On poison, naturally

Dear Gentle Reader,

After Friday, I kept thinking about poison. And food.

I thought about strychnine, for example.

Strychnine brought me back to Dr. Thomas Neil Cream (1850-1892), the Lambeth Poisoner, who gave strychnine to young woman, from the USA to England, who aroused him.

When young ladies came to his practice dressed inappropriately, according to his private determination (read arousal), he would retaliate (?) by giving them candy--strychnine tablets.

The young women would be dead by the next morning.

Those 'candies' were taken by the girls themselves, but at least they didn't know what they were popping into their mouths.

I say that because the next person and poison I thought of was poor Socrates (469 BC - 399 BC) who was required by the State to willingly drink hemlock.

Socrates was required to pour a draught of hemlock down his own throat, froma cup he held in his own hand, with the full knowledge of what the consequences of those swallows would be.

The thing about hemlock is it triggers paralysis of the body while the mind stays perfectly alert.... so, at all times you understand what is happening as your body slowly shuts down and you drown in the fluid that collects in your lungs.

This, to me, sounds perfectly horrid, similar to the shut-in syndrome that some stroke patients suffer from.

These nasty thoughts, naturally, (strychnine is naturally derived from Strychnos nux vomica, the strychnine tree, from Asia, whilst hemlock is naturally derived from poison hemlock, conium maculatum) led me to the Italian wine/poison, cantarella.

Cantarella was the fabled poison of the Renaissance Spanish/Italian Borgia family.

The House of Borgia came to prominence with election of one of their own, Alfonso de Borja (1378-1458), as Pope Calixtus III (1455-1458).

Ensconced in Italy, after moving with Alfonso de Borja from Valencia, Spain, the House of Borgia became known for their political prowess which allowed them to get another member of the family elected as Pope; Rodrigo Borgia (1431-1503) became Pope Alexander VI (1492-1503).

More accurately, the Borgias become notorious for the way that people who opposed them, or who stood in their way, or who possessed large sums of liquid cash (which the family would later seize) would die.

By poisoning.

The Borgias are believed to have made a mixture of arsenic and wine which they would give to people, and this poison became known as cantarella.

The Borgias reputedly experimented on animals and, later, on people, to determine how to vary the dosages so that the poison would (a) not be detected, and (b) they could determine beforehand when their victim would die.

Knowing when death would occur was good for both building alibis and for arranging votes, or transfers of funds...

The recipe of cantarella has been lost to time but it is rumoured that it involved arsenic which had been rendered more efficacious by being mixed with the entrails of animals and squeezed out in solution...

What is known is that cantarella remained tasteless and undetectable when added to red wine.

The Borgias were a bit like the spinster Brewster aunts from Joseph Kesselring's "Arsenic and Old Lace".

But, far more successful.

And, who would refuse a dinner with the Borgias?

It is a bit hard to imagine any Westerner, during the Renaissance, refusing a dinner with the Pope or with one of his family members.

You are likely wondering where this is all heading, today.

Well, all this thought of poisoning, and of food, brings to mind a bit of poisoning your humble scribe experienced, a while ago.

Food poisoning, yes, but more in the sense of the Borgias. And, more natural.

Do you want to know more?

Same time, Friday.

After 3WW on Wednesday.

I'll tell you all about it, then.

Tschuess,

Chris

Click to hear 'Love Potion No. 9' by The Coasters 'cause you have to love something to kill for it, no? Even if it's just the thrill...

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Tschuess,

Chris

On Pelletier and Caventou, malaria, syphilis, and a gin and tonic

Dear Gentle Reader,

Your humble scribe has mentioned, in passing, the British, in India, before.

And we have glossed over the quinine they took, as tonic water, combined with that Dutch poison, gin.

The British dosed their bitter medicine (quinine dissolved in carbonated water--tonic water) with gin to make it, the quinine, more palatable.

But, what is quinine? Where is it from? Why do we all know its name?

Quinine is a medicine used to combat malaria, which, with all our drugs and skills and knowledge, today, is still a significant global killer.

Malaria was even more feared before reliable medicines were known.

But, that doesn't tell us much about what quinine is.

Quinine, C₂₀H₂₄N₂O₂, is an alkaloid derived from a plant.

It was isolated in 1820 by Pierre-Joseph Pelletier (1788-1842) and Joseph-Bienaimé Caventou (1795-1887), two French chemists who worked in Paris.

Those gentlemen were great.

They isolated quinine to treat malaria.

They also isolated brucine, a poison, that would later be used, in small doses, to treat and regulate blood pressure.

(Brucine also regulates blood pressure when administered in large doses, but it does so in a more permanent and unpleasant fashion).

Pelletier and Caventou also isolated strychnine to treat rats and other rodents.

Permanently.

(People were treated with strychnine, too. The less-reputable Dr. Thomas Neil Cream (1850-1892), the Lambeth Poisoner, murdered many women, and a few men, as a way to treat the world and purge sexual sin...)

Pelletier and Caventou even isolated chlorophyll.

Chlorophyll is not just the stuff that freshens your breath in some breath mints.

Chlorophyll is the green chemical that allows plants to convert CO₂ and water (H₂O) into sugar n(CH₂0) and O₂; chlorophyll allows plants to turn sunlight into chemical energy which is rather important for ecosystems on earth.

That chemical reaction, as an aside, written out, looks something like this:

6CO₂ + 6H₂O + photons (light) → C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂

But, without the chlorophyll, nothing happens. That arrow requires chlorophyll, the catalyst in the equation.

So.

Love those plants.

Treat them well.

(Give peas a chance.)

Finally, Messers Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph-Bienaimé Caventou even isolated caffeine, a very valuable chemical in the modern world.

Your humble scribe remembers isolating caffeine in an organic chemistry lab a long, long time ago.

Hours of work for a little bit of powder.

I apparently loved the labour, though; I stayed up for a week afterwards.

But, back to quinine.

Quinine was a far more valuable chemical in Pelletier and Caventou's time than caffeine is in our time.

In 1820, quinine, C₂₀H₂₄N₂O₂, was a very big deal.

Why? Because of malaria.

Malaria was, and had been, a scourge to Europeans scouring the globe for opportunities evangelical, mercantile and sovereign.

The bacteriological agent, Plasmodium, which was responsible for malaria and which was transmitted by the Anopheles mosquitoes (but only by the ladies), would not be discovered until 1880 by Charles Laveran (1845-1922).

However, the Jesuits had made a remarkable discovery, in Peru, early in the seventeenth century.

The Jesuits discovered what the Quechua Indians of that Spanish possession, Peru, knew. They learned that if you boiled the bark of what became known as the Cinchona shrub/tree you might be able to cure a malaria victim.

The mythical, Western origin legend was that the Countess of Chinchona, wife of the Spanish Viceroy to Peru, was cured of malaria by the Quechua Indians and, hence, later, Carolus Linaeus would name the shrub/tree Cinchona.

(Isn't it obvious that the miracle plant would be named after the Western victim rather than the people who supplied the information? No? Go back to your history books!)

Jesuit's bark (later, Cinchona bark) became known in Europe as the cure, and as a possible prophylactic, or preventative treatment, against malaria.

The prophylactic treatment came from the work of one Dr. Christian Hahnemann (1755-1843), the father of homeopathy--the concept that like cures like.

The historical pre-foundation of homeopathy can be found in the English expression "the hair of the dog" which refers to the idea of taking a stiff drink in the morning to ward off a hangover from the night before.

Its etymology was the ancient belief that if you were bit by a dog, you should cut out some of the hair of the dog that bit you and stuff that into your wound to ward off disease, especially rabies.

This treatment came from Roman times as an example of the medicinal rule similia similibus curantor, or like cures like.

Dr. Hahnemann, a German physician, noted that cinchona could not only cure malaria, but if taken in large doses by a healthy person, cinchona would induce the same symptoms as malaria.

Recalling the old Roman adage, and modern, recorded observations, Dr. Hahnemann founded the medicinal science of homeopathy--from observations on the curative, and causative, properties of cinchona bark.

So, remembering that the active ingredient of cinchona bark, essentially, was quinine--quinine could be argued to the root (though it comes from bark) of homeopathy.

More things should be noted about malaria and quinine.

Another scourge of Europe, and the world at that time, was the pox, women's pox, the scourge.... syphilis.

(An aside, while malaria really is only spread by ladies, lady Anopheles mosquitoes, that is, it was believed for a long time that syphilis was only spread by ladies which was why it was called woman's pox.)

Syphilis was painful, virulent, incurable, and fatal.

People tried cures, like injecting large quantities of mercury up men's urethras, and tried prophylactics... like condoms made from fishskins... with the scales still on... or from the intestines of sheep, or lambs... an interesting origin theory, perhaps, for the slang terms alluding to a phallus as a sausage....

But, sadly, none of the cures or prophylactics worked.

Then it was discovered, perversely, that a malarial infection would kill a syphilis infection.

Although the patient would still die.

Until Jesuit's bark came along, however, because powdered cinchona helped some people survive malaria.

So quinine, the isolated active compound from cinchona bark, or Jesuit's bark, had a monumental impact on the world.

Now that malaria could be cured, it was easier, or at least safer, to explore the world and to extract wealth from it.

Further, one could now fornicate with abandon.

Life was looking up.

(Especially now that scratchy fish-scale condoms could be abandoned.)

Based upon Dr. Hahnemann's theories of homeopathy, people took quinine as a prophylactic against getting malaria, especially when they were abroad.

Grains of wildly bitter quinine were given to members of the Indian Army and the Indian civil service.

Enlisted men had to take the quinine on their parade grounds, under the watchful gaze of their officers, as the medicinal quinine was so stupefyingly bitter that some would try to not take it.

Wealthy British planters in India consumed large quantities of gin to help the bitter quinine grains go down. And they found that gin went well with the bitter taste of quinine.

Eventually some clever chap thought of brewing up bark from the remijia tree of Peru so that people could have a better bitter tonic, and by better, I mean cheaper.

Remijia is a relative of the cinchona shrub/tree. It has a more bitter taste than cinchona bark and while it has some quinine in its bark, it has less quinine that cinchona...which makes remijia relatively cheaper although more flavourful. And the name of the game in advertising is not reality, but appearances.

The new tonic water from remijia bark tasted more of quinine than cinchona bark did, although it actually had less, so it was ideal for a mass distributor of a bitter, quinine flavoured tonic for profit.

And thus Indian tonic water, and hence a gin and tonic, was born.

And why did your humble scribe go off on that long, earlier, laudatory aside on Messers Pierre-Joseph Pelletier and Joseph-Bienaimé Caventou?

...Beside the fact that quinine had a monumental impact on the world from curing and preventing malaria, to curing syphilis, to creating the gin and tonic cocktail...

Because, after Pelletier and Caventou had isolated quinine, the key to combatting malaria, and, circuitously, syphilis, Pelletier and Caventou freely gave their knowledge away to the world.

Their benefit was seeing the world benefit.

I think that that is worth a laudatory aside for those two gentlemen.

So.

Charge your glass with some gin.

And some tonic.

And join me in a toast to Pelletier and Caventou.

Tschuess,

Chris

And the music for today...

Click to hear 'Root Trees' by Shawn Lee & Clutchy Hawkins

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Tschuess,

Chris

Transience and Volatility

Dear Gentle Reader,

If you look closely, the building shown in this image is a bank. It is called the Hang Seng Bank.

The Hang Seng Bank was founded in 1933 as a money-changing operation. It is now the second biggest bank in Hong Kong, although its majority owner is HSBC (Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation), an old overseas British bank from the days of mercantilism and colony.

The corners of the Hang Seng Bank building are not.

Not corners that is, or not sharp corners at least.

The corners of the Hang Seng Bank building in Hong Kong are rounded. This is because feng shui (literally wind water) beliefs state that sharp corners are dangerous and bad for business.

Arguably (your scribe is guessing) feng shui practitioners determined, in the past, that because you could not see around a sharp corner it was easy to be ambushed at sharp corners. And ambushes are always bad for business--unless you are the bandit...

So the superstitious board of directors directed round corners for the bank.

When you watch your stock portfolio plunge each day, and they tell you what Asian markets are looking like, you probably hear about the Hang Seng Index. The Hang Seng Index is Hong Kong's version of the Dow Jones Index. Now you know where that index is calculated.

Why do I have this picture here, today?

Yesterday, I mentioned the relative advantage Spain once had.

Spain had huge forests of sea-worthy hardwood timber. The Spanish harvested and converted these forests into vast navies to explore the world.

The Spanish were lucky enough to find lands rich in silver and gold, and sparse in armaments, in the New World.

Spain's last great harvest of trees should have allowed them to invade and conquer England, but their Armada was destroyed by a storm and there were no more trees left in Spain to build a new fleet, not to mention the loss of human life and materiel (and no, that is not a typo) that an army runs upon.

Prior to the Great Armada fiasco, the Spanish had been, pragmatically, the most important nation in Europe.

Due to the phenomenal wealth the Spanish were deriving from the New World, they achieved the remarkable anti-alchemical trick of converting gold to stone. This also led to their downfall.

One glance at the Spanish surplus of grandiose churches and cathedrals, constructed in a very short time, proves this point. For clarity, the oversupply of grand stone churches proves the anti-alchemical trick, not the downfall of Spain--but the fact that at a certain time all new construction and acquisitions ceased does implicitly point to a financial downfall, or at least to a significant shift in fiscal priorities.

In their heyday, when the gold and silver from the New World was pouring in, the Spanish spent faster than their ships full of gold and silver would arrive (once a year) from the New World.

The Fuggers, a wealthy banking family from the Swabian Free City of Augsburg, starting buying up the next year's delivery of the shipments of gold and silver, at a discount, by providing the Spanish crown with massive loans. The Fuggers were also the majority underwriters for the loan that allowed Charles V sufficient funds to secure the votes he needed from the Electors to become the Holy Roman Emperor.

When the shipments of gold and silver from the New World faltered, Spain fell. When there were no more forests to build fleets to go get more gold or silver from the New World, the bankers called in all their loans, and some of the bankers fell too.

Spain went from being a country controlling Europe through its riches, and almost the conqueror of Britain through it forests (the Armada), to a country in ruin.

Spain stayed, relatively speaking, in rags until the English, with rising equity in their houses, came on an Iberian campaign (reenacting their staging grounds from the Peninsular War of 1808-1814) and started buying up the Spanish countryside.

Now that the financial storms have unleashed their turbulent winds, or, more aptly, bagged the zephyrs that drive the sails of commerce, that campaign, the Anglo-Iberian campaign, two centuries later, has foundered as the value of land in Spain has collapsed. What outcome will flow from the current financial distress has yet to be determined.

I mention all of this because something similar happened with the Khmer civilisation.

The Khmers spent much of their wealth, and time, building structures in the middle of a swampy lake, the Tonlé Sap.

As we reviewed Khmer architectural history, in snippets, yesterday, the Khmers went from bricks to laterite to sandstone as the materials of their trade.

Their sandstone was hewn from Mount Kunlun about 60 kilometers away and ferried by raft in the wet season and dragged by elephants in the dry season to the middle of the marshy Tonlé Sap (lake).

There was no stopping the Khmers in their building frenzy until their treasuries were empty, their people unhappy, and the country was unable to defend itself against predations by its neighbours.

The architecture of the Khmer civilisation survived the Khmer collapse because it was so much work to transport the stone to the middle of the swampy lake that it did not seem worthwhile to cart it back out again.

So the architecture, the physical manifestation of culture, wealth, and civilisation, was covered up by the jungle where it remained hidden for centuries.

Everything is transient. Wealth, power, and glory; all are volatile commodities.

The Khmer temples and palaces of Cambodia have now been uncovered and the tourists flood in, bringing riches to a very poor country.

But even the greatest wealth and power is transient, as Ozymandias discovered, or rather as others (specifically the English poet, Shelley) disovered of Ozymandias...

Ozymandias (by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822)

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains: round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Your scribe has stood atop the vast and trunkless legs of stone at the mortuary temple of Ramses II, what the French philologist Jean-François Champollion (1790-1832) called the Ramesseum, on the west bank of Thebes in Egypt. Looking at the toes of the ruined statue of the Egyptian Pharoah, Ramses II, was the first time your scribe recognized the transience of fame, power, and glory.

After the collapse of the New World gold and silver trade, and of the Spanish Armada, Spain as a nation was poor. Spain was poor until the recent global housing boom, and the influx of European Union support and fiscal equalisation funds for infrastructure projects made Spain wealthy again. The global housing boom is collapsing and the economy of Spain is following.

Khmer culture and civilisation was famed throughout South East Asia in its time. It collapsed and disappeared into the jungle.

Refound, those Khmer temples that led to collapse now lead to rebirth and prosperity. But for how long?

Maybe it's time to appreciate the now again.

Tschuess,

Chris, Regina, and Pommes