Strychnine  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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A very toxic, colourless crystalline alkaloid, derived from nux vomica, used as a pesticide

Notable strychnine poisonings

• The poisoning of James Preston Metzker in the Almanac case
• In the 1904 Olympics, Thomas Hicks (U.S.) won the marathon at St. Louis and collapsed. It took hours to revive him; he had taken brandy mixed with strychnine to help him win his gold medal.
• Was the first of many poisons used by Agatha Christie to dispatch her victims in her debut novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles in 1921.
• In the well-known stage play Arsenic and Old Lace, the poisoned wine the two dotty aunts use to dispatch their "lonely old men" victims is comprised of arsenic, cyanide and "just a pinch of strychnine".
• Used by Norman Bates in Psycho to kill his mother and her lover.
• A tonic laced with arsenic and strychnine that was religiously given to legendary racehorse Phar Lap may have caused his death.
• Strychnine was used in several of the murders committed by serial killer Thomas Neill Cream, who poisoned prostitutes on the streets of London.
• Famous Delta Blues legend Robert Johnson's whiskey bottle was laced with strychnine, resulting in pneumonia.
• A childhood friend of Vincent Van Gogh, Margot Begemann, attempted suicide by ingestion of strychnine.
• Jane Stanford, who cofounded Stanford University with her husband, Leland Stanford.
• In the Bengali movie Shubho Mahurat (Adaptation of The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side), by Rituparno Ghosh, Padmini's character, played by Sharmila Tagore, uses strychnine to kill her ex-colleague, Kakoli Mondal, and the hairdresser. The former was given a strychnine laced drink, while the latter was offered a strychnine laced inhaler.