Is it true that a drop of nicotine kills a horse?

Talking about the danger of smoking, they often say that even the minimum amount of nicotine can lead to the death of a large ungulative one - what can we say about a person. We checked how reasonable this expression is.

In the Russian -speaking mass culture, among all arguments, in favor of abandoning smoking, this was also fixed: "One drop of nicotine kills the horse." The call is effective or not - a separate question, but Viktor Dragunsky mentions this phrase in the same name text From the cycle "Deniskin Stories", and Alexander Zhitinsky beats the anti -tobacco warning in story "Drops". In the post -Soviet culture, very short forms appeared - memes and jokes like "a drop of nicotine kills a horse, and a cup of coffee - a keyboard." But the expression is still used according to the original purpose - for example, Yakut doctors They paint Thus, the danger of cigarettes.

A few decades after the opening of tobacco, Europeans began to use animals to research about the dangers of nicotine. At first, cats and dogs became the victims of science, but in 1864, the chemist Augustus Kulman conducted experience on a horse. He described his observations in the dissertation “On the effect of tobacco on the body”: “If you introduce a few drops of nicotine into the mucous membrane of the nose and mouth of the horse ... The animal immediately begins to worry, looks around and tries to escape, but cannot take a step; breathing accelerates, becomes difficult and audible; Soon the animal begins to tremble ... The body is covered with cold, sticky later, trembling is accompanied by tremor, the horse begins to stumble ... and finally falls, stretching out, to the ground, where it soon chokes. "

Apparently, the wording, in which a few drops turn into one, first appeared in 1879. The French doctor Hippolytus DePierry published a text for children, which stated that the “one particle” of nicotine kills the horse when introduced into the body, and one drop - when instilled in the eye. However, DePierry was an active opponent of smoking, and the text did not claim to be scientific, so the estimated calculations are doubtful. In the domestic publications that have reached us, “one drop” is mentioned only in relation to dogs or simply “animals” until the end of the 1950s, and the statement that we checked was not used even on numerous posters that warning Soviet citizens from smoking. Historian and Culturologist Konstantin Dushenko suggeststhat the wording “a drop of nicotine kills a horse” appeared in the late Soviet years under the influence of numerous popular science publications and finally entrenched in mass culture in the years of perestroika. By the way, two decades earlier, a similar process occurred in Poland.

How many nicotine do you really need to kill a horse? In 1994, a group of American veterinarians published Scientific article, in which she presented data on the death of mules due to nicotine poisoning. Although scientists do not mention the source that they refer to, they give a dosage of 100-300 mg as a lethal for an adult horse. Back in 1958 in an authoritative journal Science were published results A more relevant experiment - scientists introduced nicotine into the muscles of different animals and calculated the maximum possible dose. It turned out that horses, cats, deer and cattle are susceptible to the negative effects of nicotine much more than goats, dogs, rats and even rabbits. According to scientists, a lethal dose for horses is 8.8 mg per kilogram of weight.

Although a drop is not a standardized unit of measurement, it is quite possible to make an approximate calculation. From the point of view Medicine A drop is approximately 0.05 ml. Given that the density of water and nicotine practically The same and equal to one, a drop of nicotine - also about 0.05 ml, and weight - 0.05 g. Weigh From 400 kg - respectively, for the murder of an adult animal, according to American veterinarians, it will take at least 3.5 g of nicotine, or 70 drops.

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. K. Dushenko. A drop of nicotine kills a horse: the story of a mysterious poster
2. https://science.sciencemag.org/content/127/3305/1054