The Power of Poison

Rooted in the ground and besieged by insects and other plant-eaters, land plants have had plenty of time—about 450 million years—to evolve an amazing array of chemical defenses, some which are only now being discovered. Others have been known for ages.

There was a time when magic—not science—was widely used to explain poisonings or sicknesses, a time when the lines between poison, magic, and disease were often blurred. Specialized knowledge of botany—specifically, plants that could heal or harm—was considered a source of power and magic for centuries. A famous scene in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which features a trio of witches dropping gruesome ingredients into a boiling cauldron, is just one of several tales and legends re-created in lifesize dioramas in the exhibition’s Poison in Myth and Legend section. Visitors will also be able to examine an “enchanted” book that resembles an ancient botanical volume and watch animations of well-known poisonous plant species, including belladonna and monkshood, “magically” appear with each turn of the page along with origin myths and annotations explaining how these plants were used in the past.

Just as the source of disease was mysterious for most of human history, so was cause of death—especially if poison, which in many cases was difficult to detect, was involved. A gallery in the exhibition’s Villains and Victims section considers some of history’s most notorious poisoners and poisonings that still puzzle us today, offering a glimpse of the challenges of detecting poison, especially before toxicology was developed as a scientific discipline in the late 1800s. Still, there are new details to glean about Cleopatra’s death or Napoleon’s decline on Saint Helena from our modern understanding of poisons, even if some cases remain mysteries.

Poisoning is not always the result of a criminal action, of course. An iPad game will let visitors play detective by finding clues about various toxins and poisonous creatures and reviewing victims’ symptoms to help solve three puzzling cases of accidental poisonings. These include the mysterious illness of Captain James Cook and two naturalists aboard Cook’s ship, Resolution, in 1774.

The field of toxicology was born out of a specific and urgent need—to detect poisons and prevent illness or death. Over the past century, advances in cell biology have allowed scientists to discover different ways in which poisons affect human cells and to figure out how to put that power to work restoring our health. As the Poison for Good section of the exhibition points out, hundreds of species of plant and animal toxins are being studied as sources for potential ingredients for life-saving new drugs.