This is a tangent, but the long discussion of poisons reminded me of my recent discovery of the (not surprising in retrospect) limitations in our knowledge. In Plato scholarship, there was for some time a controversy about Socrates’ death scene in Phaedo; some scholars argued that death by hemlock is much more unpleasant than the peaceful scene Plato describes, so Plato either got it wrong or misrepresented it for some purpose. But more recent scholars mostly think that Plato probably did describe it accurately, with the alternate interpretation arising because quite a number of different things have been called “hemlock” over the years, some of which produce very unpleasant deaths, but at least one of which produces pretty much what Plato describes. It appears that one reason that there was ever a controversy is that we often don’t know very much about how poisons cause deaths; once something is identified as poisonous, people just start avoiding it, so we don’t tend to accumulate many further cases of death by that cause to observe.
It appears that one reason that there was ever a controversy is that we often don’t know very much about how poisons cause deaths; once something is identified as poisonous, people just start avoiding it, so we don’t tend to accumulate many further cases of death by that cause to observe.
Except, presumably, in cases where people deliberately use those poisons as means of execution, murder or warfare?
This is a tangent, but the long discussion of poisons reminded me of my recent discovery of the (not surprising in retrospect) limitations in our knowledge. In Plato scholarship, there was for some time a controversy about Socrates’ death scene in Phaedo; some scholars argued that death by hemlock is much more unpleasant than the peaceful scene Plato describes, so Plato either got it wrong or misrepresented it for some purpose. But more recent scholars mostly think that Plato probably did describe it accurately, with the alternate interpretation arising because quite a number of different things have been called “hemlock” over the years, some of which produce very unpleasant deaths, but at least one of which produces pretty much what Plato describes. It appears that one reason that there was ever a controversy is that we often don’t know very much about how poisons cause deaths; once something is identified as poisonous, people just start avoiding it, so we don’t tend to accumulate many further cases of death by that cause to observe.
Except, presumably, in cases where people deliberately use those poisons as means of execution, murder or warfare?