For those who are interested in ancient wine, the History Encyclopedia editor brings a detailed article for your reference. What was the ancient poison wine made of? Is toxicity really that strong?
In history, poison seems to have always been a subject of attention, such as the famous arsenic, crane top red, throat sealing, and so on. Of course, the most powerful poison is poison wine. What substance is this poison and how toxic is it?
Speaking of which, Ling is actually the name of a bird species, which is even more vicious than venomous snakes. After all, this guy even uses venomous snakes as his own food. It is said that after eating snakes, the venom of snakes will not be excreted from its body, but will remain in its body. Therefore, this bird species has become a true flying poison.
In a narrow sense, the term “poison wine” usually refers to wine soaked in the feathers of this bird species. However, as time passed, the definition of this wine became increasingly broad, and people usually referred to highly toxic wines as “poison wine”. The toxins contained in these wines were not bird feathers, but commonly common toxins such as arsenic and Aristolochia. In history, many celebrities died on this, such as famous figures like Li Yu and Wang Hu. It is said that the toxin in the poisoned wine that Li Yu drank should be strychnine, and Wang Hu died even more tragically, being poisoned by his own father with poisoned wine. It can be said that in the power arena, there is really no family affection to speak of.
In ancient times, this type of wine could not be easily prepared by just one person. The person who prepared this type of wine also had a special name, called the “Drinker”. They were usually professional pharmacists who had a very precise grasp of the dosage of the medicine. Moreover, they must be extremely careful at all times during the process of making alcohol, otherwise they may be poisoned and die on their own.
In modern ancient films and TV dramas, there are often scenes of drinking and poisoning, some of which look really unbearable, such as bleeding from the seven orifices, foaming at the mouth, convulsions all over the body, and so on. In fact, to a certain extent, the degree of toxicity of this poisonous wine is not so exaggerated. After all, even in today’s highly developed technology, people poisoned by potassium cyanide do not die immediately in a second. Ancient poisons with low precision are even less likely to cause people to die in minutes. For example, in the Tang Dynasty, a person named Jia Zhidao drank this poison wine, but did not die at that time. He just fell into a coma and even woke up the next day. There are more than one such case.
In addition, in ancient times, many officials and concubines were executed by drinking poisoned wine, in order to preserve their intact bodies, which looked better than beheading or hanging.