posted on Oct, 19 2011 @ 12:17 PM
Im who believes this is not the past, but the present!!!:
Arsenic: A Murderous History
www.dartmouth.edu...
A Secret Weapon
Dioscorides, a Greek physician in the court of the Roman Emperor Nero, described arsenic as a poison in the first century. Its ideal properties for
sinister uses included its lack of color, odor or taste when mixed in food or drink and its ubiquitous distribution in nature, which made it readily
available to all classes of society. Symptoms of arsenic poisoning were difficult to detect, since they could mimic food poisoning and other common
disorders. There could be no doubt about arsenic's efficacy as a single large dose, which provoked violent abdominal cramping, diarrhea and vomiting,
often followed by death from shock.
Poison and Politics
During the fourth century BC, the Romans made considerable use of poisons in politics. In this same period a conspiracy was uncovered involving a
group of women who schemed to poison men whose deaths would profit them. In 82 BC, in an attempt to stem what was becoming an epidemic of large-scale
poisonings, the Roman dictator and constitutional reformer Lucius Cornelius Sulla issued the Lex Cornelia, probably the first law against
poisoning.
Poison and politics were also intertwined in the early Renaissance period in Italy. Records of the city councils of Florence during this period
contain detailed testimony naming victims, prices and contracts, complete with dates that transactions were completed and payments made.
Arsenic and Bedrock
Even purely altruistic efforts have resulted in chaos because of arsenic. The water supplies of much of the impoverished nation of Bangledesh
consisted until recently of shallow wells that were often polluted by animal and human wastes
do something f***** witchy!!!