Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio Hey brain Stuff laurin volgeban in here. In two thousand and eight, a middle aged couple decided to spice things up by eating raw honey gathered from near Turkey's Black Sea, and then ended up in the hospital with symptoms that mimiced heart attacks. The culprit mad honey poisoning a little known ailment that has brought down ancient armies and in modern times been rumored to have a hallucinogenic effect that increases sexual performance.
So called mad honey is produced by bees that ingest the nectar of poisonous plants, specifically ones that contain gray anatoxins. These are neurotoxins that are found in various species in the heather family, like rhododendrons azalias and mountain laurels. The naturally toxic syrup reportedly tastes more bitter than normal honey, and the toxic city is stronger in fresh honey gathered
in the springtime. Variants on mad honey have been found in parts of Japan, Nepal, Brazil, North America, Europe, and the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. Mad honey is a razor's edge substance that can go from intoxicating to lethal in just a few tablespoons, and because potency varies from hive to hive, there's no sure way to tell
when enough is enough. In the case of the couple who wound up in the emergency room, increasingly large doses of the toxically tinged honey caused acute inferior myocardial infarctions aka heart irregularities. While typically not fatal, mad honey poisoning doesn't sound fun with symptoms like nausea, vomiting, excessive sweating, and dizziness. In rare cases, you could be looking at convulsions,
low blood pressure, shock, and yes, heart trouble. Documentation of this goes all the way back to four once, when the ancient Greek commander Xenophon, returning with an army from Persia, wrote of his men experiencing an accidental poisoning. Before the article this episode is based on, has Stuffworks spoke with Adrian Mayer, a research scholar in classics and history of science at Stanford University with a specialization in ancient biological
and chemical warfare. She said Xenophon prided himself on choosing healthy and safe campsites in hostile territory. He noted nothing unusual about the campsite in Pontus, on the Black Sea coast on northeast Turkey, but he did note quote an extraordinary number of swarming bees, and said that his men soon discovered the hives and gorged on the sweet treat of wild honey. He was appalled when a soldier suddenly
behaved like crazed madmen and collapsed in mass. His entire army was paralyzed and incapacitated for days, totally vulnerable to possible enemy attack. Luckily for them and this was again accidental and Xenophon's army recovered before they could be discovered. But ancient armies did use mad honey as a weapon, and quite effectively at that. Around sixty five BCE, King Mithriddes, the sixth of Pontus set a trap for the invading
Roman army led by Pompy the Great. The Romans were moving along the coast of the Black Sea in present day northeast Turkey, the same area that Xenophon had been traveling through a few hundred years before. Mithriddeses troops set out poisonous mad honeycombs along the route. The Romans fell for the tasty trap, and meth Briddes's army attacked and killed about a thousand of them once they had been rendered helpless by the honey. Eventually, Pompey defeated him and
ended his expanse into Rome's territories. Supposedly, mith Briddes died after being overthrown by his son under guard. He tried to kill himself with poison, but was inured to it. After years of mild preventive doses, he finally had to ask a garb to run them through. There are also instances of mad honey being used to make mead as a way of stalling encroaching forces. A mead, also called honey wine, is made by fermenting honey with water and
often flavoring the mixture with fruits or spices. A two notable occurrences of mad mead as a biological weapon took place in the same region we've been talking about. In nine forty six, ce Olga of Kiev had his allies sneakily offer mead to his Russian foes, then slaughtered all five thousand of them once they had collapsed, and in fourteen eighty nine a Russian army left behind casks of poisoned mead when they abandoned the camp in the face of an incoming Potter army then swept back through and
killed some ten thousand of them. The armies of antiquity may have fallen for these literal honey traps because sugar wasn't widespread until the seventeen hundred see before the technology and enslaved labor that brought the price down for sugar. Around that time, the sweeteners were rare and expensive in most places, limited to things like maple syrup, dates, and honey. So mad honey was a delicious but deadly trojan horse
or trojan hive. Today's episode is based on the article Ridiculous History Ancient armies waged war with hallucinogenic honey on HowStuffWorks dot Com, written by Laurel Dove. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.