Timeline for How are poisons discovered? Does someone have to die/be poisoned from it first?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
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| Jul 10, 2018 at 23:30 | vote | accept | mavavilj | ||
| Jan 16, 2018 at 16:28 | history | edited | paracetamol | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 16, 2018 at 2:07 | comment | added | detly | I don't know about chemistry, but in nuclear physics and radiation health science some of the dosage information was determined from either unwitting exposure or exposure before harmfulness was known. Of course, this has the problem of not being repeatable. | |
| Jan 15, 2018 at 13:17 | history | edited | paracetamol | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 15, 2018 at 10:20 | comment | added | paracetamol | @Chris True. I did say you need a test group to compute the $\pu{LD_{50}}$. I suppose a less ambiguous way to put it would be "Of course, the only way to get an accurate $\pu{LD_{50}}$ for a human would involve actually poisoning someone" ;-) | |
| Jan 15, 2018 at 10:05 | comment | added | Chris H | Of course, the only way to get an accurate LD50 ... for a human is to actually poison someone. Actually rather a lot of people, as it's a statistical measure | |
| Jan 14, 2018 at 20:55 | comment | added | Mark | Note that culture testing is prone to false positives. For example, a culture test would conclude that theobromine and ethanol are deadly poisons, because a tissue culture doesn't have a liver. Further, it would conclude that a number of substances are deadly neurotoxins, when in fact they're harmless to humans because they can't cross the blood-brain barrier. | |
| Jan 14, 2018 at 20:08 | history | edited | paracetamol | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Jan 14, 2018 at 19:13 | comment | added | Raoul Kessels | +1 for the quote. As my tutor used to say (we did synthesis back then) the compounds we synthesize or are poisons or do nothing. If they do nothing they have no interest. If a poison, it can be a medicine when used with the correct dose. | |
| Jan 14, 2018 at 15:36 | comment | added | JSCoder says Reinstate Monica | @paracetamol it can also be noted that the Chinese legendary toxicologist Shen Nong allegedly tasted different herbs to see if they were toxic and died this way (just a note that your link only includes European people) | |
| Jan 14, 2018 at 15:19 | comment | added | JSCoder says Reinstate Monica | @GaurangTandon did you know that a scientist volunteered to test vx (spoiler: he didn’t die) | |
| Jan 14, 2018 at 15:11 | comment | added | paracetamol | @GaurangTandon Since NatGeo hasn't been taken down, I'll assume they just mentioned that incident (if it ever happened), and not demonstrated on live T.V. That said, if that incident did occur, I suspect the chap never did intend to die, it's just that the path of Science is a long and dangerous one (1) (2) (3) O:) | |
| Jan 14, 2018 at 14:59 | comment | added | Gaurang Tandon | Alright! Also, Re: "These chance encounters alone, led to the discovery of numerous poisons." slightly off-topic, but this reminded me that I remember watching a show on Nat Geo where they showed how a scientist had drank a poison knowingly in order to record what effects it had on his body, because till then its effects on human bodies were unrecorded. To his last minute he kept writing of the negative effects of the poison until he finally collapsed and died. Tragic! Did you ever come across anything about this scientist, the poison, or the story? | |
| Jan 14, 2018 at 14:56 | comment | added | paracetamol | @GaurangTandon That's correct, but the version I put up is the better known one ;-) | |
| Jan 14, 2018 at 14:55 | comment | added | Gaurang Tandon | Great answer! But Google translate gives "All things are poison, and nothing is without poison, but the dose makes that a thing is not a poison" for your quotation. I don't know German though so I can't verify it in that case I leave the discretion upto you :) | |
| Jan 14, 2018 at 14:46 | history | answered | paracetamol | CC BY-SA 3.0 |