Poison
Suicide can be committed by using fast-acting poisons, such as hydrogen cyanide, or substances which are known for their high levels of toxicity to humans. For example, most of the people of Jonestown, in northwestern Guyana, died when Jim Jones, the leader of a religious sect, organized a mass suicide by drinking a cocktail of diazepam and cyanide in 1978. Sufficient doses of some plants like the belladonna family, castor beans, Jatropha curcas and others, are also toxic. Poisoning through the means of toxic plants, is usually slower and is relatively painful.
Read more about this topic: Tentative Wound
Famous quotes containing the word poison:
“To save the theatre, the theatre must be destroyed, the actors and actresses must all die of the plague. They poison the air, they make art impossible. It is not drama that they play, but pieces for the theatre. We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air: the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner.”
—Eleonora Duse (1858–1924)
“My heart pumps yet the poison draught of you.”
—William Empson (1906–1984)
“I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”
—Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.)