Although the nobles of the ancient imperial palace had supreme power, they did not have so much freedom in life. For example, as an emperor, you can't be too casual in terms of eating and wearing, and you have a set of process-oriented services.
In the process of this whole process, the responsible eunuch or palace maid must assume their respective responsibilities, and their responsibility is more fire prevention and theft prevention. In ancient times, medicine was not very developed, and once poisoned, it was likely to be ineffective and die.
Therefore, as the emperor, he is most afraid of being poisoned by others, so there will be a set of chain-type processes that restrict them from each other, so as to ensure the safety of the emperor's diet and other aspects. Among the many emperors, Zhu Yuanzhang was a monarch who carried out these processes very carefully.
In the eyes of historians, Zhu Yuanzhang is a very complex figure. There is both a virtuous and a cruel and inhumane side. Moreover, he was a suspicious person by nature, and many unjust, false and wrongly decided cases that occurred during the Ming Dynasty were due to Zhu Yuanzhang's suspicious problems.
In fact, as an emperor, he has a high position of power and many people who please him, but there are also people who want to harm him, so being suspicious is not necessarily a bad thing. But his practice of directly putting people to death because he was suspicious and not seeking verification was very disgraceful.
Once, after a new palace maid gave Zhu Yuanzhang a bowl of porridge, he was beheaded by Zhu Yuanzhang's order, which sounded incredible, and the origin of the matter was like this.
Late one night, Zhu Yuanzhang corrected the chapter late, and since he became emperor, he has been working major state affairs, which is also his very conscientious and conscientious side as a sage. In fact, Zhu Yuanzhang spent almost every night like this.
Therefore, in order for the emperor to have a good night's sleep, Empress Ma would order the imperial dining room to boil some radish porridge for Zhu Yuanzhang to eat. Radish has a sweet and cool taste, which has the effect of purifying the heart and removing the fire for the family who stays up late.
On this day, after the porridge was boiled in the imperial dining room, Empress Ma ordered a new palace maid to send porridge to Zhu Yuanzhang. Usually, it was sent by her personal palace maid, but only because she took sick leave, she temporarily found someone.
Because the palace lady had not been in the palace for a long time, she was not very familiar with the various rules, and she did not know that it was necessary for the eunuch to inform the emperor. So when she came to the door of Zhu Yuanzhang's study, she didn't see any eunuchs and directly pushed the door in.
Zhu Yuanzhang, who was grading the folds, subconsciously glanced outside the door and asked vigilantly, "Who is coming?" The little palace maid replied with a trembling shoulder to the lunch box: "The slave maid is the palace maid next to the empress dowager, who has come to bring porridge to Her Majesty."
At this time, Zhu Yuanzhang's eyebrows were deeply locked, and he was staring at this palace girl. It is reasonable to say that the palace people around Empress Ma are very familiar to him, but he has never seen this palace girl. Zhu Yuanzhang, who had always been suspicious by nature, immediately became alert and hurriedly shouted the name of the eunuch.
It wasn't until there were several shouts that the eunuch hurriedly came. Zhu Yuanzhang angrily asked him where he had gone? The eunuch panicked and said that he had gone to untie his hand. After saying that, Zhu Yuanzhang's anger only disappeared a little, after all, people have three anxieties, and as an emperor, it is still understandable.
Subsequently, the eunuch began to help the emperor eat and drink poison, he took the silver needle into the porridge, did not expect that when it was pulled out, the silver needle actually turned black, which shows that the radish porridge contains severe poison.
This shocked Zhu Yuanzhang, and without saying a word, he immediately asked someone to pull the palace maid out, saying: "Cut me off." The palace maid shouted that she had been wronged, but Zhu Yuanzhang couldn't listen to it at all.
So what the hell is going on here? Did this palace lady really want to poison the emperor? Later, in order to find out the mastermind behind the scenes, Zhu Yuanzhang conducted an investigation, and the truth slowly surfaced.
It is reasonable to say that the matter of daring to poison the emperor cannot be only done by a small palace girl, and there must be a huge force behind it. Zhu Yuanzhang did not trust others easily, and after the poisoning, he vowed to find out the mastermind behind the scenes.
At that time, the palace maid claimed to send porridge to the emperor according to the empress's will, so this matter should also be related to the empress, but the empress could not poison the emperor, so it must be a flaw in which link appeared in the middle.
After some investigation, it was found that the bowl of porridge began in the imperial dining room and passed into the hands of the emperor, and from beginning to end, it only passed through the hand of the palace maid, and no second person was involved. However, after the empress's testimony, the palace lady was a newcomer, and naturally did not dare to do anything to murder the emperor.
Then you can only check from the source, that is, the imperial dining room. So Zhu Yuanzhang ordered that the cook who helped him boil the porridge be arrested, but the cook was very tough and insisted that he had not been poisoned.
Zhu Yuanzhang said, "If you don't recruit from the truth, I'll let you drink all these poisonous porridges." Later, the chef actually drank the rest of the porridge. I thought the cook was going to die, but after a few days he was unharmed and nothing happened.
Some suspected that he had taken the antidote in advance, but the chef insisted that he did not. Later, after some careful interrogation, the chef said: "I just put some more white radish than usual, and I really didn't poison it."
In order to verify the chef's statement, Zhu Yuanzhang ordered people to boil two pots of porridge. One pot according to the usual amount, the other pot according to the amount of the day, the result of the first pot of test silver needle did not turn black, the second pot became black. Even the imperial doctor at the time could not explain what was going on.
In this way, the truth of the poisoning incident was revealed, and everyone speculated that it may be because some of the substances in the radish reacted with the silver needle, but these were harmless to the body. However, because Zhu Yuanzhang killed the palace girl without a clear investigation, he has been criticized.
The method of testing poison with silver needles has always been widely used by ancient courts and folk, because there was no such cultural system as chemistry and experimentation in ancient times, so poison testing can only be carried out with some medical experience.
At that time, the most poisonous thing on the market was arsenic, which was originally used to kill insects, and also had its own unique magic in medicine, but later it did not know how to become a "killing tool".
Because arsenic contains a large amount of sulfides, chemical reactions with silver needles cause silver needles to turn black, so the ancients felt that as long as silver needles turn black, it is toxic. In fact, many of the vegetables and fruits we eat every day contain sulfur.
In addition to using silver needles to test for poison, there are other ways to test drugs in the court, such as the emperor must have a eunuch or palace maid "try to eat" before eating, and after a period of time, they are safe and sound, and then it is the emperor's turn to eat.
Regarding this method, the last emperor Puyi mentioned it in his memoirs. He said that at that time, it was a luxury to want to eat a hot meal. Because the ingredients went from the imperial dining room to the table, and then through the eunuchs' "tasting", the food was cold during this time.
And there is a more bizarre rule on the prevention of poisoning. That is, the emperor can not put chopsticks on each dish more than three times, so as to prevent others from knowing the emperor's taste and poisoning at the right time. This is also the reason why every time the emperor eats, he feasts on the banquet.
When the emperor was still very bitter, the food was cold enough, and he couldn't even eat more of the dishes he liked to eat. However, the real-time program has become so complicated, and many emperors have been poisoned in history.
For example, Liu Yan, the Emperor of Hanping, Wang Mang poisoned him while offering him pepper wine, resulting in his death. Sima Zheng, the Emperor of Jinhui, was poisoned by his own relatives; Emperor Xianwen of Northern Wei was poisoned by the empress; Emperor Guangxu of the late Qing Dynasty was poisoned by Empress Dowager Cixi, and so on.
Perhaps because there are more emperors who have been poisoned in history, there are latecomers to formulate such a complicated set of "drug testing" procedures, but from these processes alone, the fate of the emperor is also quite sympathetic.