Poison

Main categories of poisons

One distinguishes three main categories of poisons:

chemical poisons (Arsenic, Cyanide, phenol…) ;
biological poisons (batrachotoxine, Curare, botulinic toxin, muscarine, Ricine, tétraodontoxine…) ;
physical poisons (Radionuclide S: radiations alpha, beta, gamma).

The poison can be gas, liquid or solid. It can act by contact (skin absorption), by inhalation, ingestion or injection. There exist natural poisons (mineral Gaz, , Alcaloïde S, Venin S…) and of the poisons created by the man.

One distinguishes also the organic poisons (Paraquat, Colchicine…) functional poisons (Antiarythmique S, Antidepressant S, Tricyclic S, Barbiturate S, Carbamate S, Chloroquine, Digitalin, Theophylline…).

Classes of poisons

Neurotoxic (Inhibiting of the synaptic junction…) : The neurotoxic ones act on the nerve impulse, prevent driving coordination and block some essential Muscle S (respiratory muscles, heart). Most known are the Curare, the neurotoxines, and the Gaz innervant S; many insecticides belong to this class. Generally, their target is the interface between the nervous cell and the following cell (nervous or muscular);
necrosing poisons and haemolysing poisons : The alive cell S are full pockets to crack, which do not hold that thanks to a reinforcement, a net made up of proteins that the cell maintenance permanently. Certain poisons destroy this net, either by catalyzing and accelerating its decomposition, or by taking the place of certain elements but without ensuring the solidity of the unit;
inhibiting of the synthesis of ATP : The alive cell S function with the energy of ATP, provided by the Mitochondrie S. the Cyanure S block the synthesis of ATP, which deprives in a few seconds these cells of any energy, stopping all the syntheses and any motor activity, and causing death quickly;
inhibiting of the muscular junction : The Chlorure of potassium causes a cardiac arrest by preventing the creation of the cellular potential necessary to the contraction of the muscles. It is the latter poison which is used in certain States of the the United States to carry out condemned to death;
heavy metals : A poison can also act slowly by accumulation. For example the mercury, the Lead;
mutagen poisons and poisons allergens : Lastly, the Asbestos (causing lung cancers and Plèvre), many dust (sawdust, coal and ground dust), the Allergen S, has harmful effects of which occurred is not certain, but more or less probable according to the amount and the frequency of exposure, and according to the sensitivity of the person.

Many substances considered as poisons are in fact of the precursors of poisons: it is the body itself which transforms them into poisons. For example, the Méthanol is not toxic, but is transformed into Méthanal in the Foie.

(See also the types of toxins in the article Venom).

Types of damage

The contact or the absorption of a poison can cause damage:

temporary, or irreversible (including death);
partial and located, or generalized;
quickly, or on the contrary slowly;
with certainty, or with a certain probability (increasing with the amount).

(See also the types of damage in the article Venom).

Resistance to the poisons

The poisons are so present that the life would be impossible without mechanisms antipoisons. Various solutions are adopted by the living beings:

excretion, i.e. evacuation (urine, sweat, breathing, etc). This mechanism is very much used for the poisons of internal origin, present by synthesis and in significant amount (urea, oxygen for the plants or carbonic gas for the animals, etc),
the chemical destruction (but, it was seen, the remedy can be worse than the evil, if the products of the destruction are more toxic). The majority of the organizations have a body specialized in the treatment of the entering molecules (like the Foie). That makes it possible to reduce the concentration in sometimes sufficient proportions to hold the shock.
concentration in a body chemically little mobilized (cells of fat storage, shells or bone).
the self-mutilation: rather than to have a Organe powerful but sensitive to a certain poison, the organization prefers to occur some while using a less effective system but more adapted to the context (what does not want to say more robust in the absolute). It is the mechanism of certain resistances of the microbes to the Antibiotique S.

The mithridatisation consists in introducing increasing amounts of a toxic product with an aim of acquiring a insensility or a resistance with respect to this one. The king of Antiquity Mithridate thus proceeded in order to prevent the risks related to a poisoning of which it feared to be the victim.

The effects of the poison also vary with the resistance of the victim.

Latency period

Certain poisons can have a striking down effect, acting in a few minutes, others in a few hours, others in a few days, or at several weeks, finally some acting in the long run (over six months at more than one year, with long a Latency period - as for example with asbestos, because of the very long development delays of the Cancer of the Plèvre (Mésothéliome). This last period for the Amiante exceeds the twenty years clearly, in the majority of the cases of mesotheliomes.

Latency period - indicating the period without symptoms or average time with the end of which the poison makes its effect -, can be very variable from one poison to another and can depend on other factors (resistance to the poison…), majority of the poisons not making effect immediately.

Lethal amounts

The lethal amounts can be very variable, energy of quantities higher than the Gram than lower than the picogramme.

In toxicology, the lethal amounts (LD₅₀, amounts per kilogram of fresh weight) represent amounts which result in the death of half of the human beings or the living organisms.

Detection of the poisons

The techniques used to detect the poisons depend on their nature. The physicochemical analyzes can in particular use the electrochemical methods , chromatographic and spectrometric, for example a chromatography coupled to a mass spectrometry.

Use of poisons

in nature

Without poisons, the life such as we know it would not exist. All the alive species use largely of poisons:

to defend oneself, in particular against the micro-organisms (Antibiotic S, Lysozyme) or against of other living organisms (toxic plants, poisonous or poisonous animals, etc);
to defend their territory and their source of food against competition (weeding Plants, Mycotoxin S);
to obtain an offensive capacity much larger and more economic than the rough physical force (Snake S poisonous).

by human industry

The man spreads with large scales of the poisons with this time a true will and a conscience of the objectives (but sometimes, on the other hand, a true unconsciousness of the consequences):

to eliminate from the parasites (lice, mosquitos) ;
to eliminate from the competitors (insects and devastating mushrooms of the cultures, “bad grasses”) ;
to look after themselves, or to take drugs (the English term drug shows the proximity of the phenomena clearly), or doper ;
to select species, by associating resistance to the poison with a character utile ;
to kill, make the war: chemical weapons (poison gas…) or bacteriological (cf Chemical weapon, cf Weapon S NBC) ;
etc

within the framework of crimes

political assassinations (for example, assassinations of political opponents),
assassinations of competitors (political, economic…),
assassinations of awkward people (of witnesses…),
assassinations by interests (family within the framework of transmissions of successions, to profit from the heritage…).
assassinations by hatreds, passion…
to be able to leave its spouse,
to be able to separate from his/her husband, before the law on the divorce, adopted in France, on July 27th, 1884,
within the framework of crimes of masses (within the framework of genocide of the Jews by the Nazis practiced within the death camps Nazis, using Zyklon B which releases from hydrogen cyanide…),
to test on human beings of the new substances or new poisons (criminal experiments, in particular of biological poisons, within the Japanese unit 731, of 1932 to 1945, in Kizu and Shanzi, in Mandchourie (China), experimentation of poisons on the prisoners, by Guépéou or GPU, since 1938, at the instigation of Béria, experimentation criminal doctors Nazis, on the prisoners, in certain concentration camps…).

Famous poisonings

Socrate : shown to pervert the young Athenians by his ideology, condemned to died by the learned assembly of Athène a decoction containing conium drank, assisted its serving (E) S (Plato makes of it the account in the Phédon);
the Business of the poisons, implying under Louis XIV, in France, Madam de Montespan, the Marchioness of Brinvilliers…
Napoleon Bonaparte: A theory prevailed there is still little, imagining that it would have been assassinated by arsenic, because the FBI discovered in 1961 in its hair an arsenic " rate; compatible with a empoisonnement" : the legend wants that Napoleon succumbed to a poisoning by a close relation. The current theory said that arsenic came rather from a pesticide of the hair, and that it would be in fact deceased of a gastric bleeding caused by a cancer of the stomach, rather coherent with its family antecedents and testimonys of its close relations.
Charles Darwin, by self medication of a solution containing a percent of Arsenic, although it is only one rumor (in fact, he would have suffered, during more than 20 years, from the Maladie of Chagas, a disease and infection due to the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi (American trypanosomiasis) caused bugs hémophages of the kind Triatoma , Darwin having been itself piqué, in March 1835, in Chile, by a bug likely to transmit this infection). ;
Marie Lafarge: was shown to have poisoned its husband. Condemned into 1840 to the forced labors to perpetuity, it was released but this business remains a legal enigma: the husband would be in fact probably died of the Typhoïde;
Helene Jégado: condemned to died in 1851 with Rennes for 3 murders and 3 attempts. Suspected of approximately 36 poisonings to the Arsenic;
Raspoutine, which resisted a massive cyanide amount (because of the reaction of this cyanide with the sugar of the cakes which contained it) and which was thus finally assassinated more brutally of several balls;
Marie Besnard: called “the empoisonneuse one of Loudun”, it was shown to have poisoned twelve people with the Arsenic, with a purely successional and financial aim. If she were discharged, certain scientists put his innocence today doubts it (of others a) think that the methods of measurement of arsenic rate, of the time, on the exhumed skeletons were not reliable, b) which these skeletons would have to be been able contaminated by the arsenic of weeding, employed in the cemeteries, in the years 1950, c) the majority of the people which made a gift with Marie Besnard, at the time of their death, had arrived to a advanced age, d) the amounts of these gifts were in general very small).
Alan Turing : would have committed suicide by painting an apple of Cyanure which it bit then;
Georgi Markov (Georgi Ivanov Markov), a Bulgarian dissident assassinated in London, in September 1978, by Bulgarian secret policemen, with a special umbrella, which projected to him in its calf, a ball made up of an alloy of Platine and Iridium, covered with Ricine.
Khaled Mechaal, chief of political office of Hamas based abroad, is the target of an attempted murder _ of the agent of Mossad having injected poison in the cou_ to him, in September 1997, in a street of Amman. Fallen in the coma, it is saved by the intervention of king Hussein, who requires that the Israeli government provide the antidote in exchange of the release of the two attackers.
an eminent defender indonésien of the human rights Provide Said Thalib, (or also see Providing Said Thalib, on the Wikipedia encyclopedia in English), dies on September 7th, 2004 after having ingurgity of arsenic on an aircraft between Jakarta and Amsterdam.
Viktor Iouchtchenko, President of the Republic of Ukraine since January 23rd, 2005, chief of the political coalition “Our Ukraine” (Nacha Ukrayina) since 2002, whose face remained hailed by the chloric acid, is poisoned in 2004, with the tétrachlorodibenzodioxine (TCDD) or “Dioxine Seveso”, at the time of the electoral campaign which opposes it to Viktor Ianoukovitch.
Alexandre Litvinenko, Russian ex-spy emigrant in England. Poisoning with polonium 210.

The Lafarge business and the Besnard business are, in France, the two more famous businesses of poisoning.

Famous Empoisonneurs and Empoisonneuses

Agrippine the Young person, girl of Germanicus and mother of Néron, makes assassinate its second husband Passienus Crispus, immensely rich, to bind to the emperor Claude, his uncle. Then it makes poison the emperor Claude, on October 13rd, 54, using empoisonneuse named Locuste (according to the Roman author Suétone, and its work Vies of the twelve Césars ).
Néron, wire of Agrippine, makes poison his/her brother Britannicus (according to the Roman author Suétone, and its work Vies of the twelve Césars ).
the Borgia family:

the pope Alexandre VI, Roderic de Borgia (although that is a rumor). Itself would have died while having drunk poisoned wine.
Lucrèce Borgia, girl of Rodéric Borgia (although that is a rumor).
César, wire of Rodéric Borgia.

Catherine de Médicis, although that is a rumor.
Marchioness of Brinvilliers (see Business of the poisons).
Catherine Deshayes, known as the Neighbor (see Business of the poisons).
Marie Besnard (empoisonneuse supposed, to see higher).

Poisoning in the literature

the poison holds an important place in several parts of William Shakespeare: Hamlet or Romeo and Juliette for example.

Gustave Flaubert describes the suicide with the arsenic of the main character in the novel Mrs Bovary .

In the novel the Name of the pink of Umberto Eco, the character of Jorge of Burgos makes use of a poison.

In the Count of Assembles-Cristo, Valentine de Villefort is poisoned by her mother-in-law who wants to make hand-low on the heritage of the grandfather of Valentine, but this one had mithridatisait Valentine for a few years and she survives.

poisonings abound in the detective novels: the Mirror broke, Death in the clouds, Drame in three acts, the Sign of the four, etc

Bibliography (Books)

History of the poison , Jean de Maleissye, Julliard, 1994.
Poisons and famous empoisonneurs , Roland Villeneuve, I have Lu, 1968.

See too

Simple: Poison

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