Aconitine
A poisoner’s potion of choice.
Don’t you mean nicotine?
No, although it is a poisonous plant extract just like nicotine, except
without the addictive problems. Aconitine is extracted from the
devil’s helmet or monkshood plant, whose Latin name Aconitum,
provided the name for the drug.
It’s Poisonous?
Yes, in many countries it’s quite notorious as a poison. For
example, in Iran it’s called Halahel, which is also apparently a
insult used to describe a spiteful, venomous person. Toxins
extracted from Aconitum plants were historically used to kill
wolves, hence its the other name - wolf's bane. This unfortunate
name, plus the plant’s potency, probably led to wolf’s bane being
used by storytellers (e.g. Bram Stoker’s Dracula), TV scriptwriters
(The Vampire Diaries, Grimm) and movie writers (Harry Potter,
The Wolf Man (1941), Ginger Snaps), as a link to werewolves
and vampires, either killing the fantasy creatures or helping them
depending on the plot requirements.
Despite its links to fiction and fantasy, Aconitum is actually so
toxic that poisoning may even occur if the leave s of the plant
are picked without wearing gloves. This is because the toxin is
absorbed easily through the skin. If this happens, tingling and
then unpleasant numbness start at the point of absorption and
then extend up the arm to the shoulder, and then on to affect the
heart.
Monkshood, Devil’s helmet
or Wolf’s bane.
"Monkshood" by Schnobby Own work. Licensed under
Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
via Wikimedia Commons http://commons.wikimedia.
org/wiki/File:Monkshood.jp
g#mediaviewer/File:Monksh
ood.jpg
But like many poisons, in low doses it can treat various diseases.
Aconitine has been known for centuries in China as a traditional herbal medicine that helps alleviate
pain and fever. The problem is that the difference between dosages that help the patient and those
that kill them are quite small – so it’s very easy for a lethal overdoes to be given, either accidentally,
or on purpose.
You mean, deliberate poisonings?
Yes, in fact that’s what aconitine is most infamous for, as a poison of choice by many murderers,
especially in the 1800-1900s. Before the advent of modern painkillers like aspirin and paracetamol
(acetaminophen), a herbal medicine like aconitine was one of the few analgesics readily available in
pharmacies. So many Victorian households might have a bottle of aconitine in the medicine cabinet,
which made it easy to use - and abuse.
So just how poisonous is it?
The LD50 (the dosage at which 50% of subjects die) has been reported as being only 30 ug per kg
when eaten. That means a 60 kg person would need to ingest only 1.8 mg to die –about the same
amount as 10 crystals of table sugar. Victims of aconite poisoning suffer severe vomiting, and
often become paralysed. Their organs eventually stop working and they die from asphyxiation,
but they remain conscious throughout. It’s a particularly slow and agonising death. It works by
binding to a receptor in cells which control sodium channels which are vital for the functioning of
many cells, including neurons. Aconitine effectively jams the channel open, so the neurons are
constantly on, and cannot refresh themselves. Until they’re refreshed, no new signals can travel
along the nerve cell, resulting in paralysis.
Wow, no wonder poisoners like it!
Yes, and there were some quite notorious cases over the years.
Such as?
George Henry Lamson was an American doctor who
came to work in England in 1881. But he became
addicted to morphine, and fell into financial debt. His
one hope was if he could get hold of the inheritance due
to him when his 18-year-old brother-in-law Percy John
died. Even though John was paralysed down one side
of his body, he was otherwise healthy and not likely to
Watch out for the Dundee cake!
expire soon. So Lamson decided to poison him with
aconitine, hidden inside a piece of Dundee cake. This
poison was chsen because Lamson had been told during his medical training many years before
that aconotine was undetectable. The plan nearly succeeded, and John died. But forensic
science had moved on in the intervening years since medical school, and the Victorian ‘CSIs’
were now able to detect the poison in the cake. Lamson went on trial at the Old Bailey, was
found guilty, and hanged in 1882.
So the poison was hidden in Dundee cake? Was that common?
It was quite common to hide the aconitine in a drink, cake, or even a curry!
A curry?
Yes, and the killer, Mrs Lakhvir Kaur Singh, became known as
the ‘Curry Killer’, and occurred in London in 2010, almost 130
years after the Lamson case. This was a murder of jealousy and
revenge, after Singh’s lover, Lakhvinder Cheema, left her for
another woman. Because aconitine was no longer commonly
available in pharmacies, Singh had travelled to India specially to
collect the poison, which showed a callous degree of
premeditation. She put the poison into a curry in the victims’
refrigerator, and when they ate it the next day they both became
seriously ill. During the call to the emergency services, Cheema
alleged he’d been poisoned by his ex-girlfriend, but died within
an hour. His new fiancée was treated and survived. Singh was
found guilty of murder and grievous bodily harm at trial and
sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Mrs Lakhvir Kaur Singh
in 2010
Any more?
Yes, staying on the Indian theme, in 1857 during the Indian
rebellion against British rule, some Indian regimental chefs tried to
poison a British Army detachment by adding aconitine to their
meal. Somehow the word of this attempted poisoning had
reached the attention of the East India Company officer John
Nicholson, who confronted the chefs and demanded they prove
their innocence by eating their own curry. When they refused, he
force-fed the curry to a monkey, which died immediately. The
story goes that Nicholson then strode into the British mess tent
and said "I am sorry, gentlemen, to have kept you waiting for your
dinner, but I have been hanging your cooks."
So it was nearly used as a weapon of war?
General John Nicholson
"General John Nicholson - Project
Gutenberg eText 16528". Licensed
under Public domain via Wikimedia
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ki/File:General_John_Nicholson__Project_Gutenberg_eText_16528.
jpg#mediaviewer/File:General_Joh
n_Nicholson__Project_Gutenberg_eText_16528.
jpg
True. And in the 1950s the Soviets were researching into using aconitine as a poison weapon. It
is rumoured that Soviet biochemist Grigory Mairanovsky used aconitine in experiments with
prisoners in the secret NKVD laboratory in Moscow. In an interview with the Russian newspaper
Novaya Gazeta in 2010 he admitted killing around 10 people using the poison.
But still, as a poison it’s not as famous as arsenic…
That’s true, arsenic was used for murder very frequently
during the Victorian times because it was both
commonly available, and undetectable. Eventually, of
course, forensic science established a way to detect
arsenic, so aconitine then became the poison of
choice…until it, too, became detectable. Nevertheless,
there have been a number of occasions when aconitine
has made it into the popular media. Oscar Wilde's 1891
story "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime" made aconitne
famous when it was used by the main character in an
(unsuccessful) attempt to kill his elderly Aunt
Clementina. It was later made into a 1943 film called
Flesh and Fantasy. Also in James Joyce's Ulysses, the
protagonist Leopold Bloom's father uses pastilles of
aconitine to commit suicide. And recent TV series, such
as Dexter, Midsomer Murders, and American Horror
Story: Coven, have all featured poisonings with
aconitine.
"Fleshandfantasy". Via Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fle
shandfantasy.jpg#mediaviewer/File:
Fleshandfantasy.jpg
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aconitine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aconitum
T.Y. Chan, "Aconite poisoning". Clinical Toxicology 47 (2009) 279–285.
J. Beike, L. Frommherz, M. Wood, B. Brinkmann, H. Köhler, "Determination of aconitine in body fluids
by LC-MS-MS". Int. J. Legal Med. 118 (2004) 289–293. (Forensic detection)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Henry_Lamson
S Bailey, (31 August 2010). "The American doctor, war hero, drug addict and murderer who lived
among us".Bournemouth Echo (George Lamson)
P. Macinnis, Poisons: from hemlock to Botox and the killer bean of Calabar. (2005) Arcade
Publishing. 25–26. (George Lamson)
P. Macinnis, It's True! You Eat Poison Every Day. (2006). Allen & Unwin. 80–81.
D. Majumdar, (2010-02-10). "Spurned lover's poisoned curry revenge". BBC News (Singh trial)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lakhvinder_Cheema
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nicholson_(East_India_Company_officer)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigory_Mairanovsky
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Arthur_Savile%27s_Crime#Lord_Arthur_Savile.27s_Crime