Here’s another log to throw on the hemlock fire. At 63d-e, just as Socrates and Simmias are beginning to launch a discussion of why Socrates is not just not afraid of dying but actually welcomes the prospect, Crito says that the man who is going to administer the hemlock to Socrates has been telling him to explain to Socrates that they should engage in conversation (διαλεγεσθαι} as little as possible, because if they do so, they’ll get heated (θερμαινεσθαι), and if that happens, sometimes those who don’t comply are forced to drink the drug two or three times.
Socrates says to disregard the hemlock-administrator, but let him know that he should get ready to administer the drug two or three times.
Crito says, “I knew you’d say that, but he’s been bothering me for quite some time now.”
A realistic description of the properties of hemlock? Or humor?
Maybe both, or neither? It could be part of something what mwh called the κωνειον meme. It’s as if the poison acted by cooling down your system; it seems like a crude quasi-physiological explanation.
Allow me to present my humblest apologies for what talking so casually about Plato! Anyway, what really prompted me to post at this length on this topic was not so much being interested about which poison killed Socrates, but rather finding such a mixture of interesting points and quite inadmissible mistakes in that article (which was direly in need of being reviewed by someone with neurological expertise). I’ve tried to explain which aspects of the narrative I think are in line with the identification with poison hemlock, and which ones are not.
I’ll make one final remark about the guard pinching Socrates’ leg: Either it did happen, in which case that’s interesting in itself, because according to what I was able to find on poison hemlock, it shouldn’t make your feet lose their sensation – and that would mean that the guard had is own theories about the functioning and dysfunctioning of the body, which he probably shared with his contemporaries. It’s by no means obvious to link sensory loss with motor weakness like we do, as the Greeks had no concept of “nerves”. In the examples I gave in my first post, I think people are often describing their symptoms inaccurately, because they let their preconceptions rule over what they are actually experiencing.
Or, it didn’t happen, in which case it was Plato who added the touch of the guard asking Socrates whether he could feel his feet, and telling that once the senselessness reaches his heart, he’ll be gone. I call this a lively touch if it didn’t happen; others who know English better than me may perhaps find a better word.
I think there remains a slight doubt that κώνειον wasn’t the plant known today as poison hemlock, but I have no better suggestion, and I don’t really think it’s important.
Allow me to present my humblest apologies for what talking so casually about Plato!
Don’t know who would be offended if you failed to venerate Plato.
Postscript:
Having observed some of the impact Plato, neo-Plato and Aristotle had on Church Dogmatics over the millennia … I really don’t want to study them. The Dialogues are amusing at times and the ideas embedded in them can be ignored.
Sorry to give you a hard time over this, but why Plato rather than Phaedo or whoever else told Plato about it? And even if “it happened” (to accept your stark either/or disjunction), events inevitably get distorted in the telling (especially at second hand), and any account is inevitably selective and shaped; that goes double for Plato, where the shaping is deliberate and calculated. It’s long been recognized that “bloss zeigen, wie es eigentlich gewesen ist” is an impossibility, even if that were Plato’s aim, which obviously it’s not.
On Hylander’s query: whether or not it’s a realistic description of the properties of hemlock, it’s a realistic description (a Greek might call it ἐναργής), and the recommendation against engaging in dialogue is certainly humorous, even if it happened (as I expect it did).
Sure, it didn’t have to be Plato who distorted the account. I wasn’t really focusing on the how the account might have been distorted and by whom. It doesn’t matter for my purpose at hand; in that case it’s not possible to identify the poison, and Plato might have claimed Socrates died of an overdose of Stilton cheese for all I care… The way it was distorted, if it was distorted, is still interesting, for reasons I’ve stated (I mean the confusion between sensory and motor symptoms). But I was playing, for argument’s sake as I said, with the idea that the account was reliable.
“I was playing, for argument’s sake as I said, with the idea that the account was reliable.”
Well, it’s not, as I’ve pointed out. Perhaps we should play with the idea that Socrates died from an overdose of stilton, or that the moon is made of blue cheese?
Speaking of playing, that cross-talk about not dialoguing is more than humorous, it’s positively comic. It lightens or even inverts a tragic scene, which for Plato’s Socrates was not tragic at all. The Phaedo itself explains why, and the death scene makes an appropriate coda.
This is much less reliable than Plato’s account of Socrates – Plutarch even says that there are many conflicting stories – but I see tremors, staggering, followed by collapse, pain, and then respiratory failure. This seems much more similar to the classic Hemlock symptoms described by Paul.
It’s possible, that if the symptoms of Hemlock poisoning were well known in classical Athens (and later), that Plato’s account may depart from a literal account in ways that he expects the reader to pick up on, and he therefore expects the reader to take the details as (mystically?) significant, rather than mundane.
I found Paul’s discussion of the description of Socrates’ death by hemlock interesting, particularly coming from a medical professional, and, if my suspicions are not too wide of the mark, a neurologist. It’s no wonder he has taken a keen interest in this passage.
And this is interesting, too, for a different reason:
I haven’t done any serious research on the actions of poison hemlock. What I’m saying is based on random googling. Those random sources say that poison hemlock acts by blocking acethylcholine receptors. Also, I’m largely basing my comments on Harley’s account, which I have no reason to disbelieve; however, I would not look for any serious medical advice on sources that are 150 years old. Anyway, with today’s boring ethical committees and such, there probably isn’t a modern account as detailed as Harley’s; at least I couldn’t find one. While Harley’s account of symptoms seems plausible, his notions of physiology are completely obsolete, as he doesn’t even know the difference between central and peripheral nervous system.
Modern sources mention “burning sensations in the mouth followed by vomiting”, which aren’t mentioned by Harley. Harley’s experiments were made after ingesting a preparation called “succus conii”, which isn’t necessarily exactly the same as taking the crushed plant “as it is”.
These doesn’t seem like classical Hemlock symptoms at all – tremor is a symptom I’d expect with about any sort of death except hemlock. Tremor originates from the central nervous system, and you can’t have tremor if the message from the nerves to the muscles doesn’t get through. All the muscles are flaccid and the person is unable to move even his eyelids. What is conspicuous about death by hemlock poisoning is the lack of any sort of agitation, gasping for breath, groaning (so στενάξας doesn’t fit either) etc. With almost any death you see some sort of struggling, but not with hemlock, or this is what I expect. So Plutarch’s description is a very generic one, and is consistent with almost anything, but not really poison hemlock.
He says (p. 4): “An hour and a quarter after taking the dose, I first felt decided weakness in my legs. The giddiness and diminution of motor power continued to increase for the next fifteen minutes. An hour and a half after taking the dose, these effects attained their maximum; and at this time I was cold, pale, and tottering.”
I now think that ψυχρὰν and ψύχοιτό are easy to explain as part of the action of poison hemlock: normally, muscle activity is an important part of maintaining body temperature (shivering when you’re cold is an extreme example); it’s only natural that a total loss of muscle tone makes you cold (and not just feel cold). The lack of muscle tone and basically any kind of struggling (unusual when one is dying) would explain the πήγνυτο part.
The only inconsistency that remains in Socrates’ narrative is the ascending lack of sensation (Socrates not feeling when the guard was pinching him), as I’ve said from the start.
I’m not an actual neurologist, though I did work about a year in a neurology department. Nowadays I’m specializing in clinical neurophysiology, which is lab nerd medicine; in many countries it’s part of neurology, but in Finland it’s a speciality of it own. Bart (about whom we haven’t heard for a while…) is, I think, a real neurologist. I wonder what he would say about this.
I think that the main point about Plutarch’s description being very general is spot on. However there seems to be an initial tremor (associated with the motor weakness?) reported with hemlock ingestion in humans and animals.
Thanks for the links. The symptoms as described in the first article are slightly different; I wonder if it’s because the doses were bigger than what Harley self-administered or because Harley used a preparation. I also wonder whether what the authors describe as ataxia (lack of coordination, i.e. clumsiness) is not really just weakness, as differentiating the two is not always easy.
A collegue pointed this out to me, actually. I didn’t have the time to check it out yet.
I don’t know which one is more ridiculous - to call an acute poisoning with an agent that blocks neuromuscular junctions a ”polyneuropathy”, as is done in the article that was the original subject of this thread, or this new theory about Alexander also succumbing to GBS (Guillain Barré Syndrome) - and what’s more, a variant of GBS particularly fashionable right now in certain circles of neurologists called AMAN (acute motor axonal neuropathy).
Posterity glorifies Great Men, and it’s especially common to come up with all sorts of legends about their birth, childhood and death. The most usual glorifying stories about death are (or so it seems to me): 1) ”the person was lucid right to the end”, 2) ”the person’s corpse didn’t decompose as usual”. Certainly legends such as these would have abounded about Alexander. Yet it’s on such evidence that these people basing their theory!
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to access the original article. I’d like to know on which text passages their theories are based. But I’d be surprised if they know Greek. I hope I’m proved wrong.
The body not decomposing after death (incorruptibility is the official term I think) is a sign of sainthood in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Church. Christ’s body didn’t decompose after all according to official dogma. I don’t know if this (i.e. the body not decaying) was an established sign of divinity in ancient Greece. If so it would fit rather nicely with Alexander’s godlike status.
Anyway, with today’s boring ethical committees and such, there probably isn’t a modern account as detailed as Harley’s; at least I couldn’t find one. While Harley’s account of symptoms seems plausible, his notions of physiology are completely obsolete, as he doesn’t even know the difference between central and peripheral nervous system.