Plato (c. 428–c. 348 BCE), Socrates (469–399 BCE), Derek Humphrey (b. 1930)
The ancients knew hemlock as a drug, but its everlasting fame rests on its use as a state poison that ended the life of a key founder of Western philosophy. The plant, also called conium and poison hemlock, is native to Europe and grows alongside roads and ditches. It was used medically into the nineteenth century as a sedative and to relieve spasms in whooping cough and asthma. In higher doses, the active alkaloid, coniine, is a nerve poison.
FINAL DRINK FOR THE WISEST MAN. In 399 BCE, charged and convicted of impiety against the Greek gods and for corrupting the youth of Athens, Socrates was given a choice: exile or death by drinking from a cup containing hemlock. He selected the latter. In the Phaedo dialogue, his student Plato describes the progressive and marked paralysis and coldness of Socrates’ body from the feet upward (death results from paralysis of the muscles of respiration). The peaceful ending described by Plato suggests that herbs, such as opium poppy juice, may have been added to produce a painless and more rapid death. The final scene is visually depicted in Jacques-Louis David’s 1787 painting The Death of Socrates.
When old men ceased to be of service to the state in ancient Greece and were burdened by daily existence, they assembled at a banquet of death and voluntarily ended their lives by drinking hemlock. In 1980, Derek Humphrey founded the Hemlock Society USA in California with the dual aim of providing information to terminally ill persons and of promoting the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. After a number of name changes and mergers, the organization is now called Compassion & Choices and claims to have 40,000 supporters. On a far lighter note, the heavy metal band Hemlock has been in existence since 1993.
SEE ALSO Alkaloids (1806).
Hemlock, long forgotten as a medicine, has been immortalized as the poison given to Socrates. In David’s painting, The Death of Socrates, Plato, a disciple, is red-robed and sitting to the right of his master.