“Some folks like water, some folks like wine, but I like the taste of straight strychnine”. These are the opening lines to a song by 60s garage rock band, The Sonics, in which they zealously espouse the many benefits of strychnine, painting it as a panacea for all your ills. Given that strychnine is most commonly known for its use as a poison, it’s easy to interpret this song as a cynical swipe at the way in which pharmaceutical drugs are advertised. But could it be the case that strychnine does in fact have some medicinal value?
Before getting an answer to this question, I wanted to find out why strychnine had built up such a fierce reputation for being a terrifying poison. So I reached out for a chat with Kathryn Harkup, chemist and author of A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie, in which she discusses the many poisons used in Christie’s iconic detective novels – strychnine among them.
Could you just give a quick overview of how strychnine works in the body when ingested?
“Strychnine is a nerve toxin, so it interacts with a very specific part of the nerves. It interacts with neurotransmitters, which are responsible for passing messages and signals between nerves. There are lots of chemicals that are released which pass messages from one nerve to the next, and one of those chemicals is glycine, and that’s kind of the ‘stop’ message – it tells the adjoining nerve or cell not to fire.”
“What Strychnine does is it docks at those same glycine receptors, but it switches them off. So all the receiving nerve or cell is hearing is the ‘go’ message, and it continues to get more excited and keeps on firing, causing the nervous system soon to go into chaos.”
She then went on to describe how this interference with the nervous system affects the body in cases of poisoning with strychnine:
“Visually strychnine is a very distinct poison and, I imagine, quite horrific to watch, let alone experience, because you get these whole body convulsions.”
“You end up with the body arched, just resting on the heels and the back of the head. Which is terrifying to see and, I am told, agonizing to experience.”
This condition is known as Opisthotonus. Every muscle contracts simultaneously until it is exhausted causing the body to go limp, and after it has recovered the agonizing spasms reoccur. This horrific cycle ends when the nerves responsible for breathing give out, whereupon asphyxiation ensues.
However, if you look back in history you find records of strychnine being used in western medicine throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, and even earlier than that in countries like China or India. A 1944 article in the British Medical Journal chronicles a number of cases in which Strychnine was administered in order to aid digestion and increase appetite, and a 1896 issue of The Lancet includes a letter from a medical student who took strychnine in order to help him study for a test.
How could have Strychnine been used as both a medicine and a poison? The answer is dose. In small enough quantities (1-4mg), Strychnine’s effect on nerves allow it to be used as a stimulant. But owing to its catastrophic effects in overdose and the discovery of more desirable alternatives, Strychnine stopped being used in western medicine in the mid 20th century and was banned outright in the EU in 2006.
So, is Strychnine good or bad? Medicine or poison? The truth is that none of these labels are immutable characteristics of any compound. Public perception of chemicals, especially those used as drugs, often revolves around endless moralising. But molecules don’t contain morality, they’re just atoms bonded together. We are the ones who decide how we use these molecules, and how we legislate around them – and this is ultimately what determines whether they have a positive or negative impact on society.