Ancient Poisons Not Even Putin Would Dare Use
Okay, look, I’ll admit to a bit of exaggeration. Putin’s a pretty nasty fella, and given that he’s already putting radioactive pellets in people, I think he’d be perfectly glad to bring any of these back into favor.
Of course, he might just consider his openness to poisoning political enemies a throwback to simpler times. Obviously, since the beginning, there have been substances in nature that are toxic to humans. With them has come the act of sneaking something you’re really, really not supposed to eat into the dinner of someone who is unaware of it.
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I’d say it’s a neater option than a good old-fashioned pincushioning, but given some of the symptoms, I think they’d still involve some loud noises and a thorough cleanup process.
Nightshade
Deadly nightshade, or Belladonna, has two very unpleasant ingredients within: atropine and scopolamine. It doesn’t take much of either to have a hugely negative effect on someone’s life expectancy. Imbibe enough nightshade, and you’ll be both paralyzed and delirious, hallucinating your way into an early grave.
Hemlock
Some plants have only a few poisonous bits. Hemlock, on the other hand, is highly poisonous from tip to tail. If you’re unlucky to ingest it, you can expect an unpleasant time filled with seizures and barf until you eventually experience respiratory failure. Something Socrates famously found out personally.
Wolfsbane
Wolfsbane lays claim to a heaping helping of poisonous aconitine, and also a huge amount of awesome nicknames: monkshood, devil’s helmet, “the queen of poisons.” The name wolfsbane comes from its use poisoning wolves, and, wouldn’t you know it, that means it’s not great eats for humans either. Ingest wolfsbane, and you’re in for a veritable cornucopia of symptoms, including everything from diarrhea to dizziness. From there, it’s a race to see if your heart or your lungs quit on you first.
Mandrake
These days, most people probably think of the screaming plants from Harry Potter, but the real plant they’re based on is deadly in its own right. It’s even got an incredible nickname that could threaten wolfsbane’s throne: “the Devil's testicle.” It’s packed chock-full of all sorts of ingredients that mess with your body, which made it a common medicinal plant. One use was to help put someone to sleep, which, as usual, means it’s just a question of dose away from murder.
Henbane
Another highly dangerous sedative of yore was henbane. They knew just how dangerous it was, since it was both used in medicine as well as applied to the tips of arrows and spears as a poison. Maybe the most famous person it can claim the death of, though fictional, was Hamlet’s father, who received a generous dose of henbane via the ear canal. The afflicted will go through stages of madness and a loss of muscular control before entering a coma and dying.
Arsenic
The only non-plant on this list and the one that’s probably still most commonly known today is arsenic. It wasn’t particularly hard to find in the old days, and it didn't affect the color, taste or smell of the food or drink it was mixed into. Couple that with the symptoms being incredibly hard to definitively link to arsenic, at least before modern tests, and you’d think this stuff was plopped on earth specifically to speed along royal lines.
