Chocolate-coated strychnine

worthpoint.com

Of all the insane things I have discovered since starting my research, the top contender is chocolate-coated strychnine.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Chocolate-coated strychnine.

Don't believe me? Read the label.

Who thought that would be a good idea? "Hey, let's coat the deadly, bitter poison with chocolate so it goes down more easily!"

An early precursor to Mary Poppins and a spoonful of sugar?

According to a TIME magazine (first published on March 3, 1923) article on Monday, March 13, 1933 entitled Medicine: Strychnine Antidotes:

Strychnine kills about three people each week in the U. S. Some take strychnine for suicide. Some use it for murder.* But the most frequent cause of strychnine poisoning is the chocolate or sugar coated pill kept in the bathroom cabinet as a laxative or "tonic." Children eat the pills for candy, die in convulsions.

*As in the New Jersey dachshund murders (TIME, Feb. 13, 1933).

Wow. The New Jersey dachshund murders. I don't think the Ohio State poisonings made it into TIME, but the New Jersey dachshund murders did?

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