by Lydia Kang
An era of conspicuous and socially acceptable opiate consumption was over. Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup would no longer be as easy to procure as a quart of milk. In 1924, the United States banned heroin once and for all.
But it didn’t matter. A generation was already hooked, and more would follow. The safeguards of laws and prescribing restrictions still don’t stop opioid deaths. In 2015, thirty-three thousand people died in the United States from opioid use, and half of those were taking prescription painkillers.
Medications to reverse opioid overdoses, like Narcan, are widely available outside of emergency departments with and without a prescription. But it’s only a temporary fix. Society continues to battle illegal drugs as well as the treacherous balance between pain control and deadly side effects. As long as vast poppy fields still exist, and modern medicine can’t produce a safer class of medicines to kill pain, the battle will continue.
So the next time you see Bayer aspirin on the shelves of your supermarket, you’ll know how it was overshadowed in its infancy by heroin, the so-called hero that ended up being the villain of the addiction world.
7
Strychnine
Of Poisoned Marathoners, Deadly Trees, Sexual Stimulants, Nefarious Brewers, and Indian Weightlifters
On a hot and humid Missouri day in 1904, a hodgepodge of runners lined up at the start of the Olympic marathon. Their ranks included a debt-ridden Cuban postmaster who had hitchhiked to the event, two African tribesmen who just happened to be in town as part of a Boer War exhibition, and the American distance runner Thomas Hicks.
The race started and ended in the St. Louis stadium, but was otherwise run entirely on Missouri country roads. The heat was in the 90s. With numerous hills and poor roads made worse by the clouds of dust stirred up from passing motorists, the 1904 marathon course was probably the toughest in Olympic history.
As for aid stations? There was a well somewhere around mile eleven.
A stone well. Like, with a bucket.
So Hicks, our American boy, was suffering badly at mile fourteen when his trainers decided to give him a little boost. Performance-enhancing drugs, far from being banned, were still widely used in athletic competitions at the time. Hicks’s trainers mixed 1904’s equivalent of an energy drink: a 1 milligram dose of strychnine (yes, strychnine) with egg whites to subdue its extreme bitterness. He drank it and carried on running.
Even when Hicks had a generous mile-long lead on his closest competitor, he was slowing down with each grueling hill. Then there was the mounting dehydration. His trainers had denied him drinking water throughout the race, generously offering instead to wash out his mouth with “warm distilled water.” So when another dose of strychnine was in order for their struggling runner, Hicks’s trainers obviously couldn’t mix it with water. Their solution? A strychnine and brandy cocktail.
The thrilling conclusion of the 1904 Olympic marathon!
Hicks, in some miracle of human endurance, managed to push on. In the last two miles, a race official wrote that he was “running mechanically, like a well-oiled piece of machinery. His eyes were dull, lusterless; the ashen color of his face and skin had deepened; his arms appeared as weights well tied down; he could scarcely lift his legs, while his knees were almost stiff.”
Yeah, that’s because the runner was almost dead. Hicks was, by this point, bordering on a toxic level of strychnine poisoning. Combined with the August heat, crippling dehydration, and the sheer physical exertion of running a marathon at an Olympic level, Hicks was quite literally dying. His trainers—shockingly—debated giving him a third dose of strychnine, a move which would almost certainly have killed him.
In the final stretch, he required the physical support of his trainers to keep him in an upright position. A surviving photo of Hicks at that moment shows a strained, rigid expression on his face. That would be the strychnine intoxication, which produces sustained spasms of the facial muscles. Limping, hallucinating, and eight pounds lighter than when he started, Hicks was declared the winner of the 1904 marathon.
Strychnine Energy Drinks
Although they seem absurd today, Hicks’s trainers believed, along with the wider medical community of the early twentieth century, that strychnine could increase energy. And they weren’t entirely wrong. In small doses, strychnine operates as a short-term stimulant, providing a jolt to the nervous system similar to caffeine. Unlike caffeine, however, it doesn’t take much strychnine to kill you. Five milligrams, to be exact.
Because of that strength, strychnine has also been used since the medieval era as a particularly effective—and particularly brutal—method of poisoning rats, cats, dogs, and other unwanted creatures. By preventing the effective operation of glycine—the chemical that sends nerve signals to the muscles—a high dose of strychnine causes severe, painful muscle spasms. Left unchecked, these spasms build in frequency and strength, killing the victim within a few hours through either asphyxiation or sheer exhaustion from the brutal convulsions.
In short, just the thing for a little Olympic marathon pick-me-up.
Or a potent energy drink for a student cramming for an exam.
Strychnine, briefly functioning as a Victorian version of Adderall, made some waves among ambitious medical students of the late nineteenth century trying to defeat the need for sleep. Leonard Sandall, however, went a little too far with his strychnine dosage in 1896. Although he lived to tell the tale, it was not a pleasant experience:
Three years ago I was reading for an examination, and feeling “run down.” I took 10 minims [about 0.02 fluid ounces] of strychnia solution (B.P.) with the same quantity of dilute phosphoric acid well diluted twice a day. On the second day of taking it, toward the evening, I felt a tightness in the “facial muscles” and a peculiar metallic taste in the mouth. There was great uneasiness and restlessness, and I felt a desire to walk about and do something rather than sit still and read. I lay on the bed and the calf muscles began to stiffen and jerk. My toes drew up under my feet, and as I moved or turned my head flashes of light kept darting across my eyes. I then knew something serious was developing … My whole body was in a cold sweat, with anginous attacks in the precordial region, and a feeling of “going off.” … A little time after I lost consciousness and fell into a “profound sleep,” awaking in the morning with no unpleasant symptoms, no headache, &c., but a desire “to be on the move” and a slight feeling of stiffness in the jaw. These worked off during the day.
And that, in a nutshell, is what the early stages of strychnine poisoning feel like. Surviving reports of these experiences are quite scarce in the historical record because, well, you have to survive to write a report. Sandall was lucky. Many people weren’t.
The Plant behind the Poison
The strychnine alkaloid occurs naturally in the seeds of the strychnine tree (Strychnos nux-vomica), a deciduous tree native to India and Southeast Asia. The medium-sized tree grows to forty feet in height and looks rather innocently like an overgrown pear tree. Its flowers have a distinctly unpleasant odor and are replaced by spherical fruits, each of which contains five seeds enveloped by white pulp.
Every single part of the strychnine tree is poisonous. Even parasitic plants that attach themselves to the tree absorb significant quantities of poison. In 1840, an English sailor was recovering from gonorrhea in a Calcutta hospital. Bored and morally bankrupt, the sailor took to beating the hospital’s servants during his ample downtime.
Everyone’s favorite patient was soon offered a new medicine for his ailment: the powdered leaf of kuchila molung, a parasitic plant that attaches itself to the strychnine tree.
Four hours later, the sailor was dead. Hospital staff wrote off the incident as an “unfortunate mistake.”
Strychnine Enemas and Other Shocks to the System
Although strychnine tree seeds had been trickling into Europe and used as an animal poison since the medieval period, it wasn’t until 1811 that their human medical potential was seriousl
y investigated by Dr. Pierre Fouquier in Paris. The plant had been largely ignored by French doctors until Fouquier theorized that strychnine’s almost electric jolt of energy might shock the limbs of paralytic patients into normal operation again.
Armed with an alcoholic extract of strychnine, Fouquier forced himself upon sixteen paralyzed patients at the Hôpital de la Charité. He began his experiments with a thirty-four-year-old male upholsterer, who was confined to his bed under a strange and spreading paralysis that began in his extremities and worked its way up to his pelvis. Fouquier dosed the upholsterer with the extract, first to little effect, but soon, with increased quantities, the patient began to suffer convulsions that appeared to have “shocked” his system into normal functioning. After three months, during which he consumed 314 grains of strychnine, the upholsterer sat up in bed and walked out of the hospital, his paralysis gone. (Probably not a moment too soon.)
Above: Dr. Fouquier taking a break from poisoning patients. Below: Strychnine correctly labeled as poison!
Fouquier’s other experiments were less successful. Consider the unfortunate M. Vanhove, who was singled out for strychnine enemas (let that sink in for a moment). Vanhove, remarkably, was reported as making some progress with his paralysis, when he was accidentally given strychnine pills in addition to the enema. Although he—shockingly—didn’t die from the horrific convulsions that soon followed, Vanhove was abruptly written out of Fouquier’s account after his health stopped improving.
Fouquier’s disturbing experiments encouraged other French scientists to investigate further, and in 1818 the strychnine alkaloid was first isolated from the seeds. French doctors launched a vigorous series of experiments to investigate the efficacy of pure strychnine as a medicine. It didn’t turn out so well. The usual dose of strychnine was between 1 and 3 milligrams; however, scientists quickly realized that as little as 5 milligrams can produce a fatal poisoning. It was easy to go too far. And many doctors did.
The extraordinary risks of taking strychnine would soon overwhelm its potential as a medicine. While strychnine was falling out of favor in the hospital, however, it was rising in popularity in the pharmacy and on the streets.
Their euphemism game is strong: Get some “night pep” with strychnine energy pills!
Getting It Up with Strychnine
After the strychnine alkaloid was extracted, it wasn’t long before French scientists started experiments on its sexual applications. The idea was to benefit from the sensory boost kicked in by a small dose. This wasn’t an entirely new concept: Rumors of the plant’s sexual properties had followed its import into Western markets from India and Southeast Asia in the Victorian era. “I have heard, of some of the more debauched among the Rajpoots, using the nux vomica as a stimulus,” wrote an observer in India in the 1830s.
Doctors Trosseau and Pidioux recorded the case of a twenty-five-year-old man who had for eighteen months been able to engage in only “fraternal communication” with his wife. While under the influence of strychnine, the man was able to rise to the occasion, an ability he lost again after he stopped taking the drug. In the pre-Viagra world, you could at least rely on strychnine.
In the 1960s, the Miami-based company All Products Unlimited stumbled upon the old Victorian reputation of strychnine as a sexual stimulant. Hoping to take advantage of the budding sexual revolution, they released a supposed aphrodisiac called Jems in 1966. Awkwardly advertised as “Nature Energizer Pep Tablets for Married Men & Women,” Jems included small doses of strychnine in each pill.
The company was soon hauled into court on charges of mail fraud, not for including strychnine in their ingredients list, mind you, but for making baseless claims about the sexual benefits of taking Jems. The company didn’t bother to fight the charges and was promptly indicted.
Strychnine in the Dictator’s Medicine Cabinet
When strychnine went mainstream, plenty of shysters swept in to profit from this energizing new drug. Fellows & Company, a father and son team that began in Canada and later emigrated to London, produced several dubious household remedies such as Worm Lozenges, Dyspepsia Bitters, and the marvelously vague Golden Ointment. The company did indeed strike gold, however, with the development of Fellows’ Compound Syrup of Hypophosphites, an enormously popular patent medicine in the early twentieth century that included strychnine in its contents. Boosted by a personal testimonial from James Fellows himself, who claimed to have been a victim of “secondary stage pulmonary consumption” (i.e., tuberculosis) before his use of the syrup completely cured him, the product was an instant success.
Fellows’ Syrup was advertised to be effective “in the treatment of anemia, neurasthenia, bronchitis, influenza, pulmonary tuberculosis and wasting diseases of childhood, and during convalescence from exhausting disease.”
By creating a marketing plan heavily reliant upon the strength of “testimonials,” the Fellows company made a tidy profit from their over-the-counter strychnine formula, which sold for seven shillings per 15-ounce bottle. The price was rather exorbitant by the standards of the day, but the crimson gelatin seal on the bottle (pause for “oohs” and “ahs”) made it all worth it.
Although not quite as popular, a competing tonic called Easton’s Syrup contained about twice the amount of strychnine as Fellows’. At 6 fluid ounces per pint in 1911, it took only a quarter of a pint to produce a fatal dose.
Another strychnine tonic called Metatone was launched in 1930 and included 1/25 grain strychnine per ounce. Still easily procurable today in the United Kingdom, Metatone is advertised as a tonic to restore health and vitality after an illness. Strychnine, however, is noticeably absent from its ingredients list, having been quietly removed in 1970.
Strychnine also crept its way into a German drug for digestion problems called Dr. Koester’s Antigas Tablets. In the early 1940s, Dr. Theodor Morell began prescribing these tablets to one of his patients who suffered from constipation and flatulence from a vegetarian diet. The doctor recommended his patient take between eight and sixteen tablets per day, which he did, faithfully, for nine years, until he took his own life in a bunker beneath Berlin at the conclusion of World War II.
Yes, Adolf Hitler was consuming near-lethal doses of strychnine during his reign of terror. Over time, the strychnine powder would have accumulated in larger and larger quantities in his intestines and, in turn, possibly led to the increasingly erratic behavior Hitler demonstrated as he neared the end of his life.
Bitter Brews: Scandals of Strychnine-Laced Beer
In 1851, rumors began circulating that a major British beer producer, Allsopp’s Ales, was adulterating their IPAs with strychnine to increase the bitterness. India Pale Ales, as all beer-hounds know, are very hoppy, very bitter ales. Allsopp’s was accused of supplementing hops in their brews with strychnine, a cheaper, more poisony alternative.
The rumors were rampant enough that Henry Allsopp himself commissioned an independent report by two prominent British chemists to prove that Allsopp ales did not in fact contain any strychnine, a statement that challenges the age-old mantra “There’s no such thing as bad press.”
In what must have been a surprise to someone somewhere, the British chemists found Allsopp’s Ales to be strychnine-free. So Allsopp was off the hook for any pending mass-poisoning charges. But the basis for that rumor had some truth to it. While Allsopp’s Ales did not lace their beer with strychnine, pub owners throughout Britain did. Frequently. In the nineteenth century, a pub owner sold beer to his customers at the same cost he paid the brewer. So how could he make a profit? Well, he could water the beer down, sure, but he wouldn’t keep his customers very long. But what if there was a way to water the beer down without it tasting watered down?
Enter strychnine.
This magical powder, dissolvable in water, adds the bitterness associated with hops and provides an intoxicating impact similar to unadulterated beer. In other words, just the thing for the greedy pub owner anxious to make a profit. More than
a few British alcoholics died from a different type of intoxication in the nineteenth century.
Strychnine’s Downfall
By the early 1970s, strychnine was finally creeping out of fashion, as arguments in the British Medical Journal advocated for its complete removal from any use in human medicine.
Today, strychnine is shunned in the West, but we still test for it in the urine of athletes. A century after Hicks’s race, strychnine doping surfaced again in 2001 when an Indian weightlifter was banned from competition for six months after strychnine was found in her urine. That athlete, Kunjarani Devi, also had to return a gold medal she had won at an Asian weightlifting competition. Devi made the dubious claim that she had simply drunk too much coffee. She argued, without scientific basis, that strychnine occurs in small quantities in coffee. More likely Devi had taken a large dose of nux vomica, still a widely available homeopathic remedy in India.
Devi was not totally off-base, though. Although the strychnine alkaloid is not actually found in coffee, caffeine is very present in our favorite morning beverage. And caffeine and strychnine are remarkably similar molecules. Both operate as a glycine inhibitor in the human body. Strychnine is just stronger. A lot stronger.
So if you ever want to experience a feeling mildly akin to strychnine poisoning, try downing a few pints of strong coffee. As your heart races, your senses quicken, and your muscles twitch, you can enjoy that same stimulative kick chased by French medical students in the nineteenth century and Olympic marathoners in the twentieth … without the unfortunate side effects of horrific convulsions and agonizing death.
But then again, you might get a heart arrhythmia and end up in the ER, so it may be better to just stick to a thought experiment.