permanently poisonous blade?

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churchlover

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I was told by an Elderly Arab gentleman that they used to make poisonous blades by mixing leaves of poison plants with the metal or something like that but the result is a blade that is permanently poisonous that would kill during a war with the smallest wound as long as it hits the blood. I don't know what the process exactly was. I thought that the heat treatment would kill any chemicals in the leaves of the plant.

Have you heard of such blades.

Or is it like the myths about Damascus sword that cut the anvil that it was made on?
 
Never heared about that "metal-poison-alloy" ;)
I know that antique spanish navajas had sometimes some decorative holes in the blade to carry poison...
Can't imagine that the organic poison in that alloy would survive the heat treatment.
 
I think this sounds rather unlikely, but there's something important to remember about ancient cultures and martial arts etc--that it was good for side A for side B to believe it had special powers. If you do one of those cool sword walking demos as an ancient warrior, and you chalk it up to magical chi powers, then the word gets around, well, pre science, you'd be a pretty scary group of warriors to mess with.

So sometimes I chalk up these sort of claims as exaggerations propegated by a group to help make their opponents fear them.
 
Horse Hocky. Whatever plant you throw into the mixture would burn up during forging and only leave trace carbon elements. I think I heard from some customer about the Japanese coating their bayonettes in human fecal matter during WWii. That would probably suck.
 
Artfully Martial said:
I think this sounds rather unlikely, but there's something important to remember about ancient cultures and martial arts etc--that it was good for side A for side B to believe it had special powers. If you do one of those cool sword walking demos as an ancient warrior, and you chalk it up to magical chi powers, then the word gets around, well, pre science, you'd be a pretty scary group of warriors to mess with.

So sometimes I chalk up these sort of claims as exaggerations propegated by a group to help make their opponents fear them.
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This is a very interesting thought, very likely.
 
Don't make me give you the "Dim Mak" Death Touch, you Mall Ninja wannabe! :D
 
Knifeclerk said:
Also, I would recomend thjat you stop talking to arabs. Btu i'm racist right now.
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Also stop talking to Californians. Yep, I'm a stateist (?) right now.... :thumbdn:
 
Knifeclerk said:
Also, I would recomend thjat you stop talking to arabs. Btu i'm racist right now.
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:thumbdn: :thumbdn:
I am a species-ist right now, and I dont think I want to talk to invertebrates like yourself.:barf:

Looks to me like you dont really want to continue participating on this forum.
 
Very few, if any, organic poisons would survive the HT process as stated above.

Heavy metals could be added to provide a poisonous component to the blade, but these are cumulative poisons, so they would bleed to death months before they experienced any toxic symptoms!

Off the top of my head, the only thing I could envisage is there being some ionic cyanide salt mixed with the alloy. These are far more likely to survive the HT and poison quickly. However, the production of these from plants would likely have required processing the cyanogenic glycosides found in cherry, apple or apricot seeds or in almonds before adding it to the alloy. I doubt this level of chemical knowledge was in existence then, though they may have hit upon it by pure chance. Maybe even occured during the HT process.

I think it much more likely that it was the psychological warfare aspect, ie. putting the fear into your enemies that was at play here.

What disturbs me the most is that if these did exist, how likely its owner was to be poisoned. I mean, who here HASN'T cut themselves accidentally on their own knife? Strikes me as an incredibly bad idea :D
 
No it's true!

I saw a "poisoned" knife in the James Bond movie "From Russia With Love".

There was this crotchety old Russian lady who had a knife in her shoe toe that was coated with cyanide and if she kicked you, you were history!!
 
On the subject of the original post-

I think a constantly poisonous blade is possible, by filling or lining the sheath with poisonous material. Thus the blade would be coated with poison at all times. Maybe a type of oil that the poison is mixed with.
 
In some cultures they use poison from plants in on arrows to hunt animals. The arrow is tiny and the death of the animal is caused by the poison. Again this is not permanent. They just dip the arrows in the poison after the arrow is made.

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If you reference poisoned arrows and darts, these are items that were poisoned by a paste that is added to the heads, or by dipping them in liquid. For combat, neurotoxins would be the most effective by paralyzing the person...although a corrosive would be pretty useful for torture. (I was composing this when churchlover replied! :p)

An applied poison becomes no good once blade is used unless trace amounts of the toxin remain. Permanently poisoned blades were fictitiously created for storytelling and for Dungeons and Dragons.

Obviously, injection-type poisons would be the only type to apply; making metal and elemental poisoning an unlikely candidate.

I just had a thought: what if the blade was wooden? If soaked the weapon could retain the poison for longer than just an immediate use on a metal edge. A wooden blade wouldn't be as effective for edge wounding, but a stab wound.
 
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