Poison Arrows, Chinese Medicine and Werewolves

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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 that are in it that our producer Tyler throws in and also like some really cool background props and items

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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, 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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 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 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,

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 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, 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 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 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 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

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.

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 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 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. 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 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 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

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 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. 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 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 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, 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,

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, 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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 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. 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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

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 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, 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 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 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

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, 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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

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