Anton von Störck (1731–1803)
For more than two millennia, aconite has appeared in folklore, legend, and literature, playing many roles as a poison and as a medicine. Ancient Chinese and Gauls used it as an arrow poison in warfare. Old, infirm men on the island of Ceos in the Aegean Sea, who were no longer of benefit to the state, made a graceful exit with an aconite-containing poison.
WOLFMAN, FLYING WITCHES, FATAL ATTRACTION. Legends claim that aconite was used as a “love poison” in ancient Gaul, where men were allegedly poisoned via sexual contact with women who had taken aconite daily since infancy. During the Middle Ages, aconite (a.k.a. monkshood, wolfsbane) was used as a werewolf poison/repellent/ cure and mixed with belladonna in witches’ flying ointments.
During the 1760s and 1770s, Viennese physician Baron Anton von Störck undertook a detailed examination of eight poisonous plants known from ancient times, including hemlock, colchicum (colchicine), and aconite, with the intention of utilizing them as drugs. His test subjects were dogs and the good doctor himself. In 1762, Störck introduced aconite into medical practice for the treatment of gout, rheumatism, fevers, and glandular swellings. When applied to the skin, it was used as a liniment, and it was taken internally to reduce fevers. Aconitine was identified as the active principle in aconite in 1833. It continued to be used, with little medical justification of effectiveness, for decades into the twentieth century.
Aconite is the dried root of Aconitum napellus, a garden plant sometimes mistaken for horseradish with potentially lethal consequences from heart or respiratory failure. In 2004, Canadian television and film actor André Noble died from such a poisoning in Newfoundland. Far less accidental has been the use of aconite as an instrument of suicide and criminal poisoning.
References to aconite appear in the literary works of Shakespeare (Henry IV, Part II, c. 1597), John Keats (Ode on Melancholy, 1884), Agatha Christie (What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!, 1957), and J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, 1999).
SEE ALSO Hemlock (399 BCE), Colchicine (c. 70), Witches’ Flying Ointments (1456), Belladonna (1542).
Aconite was used as a werewolf repellent in the Middle Ages. This gargoyle, said to be a werewolf, is located on the Cathedral of Moulins and was intended to frighten the faithful into attending church. The secular purpose of gargoyles is to serve as waterspouts conveying water from the roof and away from the building.