Throughout history, drugs have been used for various purposes, including medicine, divination…and warfare. In ancient times, armies would often use toxic plants as a weapon to poison their enemies. In this article, we will discuss three examples of toxic plants used for military warfare from antiquity to the late Middle Ages.
Drug Use in Ancient Times
We have likely been poisoning each other for as long as we have had conflicts. Why risk close combat if you can just poison a whole village? The first chemical weapons were almost certainly poisoned arrowheads, tens of thousands of years ago. Famous Carthaginian general Hannibal’s once suggested the second century BC for the Carthaginian military to hurl containers with poisonous snakes at enemy boats. Lated, during the late 2nd century BC, Greek historian Herodian recounts how defenders of the Mesopotamian city Hatra employed clay vessels filled with scorpions and other venomous creatures against the Roman army.
Ancient Folks were likely so knowledgable about poison because they also used recreationally. Heroes of the Bronze Age were no less familiar with hallucinogenics than today’s suburban Americans. If we believe scholars like Carl A.P. Ruck and David Hillman, they were probably even more familiar with some powerful stuff too. Those two voices used to be a minor, but thanks to the progress of chemical analysis, and a wave of ethnobotanists, we are now fairly confident that healers of ancient times knew a great deal about nature’s most powerful psychedelics.
In Ancient Greece, there was no single word for drugs. The term “Pharmacon” was used both for drugs in the medical sense and for poison. Satyrical authors even talked about Pharmacon as a scapegoat. This ambiguity has led many classical scholars to dismiss the occasional recreative drug as simply a side effect. Those in the power to heal effectively had guilty knowledge that could be put to good use in war times.
Again, Ancient Greece offers what is the greatest tale of biological warfare of all time: Odysseus. Ulysses, renowned for his cunning, bravery, and occasional deceit, emerges as a central figure, earnestly endeavoring to navigate his return home following the triumph of Troy. In a strategic maneuver to extricate himself from peril, he embarks on a campaign of biological warfare. Confronted with captivity by a Cyclops threatening to consume his entire crew, Ulysses administers potent, undiluted wine, likely infused with potent herbs. Subsequently, to evade the enchanting clutches of the sorceress Circe, he is provided with a pharmakon, rendering him immune to the very potion Circe employs to transmute his comrades into beasts.
There are other examples than Greece. The oldest evidence of in the Mahabarata in India. Military tactics outlined by the Old-Indian strategist Kautilya in the Arthashastra (3rd to 4th centuries BC), which involve the use of toxic smokes derived from burning poisonous plants, insects, snakes, and other animals. Kautilya’s instructions include the deployment of substances such as Ricinus communis and Abrus precatorius seeds, which contain ricin and abrin, respectively. Similarly, during the Dong Dynasty (9th to 11th centuries), Chinese soldiers utilized toxic smoking balls composed of hemp fibers and dried toxic plants like Aconitum spp. and Croton spp., potentially augmented with snake venoms.
We have collected a list of some of the most surprising uses of drugs in warfare:
Poison hemlock (Conium maculatum)
Poison hemlock was a popular plant used for military purposes in ancient Greece. The plant contains a toxic alkaloid called coniine, which can cause paralysis and death. It was often used to poison enemies’ food and water supplies or smeared on weapons, causing the enemy to suffer from convulsions and paralysis.
One of the most famous uses of poison hemlock was the execution of the Greek philosopher Socrates. He was forced to drink a cup of hemlock as a punishment for his philosophical beliefs. However, hemlock was also used in much smaller doses as a regular additive to wine among Greeks. Karl. A.P Ruck lists many other narcotics used in everyday wines: serpent and salamander venoms, hemlock, jimsonweed, aconite, cannabis, wormwood, ergot, and probably dimethyltryptamine (DMT) from acacia and similar plants, as well as psychoactive resins and incenses.
Knowledge of poison hemlock seems to have endured. In the 14th century, during a war between Florence and Verona, a drinking water source was reportedly poisoned with hemlock (Conium maculatum), as chronicled by Florence’s Giovanni Villani in his work, the Nuova Cronica. This is just one example of a long history of similar events occurring over centuries. However, the virulently poisonous hemlock used by Socrates likely had by then gone extinct. It is unclear which variety would have would be used by Villani.
Belladonna (Atropa belladonna)
Belladonna, also known as deadly nightshade, is a highly toxic plant native to Europe and Asia. It contains tropane alkaloids, which can cause hallucinations, paralysis, and death. The active chemical in belladonna is scopolamine, the same hallucinogen used by the U.S. police decades ago to attempt to create a sort of truth serum.
Ancient Roman armies used the plant as a weapon to poison the water supplies of their enemies. They would also coat their arrows with the plant’s juice to cause confusion, disorientation, and blurred vision. Ironically, the first documented evidence of the weaponized drug comes from Rome’s greatest enemy: Hamilcar Barca. Hamilcar was the Carthagenese general who led a giant elephant army through the Alps and came close to ravaging Rome. Apocryphal documents describe how he would have poisoned his enemies’ supplies with belladonna to confuse and sicken them.
There is also documented evidence of Scottish troops poisoning food in the encampment of the invading Norwegian army with Atropa belladonna. During the Middle Ages, belladonna was used by Italian assassins, who would mix it with wine and use it to poison their targets. Later in 1672, the Bishop of Munster reportedly filled grenades with belladonna to disperse enemies on the battlefield.
Manchineel (Hippomane mancinella)
Manchineel is a highly toxic tree native to the Caribbean and South America. It contains a potent toxin called phorbol, which can cause severe skin irritation and internal damage. It was often used by the Carib people to poison the water supplies of their enemies and as a defense mechanism against invading forces.
During the age of exploration, the Spanish army used manchineel to poison their enemies. They would chop down the trees and use the sap to coat their weapons, causing the enemy to suffer from severe burns and blisters. This is not unlike the Romans and Mongols before them who would often poison arrowheads to precipitate infection. The practice is one of the oldest warfare techniques.
Conclusion
Toxic plants have been used for military purposes throughout history. These plants have been used as weapons to poison enemies’ food and water supplies, as well as to coat weapons to cause paralysis, hallucinations, and confusion. While the use of these plants has diminished in modern warfare, they still play an important role in the development of new drugs and medicines.
Weaponized drugs are no novelty. There is plenty to say about governments trying out drugs on their population in the 20th century.
Relevant Sources on Ancient Warfare
- Happy plants and laughing weeds: how people of the ancient world used – and abused – drugs, History Extra
- War, on drugs, Peter Francopan, AEON
- Tripping in the Bronze Age, The New York Times
- Drugs as Chemical Weapons: Past and Perspectives
- Military Importance of Natural Toxins and Their Analogs, Vladimír Pitschmann and Zdeněk Hon, Molecules
- The New Chemical Weapons Convention – Implementation and Prospects, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers
- Chemical and Biological Warfare, Eric Croddy
- The Queen of the Poison Garden, Atropa Belladonna, The Death Scent Project
Leave a Reply