Why is the silver bracelet ineffective in testing poison?

Recently, a man in Yibin, Sichuan, picked mushrooms and brought them home to cook. He was afraid of poisoning, so he "cautiously" threw a silver bracelet into the pot to "test the poison". After seeing that the bracelet was normal, the man ate it with confidence. But not long after eating, the man was poisoned and was admitted to the hospital.

This is a bit confusing. Is it that the mushroom is too poisonous or the bracelet is too fake?

In fact, neither is true. The method of testing poison with silver has long been outdated. Even in ancient times, it was not a panacea. For example, it is said that the poison used to kill Li Yu, the last emperor of the Southern Tang Dynasty, was qianji poison, also known as strychnine, which has neurotoxicity, but silver does not work.

For example, the mercury used to poison Song Jiang was also ineffective with silver. Today, let's talk about why silver can be used to test poison, and why silver is not a panacea.

01. Why can silver be used to test poison?

The reason why silver can be used to test poison is that it changes color from silver-white to black when it comes into contact with sulfur.

In ancient times, people often used arsenic as a poison. After all, arsenic was in large quantities and cheap, so it was a must-have poison at home. In the past, arsenic was not very pure and often contained sulfur, so silver could be used to test it. It can be seen that the limitations of using silver to test poison are simply too great.

Because there are too many poisons! Let's talk about the common poisons. Generally speaking, substances that are toxic to the human body can be divided into two categories, chemical poisons and biological poisons.

02. Chemical toxins

Chemical poisons are mainly some inorganic substances or simple organic substances.

For example, arsenic, also known as arsenic trioxide, is a typical chemical toxin. In fact, in addition to arsenic, humans have also developed many synthetic organic substances as toxins, which are our common poisons.

For example, the core ingredients of paraquat are dichloride and dimethyl sulfate.

This thing has become a recognized substance that is harmful to humans. Every year, people commit suicide by taking paraquat. Moreover, although timely medical treatment may save lives, the damage caused by this poison to the lungs is basically irreversible, and the sequelae will accompany you for a lifetime.

For example, the most common substance in our daily pesticides is pyrethroids.

These are chemical toxins, silver, which cannot be detected.

03. Biological toxins

This type of substances is mainly extracted from organisms. These substances have complex compositions and are generally peptides, and of course there are some biological macromolecules.

For example, tetrodotoxin is a typical biological toxin.

Many people like to eat puffer fish, but puffer fish has very high requirements for the chef.

For example, snake venom is even more complicated. Not only is the toxin complex, but it also varies from animal to animal. So if you encounter snake venom poisoning, you should not only seek medical attention promptly, but also remember what kind of snake it is and see if the hospital has serum.

The same is true for fungal toxins. There are many toxins in fungi, such as amatoxins, amatoxin, and cyprids. Amatoxins are widely distributed in many fungi and are very toxic and hepatotoxic. Ingestion will cause liver and kidney poisoning.

In fact, among mushroom poisonings in my country, Amanita poisoning accounts for 95% of deaths from ingestion of wild mushrooms.

Silver also has no reaction to these biological toxins.

In addition, there are some high-end poisonings, which I think can be classified as physical poisoning.

But it is extremely rare, for example, using radioactive elements to poison people, which is generally a chronic poisoning.

Overall, it can be seen that silver can actually detect very few toxins. In life, if you really need to use poison, there are many options, so it is impossible to prevent it.