[Jean Henri Chandler]

Somebody asked me if I knew of examples of the use of poisoned weapons in medieval Europe, and specifically by Europeans. The closest thing which occurred to me off hand were some descriptions of 'poisoned' weapons used by the Mongols, in incidents which actually sound like the use of biological weapons mentioned by Jan Dlugosz and other Latin sources as taking place during various battles with the Mongols and / or Tatars in the 13th-16th Centuries.

I know of course that biological based attacks, such as catapulting corpses over walls and so on, were quite common in siege warfare. And I have heard of things like the use of arsenic and other "chemical weapons" in siege warfare such as anti-tunneling efforts going back to Classical times. For example:

https://www.livescience.com/13113-ancient-chemical-warfare-romans-persians.html

But what these people are looking for are examples of the use of weapons in individual combat, with poison or toxic chemicals.

I assumed there would be some examples of this in Italy, where poisons seem to have been frequently used in assassinations and murders, but every example I could think of involved someone ingesting a poison. I know that effective, fast acting transdermal or injectable poisons are fairly rare even now, but a wound which eventually causes death or serious illness doesn't seem out of the question.

Does anyone here know of examples of the use of poisoned weapons in Europe between say 500 -1500 CE?

[Dan Howard]

It is impossible to know whether a text describing a wound from a poisoned weapon isn't really a simple incidental infection. We would need a text describing someone premeditatedly poisoning their weapon.

[Sean Manning]

I can't think of anything from the ancient or medieval world either except for the rumours that Scythians poisoned their arrowheads. Because war arrows make small deep holes and the heads can become dislodged, its easy for people without germ theory to confuse infection with poison, but Adrienne Mayor believes that the Scythians deliberately poisoned their arrows (like some people in Central Africa and South America poisoned their arrows). I have heard that some French source accused the English of poisoning their arrows in the Hundred Years' War but I don't know the source.

I'm not sure if the trope of poisoned swords or daggers goes back any further than Shakespeare's Hamlet.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

I read something about Orpiment being used to coat arrowheads, but apparently this is also in China and Central Asia...

[Anthony Clipsom]

[Jean Henri Chandler]

I've also seen something about arrows being dipped in "manure" though only in secondary sources.

[Sean Manning]

The TV Tropes page for Poisoned Weapons does not even have stories about poisoned melee weapons before some versions of Tristan and Iseult where Sir Morholt supposedly stabs Tristan with a poisoned spear. The trope of the poisoned dagger seems to have really taken off in the 20th century after first aid and antibiotics and desk jobs made plain old stabbing seem less terrible.

I don't know of any way of proving that a useful idiot was never given a basilard and told "this was cursed by a Saracen and sprinkled with the venom of an Indian manticore! It will kill the podestà for sure and then run out the left door where a horse will be waiting for you"* but I think poisoned swords, spears, and daggers are basically a fictional trope inspired by stories of poisoned arrows.

* The horse was a squad of crossbowmen with their bows spanned, so the new podestà was not able to put the assassin to the question and uncover who was behind this fiendish plot - ed.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

Well part of the issue is that poison does not kill quickly, especially most poisons available in say, 1400.

So using poison on a blade in a standup fight may not make much sense. It's just likely to get you in trouble if detected.

However arsenic is one of those poisons that is fairly hard to detect. It could be made colorless and tasteless (this was known going back to the Roman Empire if not before). It's a metal which could even be incorporated into things. It was apparently used to make 'shot' in the 17th Century.

If you wanted to say, stab the podesta in a crowd, and help ensure that he wouldn't recover no matter how good the physician, coating a blade in orpiment powder or something similar (a substance widely available in Italy from the early 14th C from what I understand, and a substance with well known noxious properties) seems like it might not be a bad idea.

Same with say, coating the dart of a balestrino that you could shoot someone walking by a narrow opening in a window in some alley in Genoa.

And on a similar note, I think they knew enough about medicine that it might occur to people to dip a blade in excrement or some other filth before stabbing someone.

But I don't know of any examples of this except possibly in siege warfare, with arrowheads as you say. Maybe for assassinations it was sill just easier and more reliable to lace food, makeup, clothing, drinks, etc. and have them ingest the poison.

[Gregg Sobocinski]

I can not see where poisoning anything except arrows would be practical. If a sword or dagger, how would you carry it? You would need to clean it before putting it back into the sheath, which puts yourself into danger. Keeping edged weapons dry and sharp is a major job of soldiering, isn’t it? As for hafted weapons, I wouldn’t want to march with a neighbor whose naked blade is poisoned.

As others have said, topical poisons are terribly ineffective. Infection is more effective than chemicals.

[Anthony Clipsom]

Here is the quote from John Smythe's Certain Discourses mentioned above

further report and say, that they [the French] did thinke that the English Archers did vse to poyson their arrowe heads;* because that of great numbers of the French Nation that many times had been wounded or hurt with arrowes, verie fewe had escaped with their liues; by reason that their wounds did so impostume, that they could not be cu∣red. In which their cōceipts they did greatlie erre; be∣cause in troth those impostumations proceeded of no∣thing els but of the verie rust of the arrowe heads that remained ranckling within their wounds; and there∣fore by the common experience of our auncient Ene∣mies, (that we haue so often vanquished) not onlie the great, but also the small wounds of our arrowes haue been alwaies found to bee more daungerous and hard to be cured, than the fire of anie shot vnpoysoned.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

[Jean Henri Chandler]

[Benjamin H. Abbott]

The weight of the evidence indicates that poisoning arrows & darts was militarily effective, even though I'm not aware of any records of the practice from medieval Europe. For example, this late-Ming manual by Cheng Zong You goes into detail about how to apply poison to bolts for weak crossbow that need it to be sufficiently dangerous. (The text specifies that these crossbows are less powerful than a 50lb composite bow with a modest draw length.) The text asserts that "[w]hen the arrow hits a person, he will die within a few steps." That's probably an exaggeration, but this poison may actually have acted rather fast. Cheng included a way to test the poison, both on a chicken & on the producer's own body. A chicken stabbed in the wing with a small amount of the poison was supposed to turn its head back to attend the wing 2-3 times before dying for the poison to be fast enough. The human test was with a needle to thigh, & feeling how the pain spreads in the body.

In the 15th & 16th centuries, if not earlier, Europeans sometimes fought against foes who employed poisoned arrows & other poisoned projectiles. Accounts indicate these poisoned weapons killed & terrified Europeans. See A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820 by John K. Thornton. Nuno Tristão's fourth voyage in the middle of the 15th century, for instance, met defeat south of Cape Vert when opponents wielding poisoned arrows killed him & most of his crew. In the late 1520s in what's now known as Colombia, Spanish forces repeatedly had trouble with Indigenous groups who used poisoned arrows. Etc.

Militarily effective projectile poison seems to have required available plants or other poison sources, a production system, & a practice of use. These elements apparently did not come together in Europe.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

So I did a little more digging on this, and apparently the Scythians used poison arrows routinely, according to many Greek sources, and the Greeks themselves made note of the formula. They called it 'Scythicon'

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/nursing-and-health-professions/snake-venom

Quote from the article:

Complex recipes for envenomed arrows are recorded in Greek and Latin texts. One of the most dreaded arrow drugs was concocted by the Scythians, who combined snake venom and bacteriological agents from rotting dung, human blood, and putrefying viper carcasses bloated with feces. Even in the case of a superficial arrow wound, the toxins would begin taking effect within an hour. Envenomation accompanied by shock, necrosis, and suppuration of the wound would be followed by gangrene and tetanus and an agonizing death.


Then the same article notes

According to the Greek and Roman writers, archers who steeped their arrows in serpents’ venom included the Gauls, the Dacians and Dalmatians (of the Balkans), the Sarmatians of Persia (now Iran), the Getae of Thrace, Slavs, Armenians, Parthians between the Indus and Euphrates, Indians, North Africans, and the Scythian nomads of the Central Asian steppes. According to the ancient Greek geographer Strabo, the arrow poison concocted by the Soanes of the Caucasus was so noxious that its mere odor was injurious. Strabo also reported that people of what is now Kenya dipped their arrows ‘in the gall of serpents’, while the Roman historian Silius Italicus described the snake venom arrows used by the archers of Libya, Morocco, Egypt, and Sudan. Ancient Chinese sources show that arrow poisons were also in use in China at early dates. In the Americas, Native Americans used snake, frog, and plant poisons on projectiles for hunting and warfare.

There is an interesting looking book coming out about this. I listened to one of this lady's lectures on Youtube, she knows her stuff.

https://www.amazon.com/Greek-Poison-Arrows-Scorpion-Bombs/dp/0691211086/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Adrienne+Mayor&link_code=qs&qid=1657337144&sourceid=Mozilla-search&sr=8-3

[Ryan S.]

It seems to be a pattern of sources attributing the use of poison arrows to other cultures.

I have always been sceptical of poisoned weapons, because I wondered how it would stay on the weapon. The main way of using poison seems to be dipping the arrowhead in a liquid. The poison, that doesn't drip off before the arrow is shot, must then stay on the arrow while it flies and then not be wiped off by the armour and clothes. The remaining portion of the poison must then be strong enough to disable the target before the battle is over. Of course, the more effective an unpoisoned weapon is, the less advantage there is to adding poison.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

[Sean Manning]

And as I said, there are lots of stories about poisoned arrows, but I'm not sure that the trope of poisoned swords and daggers is older than Shakespeare's Hamlet.

[Graham Shearlaw]

Poisoned weapons tend to be of limited use, many poisons are useless for hunting as the toxins might be carried over, and in battle there not strong enough to make a fast difference.
A wound that makes a casualty is as good as a fatality to the aggressor.

A major limit is that poisons are not easy to handle, one miss hap with a poisoned point or edge and you end up like Philoctetes suffering from a festering wound for years.

A large amount of the poisons power was as a deterrent, "Don't think about attacking us or we'll use chemical weapons/poisoned arrows."
That's why there's a lot of tales of there nasty effects in gory details, to spread fear of them far and wide.

[Jean Henri Chandler]

[Jean Henri Chandler]