police of what had happened years ago, and they arrested Christiana for the attempted murder of his wife as well as the murder of that child. She wouldn't serve time in prison though, instead spending the rest of her life in Blackmoor asylum where she died in 1907.
But if THAT’s not enough for you, just a few years later in 1878 Thomas Cream would begin his string of strychnine poisoning- targeting mainly women who were seeking out abortions.
Thomas Cream was born in Glasgow, Scotland in 150, but he relocated to Canada shortly after he was born, where Thomas would remain through most of medical school.
During his schooling in Canada he met a young woman named Flora, who he would perform an abortion he was not qualified to perform, resulting in her getting extremely sick. Thomas attempted to flee, but her father stopped him and forced him to marry Flora who did recover from this attempt, but still passed a few months later in 1877 due to tuberculosis.
However, while they were married, Thomas DID actually leave and go to England to continue his medical training, so he never actually saw his wife after marrying her. Kind of RUDE, but honestly I bet he was insufferable and made her life hard enough.
He DID return to North America, this time heading to London, Ontario where he would start his medical malpractice. Despite having a record of malpractice at this point, many desperate patients had still seen Thomas for help, and he quickly developed a reputation.things seemed to be going okay,until one day a woman was found dead behind his office- believed to have been killed with chloroform. Thomas would claim this woman begged him for an abortion, be he declined and she threatened to kill herself if he didn't help her….no one in her life believed this to be the case- especially because this whole story wasn’t really adding up, but they didn't have any evidence- just a letter he claimed she wrote but did not match her handwriting.
Shortly after this, Cream would move to Chicago IL where he would set up shop near the red light district. It was here that he started officially offering illegal abortions to sex workers, this time being accused of killing 2 women right off the bat, but once again getting away with it for lack of evidence.
In 1881 a woman named Alice died from strychnine poisoning less than a block from Cream’s office- raising eyebrows from those around him and suspicion from the police. In July of that same year he was accused and tried for the murder of Daniel Scott, who allegedly bought epilepsy medication from Cream, but then died from strychnine poisoning It was found that Cream was actually having an affair with his wife, and the two conspired to kill her husband, but in Court Mrs. Scott would blame this entirely on Thomas, who would be sentenced to life in prison, but would be pardoned three years later because his brother appealed (and is believed to have bribed the governor).
Thomas actually ended up getting caught because he had this nasty habit of accusing pharmacists of poisoning people and then trying to extort them, which is kind of WILD, but greed is a crazy thing.
Upon his release Crem fled to London, once again targeting Sex workers, this time killing several before anyone started to grow suspicious. At this point he was exclusively using strychnine- giving women 2 pills and causing their deaths mere hours after ingestion. He was also still framing pharmacists and doctors, this time sending scary letters and threatening the police, who quickly realized they were dealing with a serial killer they dubbed the lambath killer (because that’s the part of london he was in)
Thomas would get away with this for a while…but eventually his need for attention would get the better of him when he gave an NYC police officer on vacation a VERY detailed walking tour of where all the Lambeth killer’s victims lived and sharing an awful lot of details on the case…not thrilled with the eeriness of this tour, the NYC officer told london police about his weird ass tour and they put cream under surveillance and quickly had enough evidence to convict him.
This trial was the talk of the town, with lots of attention from the press- especially since Jack the Ripper had been active nearby only 3 years prior. He HATED being called Doctor Thomas Neill Cream and instead wanted to just be referred to as Doctor Thomas Neill…so naturally the press called him Doctor Cream and I dropped Dr. altogether.. Apparently even with the alleged letter from Jack the Ripper claiming his innocence, The jury deliberated for only 12 minutes before finding Thomas Cream guilty, and a month later he was hanged.
His executioner DID try posit the theory that he was jack the ripper, saying his last words were “I am Jack the…” but this was pretty quickly debunked since the killings had happened while Cream was in prison in Chicago.
One theory is that perhaps Cream actually went to London, committing the murders as Jack while a hired body double served time for him- though this seems very unlikely as anyone they talked to- and letters they were able to find written by cream himself seem to verify he was in prison..
Another theory I like a bit better is that perhaps cream was so frightened and losing control of his body that he screamed “I am ejaculating” and the executioner just heard him wrong…thats a conspiracy theory as well, but I think it DOES make it all make sense- even if it IS weird and gross to think about.
As far as motives go, it's believed that while Cream DID do it in part for money, he mostly murdered these women for the thrill of being so completely in control of them, even though he rarely saw the effects of his poisons.
The good news is that today MOST people do live after ingesting strychnine accidentally. Typical treatment includes the patient benzodiazepines and plenty of fluids, as well as sometimes intubating folks to make sure their airways don't close. Depending on how quickly treatment is received and the amount absorbed, most people can live with very few if any complications, which usually consist of neurological and kidney issues.
Overall, I think we can all agree that Strchincine, as interesting as it is to read about, isn't something we should be overly excited to encounter in our day to day. It is still sometimes used as pest control, but in a post agatha christie world, it is much more regulated and used much more sparingly.
If you ever do see a strychnine tree, you can say hello- maybe skip the head kiss, and think about how glad we all should be that we aren't running the 1907 marathon.
That’s all I’ve got for this week, but I’ll be back next week to dive into a deadly poison that might just be lurking in your fruit bowl- cyanide…
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Until next time, be kind to yourselves, be kind to the earth, and just like a plant- drink your water.
Rooted: A Plant Podcast is a Henbane Media LLC Production. It’s written and produced by me- Em Grebner Gaddis with theme music by Eric Kluxen.
Sources:
https://www.cdc.gov/chemical-emergencies/chemical-fact-sheets/strychnine.html
https://archive.org/details/poisonousplantso0000arno/page/20/mode/2up
https://crimereads.com/strychnine-poison-christie-conan-doyle/
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/strychnine
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459306/
https://www.olympics.com/en/olympic-games/st-louis-1904/results/athletics/marathon-men
https://www.journalmc.org/index.php/jmc/article/view/1189/688
