Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T14:30:38.856Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The development of the norm against the use of poison: What literature tells us

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

John Ellis van Courtland Moon*
Affiliation:
Fitchburg State College 160 Pearl Street Fitchburg, Massachussetts 01420-2697 USA [email protected]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The use of chemical and biological weapons on the battlefield is considered by most commentators — and by international law — as more abhorrent than the use of nearly all other weapons, including ones meant either to kill secretly or to kill terribly, as do fire or burial alive. I ask why this is so. I explore this question through the study of imagery patterns in Western literature and campaigns against food contamination and environmental pollution. I find that the norm against chemical and biological weapons builds upon a taboo against poisons, a prohibition widely accepted in military manuals as distinguishing soldierly conduct from criminal conduct, especially those forms of conduct made criminal by the employment of treachery, invisibility, and transformation.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

References

1. Cited in The Oxford English Dictionary , 2nd edition (1989) Vol. 10, p. 515.Google Scholar
2. This suspension of rules to be restored at the end of hostilities is often conveniently rationalized by exploiting ambiguities: among them, the charge that it was the enemy who first broke the taboo; a literal interpretation of an international agreement which exploits loopholes in a treaty as when the Germans argued after the attack on 22 April 1915 that the Hague text prohibited the use of asphyxiating shells but did not prohibit gas attacks launched by cylinders; the blurring of the distinction between military and civilian targets as exemplified by Allied strategic bombing in World War II.Google Scholar
3. Wilson, Edward O., “The Serpent,” in Search of Nature (Washington, D.C. and Covelo, CA Island Press, 1916), pp. 56.Google Scholar
4. Wilson, , pp. 1820. On the fear engendered by snakes, see also Grice, Gordon, The Red Hourglass: Lives of the Predators (New York: Delacorte Press, 1998), pp. 85145.Google Scholar
5. Wilson, , pp. 19, 20–21.Google Scholar
6. Shakespeare, William, King Richard III , 1.2.148, and 1.3.242, 246. Edited by Honigman, E. A. J. (London and New York: Methuen: Arden Edition, 1983). References are to act, scene, and line. On poisonous spiders, see Grice, , 1–59, 147–174, 235–259.Google Scholar
7. Price, Richard, The Chemical Weapons Taboo (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 1835.Google Scholar
8. Shakespeare, William, King John , 5.7.46–48. Edited by Honigman, E. A. J. (London and New York: Methuen: Arden Edition, 1983).Google Scholar
9. Shakespeare, William, Hamlet , 1.5.35–39, 5980. Edited by Jenkins, Harold (London and New York: Arden Edition, 1984).Google Scholar
10. The concept of the sanctity of the king and the need to protect him is also emphasized in a work of modern literature in which one of the main characters, assumes that an Italian traveler is bent on assassinating King Charles II: “Strike at the body, and the wound soon heals even though it may be a great gash. Strike only one small blow at the heart, and the effect is catastrophic. And the living, breathing heart of the kingdom was the king. One man, indeed, could bring all to ruin where an entire army would be ineffective.” Pears, Iain, An Instance of the Fingerpost (New York: Penguin Putnam, Inc.: 1998), p. 432.Google Scholar
11. [For an analysis of the disease imagery in Hamlet, see Caroline Spurgeon, F. E., Shakespeare's Imagery (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), pp. 79, 159, 133–134, 213, 316–318, 319, 369]. Hamlet refers to Claudius as a “mildewed ear” [Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3.4.51]. His mother, after she confronts her sin, castigates “her sick soul” [Shakespeare, Hamlet, 4.517].Google Scholar
12. Dickens, Charles, Oliver Twist (London: Penguin Books, 1994), p. 167.Google Scholar
13. Upton Sinclair, The Jungle (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), pp. 166167.Google Scholar
14. Ibid., p. 21.Google Scholar
15. Zola, Émile, Germinal (Paris: Classique Garnier, 1989), p. 483.Google Scholar
16. Shakespeare, , Hamlet , 4.7.102–105. Claudius' use of poison imagery is interesting in two respects. First, it is doubtful that the King's report regarding Hamlet's envy is truthful. Hamlet is not depicted as an envious man; moreover, he does not show any special enthusiasm for the proposed fencing match. Second, Claudius is the supreme poisoner of the play. He kills his brother by poisoning and is now plotting to dispatch Hamlet by urging Laertes on and by preparing a poisoned drink for his nephew to use as a backup should Laertes' envemoned foil fail to kill the prince. As I will discuss more fully later, the evil, who see their enemies as a danger to them, use poisoning images for their own purposes.Google Scholar
17. Ibid., 4.7.138.Google Scholar
18. Shakespeare, , King John , 1.1.213.Google Scholar
19. This quote is cited in the Arden edition of King John . (London and New York: Methuen & Company, 1983), p. 16, note on line 213.Google Scholar
20. Zola, , p. 331.Google Scholar
21. Ibid., p. 472.Google Scholar
22. Dickens, Charles, Nicholas Nickleby (London and New York: Penguin Books), p. 166. The evil also regard the good as responsible for making them hateful to others. Ralph Nickleby, uncle to Nicholas, has designs on Nicholas' sister. He is convinced that Nicholas has poisoned his reputation in Kate's eyes: “And now to be defied and spurned, to be held up to her in the worst and most repulsive colours, to know that she was taught to hate and despise him; to feel that there was infection in his touch and taint in his companionship—to know all this, and to know that the mover of it all, was that same boyish poor relation who had twitted him in their very first interview, and openly bearded and braved him since, wrought his quiet and stealthy malignity to such a pitch, that there was scarcely anything he would not have hazarded to gratify it, if he could have seen his way to some immediate retaliation.” [Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, p. 524] Google Scholar
23. Shakespeare, William, King Lear , 1.4.286–287, edited by Muir, Kenneth (London and New York: Methuen: Arden Edition, 1985).Google Scholar
24. Shakespeare, William, Othello , 2.1.297, edited by Ridley, M. R. (London and New York: Methuen: Arden Edition, 1986).Google Scholar
25. Ibid., 3.3.329–334.Google Scholar
26. Sulphur mines produce a poisonous mineral.Google Scholar
27. Shakespeare, , King Lear , 4.3.42–47.Google Scholar
28. Shakespeare, , Hamlet , 4.5.75–76.Google Scholar
29. Pears, , p. 240.Google Scholar
30. The General Epistle of James, chapter 3: verse 8, The Bible (King James Authorized Version).Google Scholar
31. Dickens, , Nicholas Nickleby , p. 688.Google Scholar
32. Dickens, Charles, Bleak House (London: Folio Society, 2004), p.490. Emphasis on “his“ is in original.Google Scholar
33. Gesta Romanorum or Entertaining Moral Stories Invented by the Monks as a Fireside Entertainment and Commonly Applied in their Discources from the Pulpit: Whence the Most Celebrated of our own Poets and Others from the Earliest Times, have extracted their plots , translated from the Latin, with preliminary observations and copious notes by the Reverent Charles Swan, revised and corrected by Wynnard Hooper, B.A. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1959), pp. 6566.Google Scholar
34. Zola, , p. 341.Google Scholar
35. Ibid., p. 348.Google Scholar
36. Milton, John, Paradise Lost , 10.631–632. References are to book and line.Google Scholar
37. Ibid., 12.110.Google Scholar
38. Dickens, Charles, Hard Times (Penguin Putnam, Inc.: Signet Classic edition, 1997), pp. 3031.Google Scholar
39. Ibid., p. 115, 167.Google Scholar
40. Ibid., p. 117, 141.Google Scholar
41. Ibid., p. 116117.Google Scholar
42. Ibid., p. 70.Google Scholar
43. Sinclair, , The Jungle , p. 32.Google Scholar
44. Ibid., p. 36, 37.Google Scholar
45. Ibid., p. 36.Google Scholar
46. Ibid., p. 37, 113.Google Scholar
47. Ibid., p. 115.Google Scholar
48. Ibid., p. 36.Google Scholar
49. Ibid., p. 113.Google Scholar
50. Ibid., pp. 154155.Google Scholar
51. Ibid., pp. 120, 145.Google Scholar
52. Ibid., pp. 156157.Google Scholar
53. Ibid., p. 157.Google Scholar
54. Ibid., p. 157.Google Scholar
55. Ibid., p. 157.Google Scholar
56. Ibid., p. 47.Google Scholar
57. Ibid., pp. 7778.Google Scholar
58. Ibid., pp. 116,324.Google Scholar
59. Ibid., pp. 115116.Google Scholar
60. Ibid., p. 117.Google Scholar
61. Ibid., p. 163.Google Scholar
62. Ibid., pp. 140141. For the manner in which the adulterated sausage was produced, see Ibid., pp. 159–161.Google Scholar
63. Ibid., p. 152.Google Scholar
64. Ibid., pp. 46, 96.Google Scholar
65. Ibid., pp. 9495.Google Scholar
66. Ibid., p. 16.Google Scholar
67. Ibid., p. 93.Google Scholar
68. Ibid., p. 130.Google Scholar
69. Dunne, Finley Peter, Mr. Dooley on Ivrything and Ivrybody (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1963), pp. 237238.Google Scholar
70. The Encyclopedia Britannica: A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, Literature and General Information , 11th ed., Vol. 18 (Cambridge, England: University Press, 1911), pp. 540541.Google Scholar
71. Zola, , p. 72. Note: “grisou” is fire-damp. “Haveurs” are the miners who slash into the rock to facilitate the knocking down of the coal.Google Scholar
72. Ibid., pp. 307308. See also Ibid., pp. 315, 462. The dangers of mine explosions and poisonings are also depicted in Sinclair, Upton, King Coal (New York: Macmillan Co, 1917), pp. 29, 30, 169–176, 190–195, 259–261.Google Scholar
73. Sir John French's Despatch of 15 June 1915, printed in Naval and Military Despatches Relating to Operations in the War, part II: November 1914, to June 1915 (London: HMSO, 1915).Google Scholar
74. Brophy, Leo P. and Fisher, George J. B., The Chemical Warfare Service: Organizing for War (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1959), p. 3. The Bureau of Mines had been established in 1910. It is interesting that this responsibility was first assigned to a civilian bureau rather than to the US Army.Google Scholar
75. Barrie, Alexander, War Underground: The Tunnelers of the Great War (London: Tom Donovan, 1961), pp. 50, 101, 237).Google Scholar
76. Sassoon, Siegfried, Memoirs of an Infantry Officer (London: Faber & Faber, 1930), p. 28.Google Scholar
77. Remarque, Erich Maria, All Quiet on the Western Front (New York: Heritage Press, 1969), pp. 4850.Google Scholar
78. Faulks, Sebastian, Birdsong (New York: Random House, 1993), pp. 149151.Google Scholar
79. Owen, Wilfred, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” in The Poems of Wilfred Owen , Stallworthy, Jon, ed., (New York and London: W. W. Norton Co, 1985), pp. 117118.Google Scholar
80. Barker, Pat, The Ghost Road (New York: Dutton, 1995), p. 240.Google Scholar
81. Wilson, , pp. 2528; Jeffrey Burton Russell, The Devil: Perceptions of Evil from Antiquity to Primitive Christianity (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 68.Google Scholar
82. Shakespeare, , Richard III , 4.1.54.Google Scholar
83. Ibid., 1.2.45–46, 50, 91.Google Scholar
84. Ibid., 1.3.118, 230, 298.Google Scholar
85. Ibid., 4.4.418.Google Scholar
86. Shakespeare, , Hamlet , 1.5.39–40.Google Scholar
87. Ibid., 3.4.203.Google Scholar
88. Shakespeare, , Othello , 2.2.350–362.Google Scholar
89. Ibid., 5.2. 285.Google Scholar
90. Ibid., 5.2.286, 288, 302–303.Google Scholar
91. Dickens, , Nicholas Nickleby , p. 847.Google Scholar
92. Faulkner, William, The Mansion (New York: Random House, 1959), pp. 45, 373, 394.Google Scholar
93. Pears, , pp. 248, 287, 469–470.Google Scholar
94. Ibid., pp. 176177.Google Scholar
95. Dickens, , Hard Times , pp. 30, 75, 76, 252.Google Scholar
96. Conrad, Joseph, “Heart of Darkness,” in Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories (Edinburgh and London: John Grant, 1925), p. 52. See also Ibid., p. 56.Google Scholar
97. Ibid., p. 114.Google Scholar
98. Ibid., p. 149.Google Scholar
99. Russell, , The Devil , pp. 80, 92, 95.Google Scholar
100. Ibid., pp. 113,116. Russell has further traced the history of the Devil in a number of succeeding works; Jeffrey Burton Russell, Satan: The Early Christian Tradition (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1981).; Russell, Jeffrey Burton Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages. (Ithaca and London, 1984); and Jeffrey Burton Russell. Mephistopheles: The Devil in the Modern World. (Ithaca and London, 1986).Google Scholar
101. Hesiod, , Theogony , translated by Brown, Norman O. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing, 1953), p. 61.Google Scholar
102. Hesiod, , The Homeric Hymns and Homerica . Translated by Evelyn-Whiate, Hugh (London: William Heinemann Ltd. and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), p. 101.Google Scholar
103. Russell, , The Devil , pp. 136, 142–143.Google Scholar
104. Grice, , p. 103.Google Scholar
105. Ibid., p. 224.Google Scholar
106. Genesis 3:1, The Bible .Google Scholar
107. Genesis 3:15. See also Russell, , The Devil , pp. 182, note 6; 217–218.Google Scholar
108. Russell, , The Devil , pp. 174220.Google Scholar
109. The Revelation of Saint John the Divine 12: 7–9, The Bible This identification was further solidified in the writings of the apostolic and apologetic fathers of the first and second centuries A.D. See Russell, , Satan , pp. 3079.Google Scholar
110. Milton, , Paradise Lost , 1.34.Google Scholar
111. Ibid., 9.179–191.Google Scholar
112. Ibid., 9.625.Google Scholar
113. Ibid., 10.508–524.Google Scholar
114. Ibid., 10.508–547.Google Scholar
115. Joyce, James, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Harmonsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin: 1978), p. 118.Google Scholar
116. Genesis, , chapter 3.Google Scholar
117. Milton, , Paradise Lost , 1.3.Google Scholar
118. Ibid., 2.649–665.Google Scholar
119. The Night Hag is probably Hecate (see below). Hughes, in his edition of Milton's poetry and prose notes: Sin owes her serpentine nether parts to conceptions like Spenser's Error: ‘Half like a serpent horribly displaide, But th' other halfe did womans shape retaine.’ [1.1.14] But the dogs around Sin's waist, and especially their Cerberean mouths—a literally Ovidian phrase—plainly match Ovid's description of Scylla, the lovely nymph whose body Circe transformed into a mass of yelping hounds from the waist down (Met. 14.40–74]. Finally, according to Ovid—she became the dangerous reef between Sicily (Trinacria) and the toe of the Italian boot (Calabria). But—as J. F. Gilliam recalls in PQ XIX (1950) 346—the allegorization of the myth to make Scylla a symbol of sin goes back at least as far as St. John Chrysostom. Milton, John, Complete Poems and Major Prose , Hughes, Merritt Y., ed. (New York:The Odyssey Press, 1957), p. 247.Google Scholar
120. Milton, , Paradise Lost , 2.667–679.Google Scholar
121. Ibid., 10.485–493.Google Scholar
122. Ibid., 11.477–493, 12.173–190.Google Scholar
123. Ibid., 10.649–719.Google Scholar
124. Smith, J. C., ed., Spenser's Faerie Queene , 2 vols. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1909), Book I, Canto 1, 3642, Canto 2, 5.Google Scholar
125. Shakespeare, , Richard III, 4.448; Shakeapeare, William, Macbeth , 5.83, edited by Muir, Kenneth (London and New York, 1986).Google Scholar
126. Shakespeare, , Richard III , 1.246, 1.3 230, 4.4.71.Google Scholar
127. Zola, , p. 33.Google Scholar
128. Ibid., p. 303.Google Scholar
129. Some versions of Hell do not call for eternal punishment: for example, the Zoroastrian/Mazdaist hell, Hamestagen, will be abolished when time is ended in the last war leading to the last judgment.Google Scholar
130. Russell, , The Devil , pp. 132144.Google Scholar
131. Ibid., p. 152.Google Scholar
132. Ibid., p. 186, note 14.Google Scholar
133. Milton, , Paradise Lost , 1.61–64.Google Scholar
134. Ibid., 1.66.Google Scholar
135. Joyce, , A Portrait , p. 120.Google Scholar
136. Russell, , The Devil , pp. 139142, 152, 172–173.Google Scholar
137. Russell, , Lucifer , p. 297.Google Scholar
138. Shakespeare, , Richard III , 3.4.59–79.Google Scholar
139. Shakespeare, , Macbeth , 1.1.9.Google Scholar
140. Ibid., 4.1. 4–38.Google Scholar
141. Shakespeare also deals with the theme of witchcraft in A Comedy of Errors where the city of Ephesus is presented as dominated by witchcraft practices.Google Scholar
142. Milton, , Paradise Lost , 2.660–665.Google Scholar
143. Mieder, Wolfgang, Kingsbury, Stewart A., and Harder, Kelsie B., eds., A Dictionary of American Proverbs (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 471.Google Scholar
144. Joyce, James, Ulysses (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1961), p. 84.Google Scholar
145. Seyffert, Oskar, Dictionary of Classical Antiquities , revised and edited by Nettlship, Henry and Sandys, J. E. (New York: Meridian Books, 1957), p. 288; Grant, Michael and Hazel, John Gods and Mortals in Classical Mythology (Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, 1973), p. 230.Google Scholar
146. Numbers 21:5–9, The Bible .Google Scholar
147. Housman, A.E., A Shropshire Lad (London: the Folio Society, 1986), p. 100.Google Scholar
148. Shakespeare, , King John , 3.2.69–73.Google Scholar
149. Dickens, Charles. Martin Chuzzlewit . (London: Penguin Books, 1986), p. 270. See also p. 221.Google Scholar
150. Shakespeare, , Richard III , 1.1.28–31.Google Scholar
151. Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf , translated by Mannheim, Ralph (Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Co., 1971), pp. 57, 58. The belief that Jews were poisoners was widespread in the Middle Ages. It was believed that they had poisoned wells, thereby causing the Black Death of the 14th century. This belief in the Jews as poisoners is also personified in the diabolical character presented in Christopher Marlowe's Jew Of Malta: Christopher Marlowe, The Complete Plays , edited by Burnett, Mark Thronton (London: J. M. Dent, 2000).Google Scholar
152. Hanbury-Sparrow, , The Land-Locked Lake (London: Arthur Barker, 1932), pp. 309310. In Zoroastrianism, Ahriman is the evil force opposed by Ormazd, the force for good. Emphasis added.Google Scholar