When it comes to poison in the martial arts world, many small partners who are keen on jianghu can casually say several kinds, such as what is a half-step of laughter, ten fragrant soft tendons, three corpse brain gods, and so on. In fact, in ancient society, there was also a poison called HedingHong, and the name of this poison was elegant. However, because it is very common, many martial arts novel authors are reluctant to write, preferring to invent a poison that does not use this rotten street, but only Hedinghong is real among these poisons.
What is the poison of Crane Top Red? Literally, was it forged from the top of a crane's head? To know this question, we must first know which kind of bird the crane in the red top of the crane is.
There are many types of continental cranes, and only one has a red head, that is, the famous red-crowned crane. There have been biologists who used syringes to draw blood from the head of the red-crowned crane, and also collected the red feathers on its head, took it to the laboratory for testing, and finally concluded that the top of the red-crowned crane's head did not have any toxicity.
In fact, this crane top red is only a euphemism for arsenic, the ancient name is very poetic, the ancient refining arsenic ore is called red letter stone, this ore shows a light red. In the impression of the ancients, colorful things are dangerous, so the red on the head of the red-crowned crane is used to name this poison.
Why do you have to use a red-crowned crane? There are more red animals in nature, such as the macaque's butt is red, why not call it "monkey fart red"? In fact, this is related to a legend. Before the Tang Dynasty, there was no such thing as Hedinghong, and the most famous poison at that time was duck wine. This bird is a poisonous bird with a long neck and purple feathers. This bird produces poison on the body, and people die immediately after eating it, so there is a word in the idiom called "drinking duck to quench thirst". Later, this dove poison slowly evolved into crane top red, so this red-crowned crane naturally succeeded the duck as the "image spokesperson" of ancient poison.
How toxic is Crane Top Red? Crane top red is another name for arsenic, and arsenic is called arsenic trioxide in chemistry, which is an odorless inorganic compound. According to toxicological studies, arsenic trioxide showed strong toxicity in the LD50 test, 0.65 mg of arsenic trioxide can make rats chronically poisoned, 10 mg can make a 1 kg rat die quickly. If converted by weight equivalent, poisoning a 70kg adult only requires 0.7 grams of arsenic trioxide, which is only about the size of a fingernail cap.
However, considering that the purity of ancient arsenic was not enough, it is estimated that it takes 1.5 grams of crane top red to poison a person. This amount is also very small, comparable to the current king of poison potassium cyanide.
In addition, heding red has an advantage, it is put into the wine very light color and does not have any odor, can kill people invisible.
After drinking the crane top red, will it have stomach pain and vomit blood like the performance in the film and television drama? A large part of film and television dramas use exaggerated performance techniques. The arsenic trioxide in Heding Red mainly affects the ATP of human cells, and the most typical manifestation of eating this poison is muscle spasm, respiratory paralysis and eventually death of organ failure, and there will be no large-mouth blood spurt.
In addition, in costume dramas, there is a method of testing poison, using silver needles to detect whether food and alcohol are poisonous. In fact, this method is unscientific, there are many kinds of ancient poisons, and many silver needles cannot be detected.
However, silver really works for Hedinghong, the ancient purification process is not developed, and many so-called arsenic creams are actually red letter stone powder, which contain other substances, such as sulfur. Silver will turn black after touching sulfur, so it is possible to detect the red top of the crane with a silver needle. However, sometimes there will be mistakes, many foods will contain a small amount of sulfur, such as pine blossom eggs are easy to produce a small amount of sulfur when processing, which is actually not harmful to the human body.
Imagine if the eunuch in the palace's imperial dining room had made a bowl of skinned egg lean porridge for the emperor, then he would most likely lose his head, because the silver needle would turn black as soon as it was inserted into the porridge, so the silver needle test poison could easily cause injustice.
Crane top red is the most well-known poison in the mainland, and when the Western world is still poisoning people with tomatoes and mercury, the ancestors of the mainland have long used more efficient arsenic.
Scientists on the mainland who have entered the 21st century have turned Hedinghong, a harmful poison, into a good medicine for saving people. Zhang Tingdong and Wang Zhenyi, famous pharmacologists in mainland China, first discovered that arsenic trioxide in arsenic can treat acute promyelocytic leukemia, a discovery that won the 2020 Future Science Prize.
In addition, studies have shown that arsenic also has a good restraining effect on some malignant tumors, and it seems that the idea of attacking poison with poison in ancient Chinese medicine is really timeless. With the help of modern medicine, Hedinghong is also a good medicine for curing diseases. I don't know how the old brother who first discovered that HedingHong could poison people would feel when he saw this?