Aconite and wolfsbane have been understood to be poisonous from ancient times, and are frequently represented as such in literature. In
Greek mythology, the goddess
Hecate is said to have invented aconite, which
Athena used to transform
Arachne into a spider.
Medea is also said to have attempted to poison
Theseus with a cup of wine poisoned with wolf's bane. In the poem
Metamorphoses,
Ovid tells of the herb coming from the slavering mouth of
Cerberus, the three-headed dog that guarded the gates of Hades. In his Natural History,
Pliny the Elder supports the legend that aconite came from the saliva of the dog Cerberus when Hercules dragged him from the underworld. As the veterinary historian John Blaisdell has noted, symptoms of
aconite poisoning in humans bear similarity to those of
rabies: frothy saliva, impaired vision, vertigo, and finally, coma; thus, ancient Greeks could have believed that this poison, mythically born of Cerberus's lips, was literally the same as found inside the mouth of a rabid dog. The opening lines of the Ode on Melancholy by John Keats warn against taking poison as a radical cure for a ‘melancholy fit’: “No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine…”
In popular culture Early examples As a well-known poison from ancient times, aconite (including as wolfsbane, in its various spellings) often found place in historical fiction. In
I, Claudius, Livia, wife of Augustus, was portrayed discussing the merits, antidotes, and use of aconite with a poisoner. It is the poison used by a murderer in the third of
the Cadfael Chronicles, ''
Monk's Hood'' by
Ellis Peters, published in 1980 and set in 1138 in Shrewsbury, England. The
kyōgen (traditional Japanese comedy) play , which is well-known and frequently taught in Japan, is centered on dried aconite root used for traditional Chinese medicine. Taken from
Shasekishu, a 13th-century anthology collected by
Mujū, the story describes servants who decide that the dried aconite root is really sugar, and suffer unpleasant though nonlethal symptoms after eating it. In the 16th century, Shakespeare, writing in
Henry IV Part II Act 4 Scene 4, refers to aconite, alongside rash gunpowder, working as strongly as the "venom of suggestion" to break up close relationships.
20th century and later An overdose of aconite was the method by which Rudolph Bloom, father of
Leopold Bloom in
James Joyce's
Ulysses, died by suicide. In the 1931 classic horror film
Dracula starring
Bela Lugosi as
Count Dracula and
Helen Chandler as Mina Seward, reference is made to wolf's bane (
aconitum); towards the end of the film, "Van Helsing holds up a sprig of wolf's bane".
Van Helsing educates the nurse protecting Mina from Count Dracula to place sprigs of wolf's bane around Mina's neck for protection, instructing that wolf's bane, a plant that grows in
Central Europe, is used by those dwelling there to protect themselves against vampires. In the 1941 film
The Wolf Man starring Lon Chaney Jr. and Claude Rains, the following poem is recited several times:Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night, may become a wolf when the wolf-bane blooms and the autumn moon is bright. In the 1943 French novel
Our Lady of the Flowers, the boy Culafroy eats "Napel aconite", so that the "Renaissance would take possession of the child through the mouth." Aconite and wolfsbane have also appeared in a references in modern settings. In the early 1980s, famed Spanish horror film star
Paul Naschy named his production company "Aconito Films", an in-joke relating to the large number of werewolf movies he produced. In the 2003 Korean television series
Dae Jang Geum, set in the 15th and 16th centuries, Choi put "wolf's bane" in the previous queen's food. In the 1980 novel ''
Monk's-Hood'', third in
Ellis Peters' series
The Cadfael Chronicles and set in 1138, a wealthy donator to Shrewsbury Abbey, Gervase Bonel, is murdered with stolen Monks-hood
liniment prepared by the Abbey's herbalist Brother Cadfael, who needs to identify the true culprit to exonerate Bonel's stepson Edwin. In the
Harry Potter series by
J.K. Rowling, describing aconitum is one of three questions that
Professor Snape asks Harry Potter during his first Potions class in the first novel. Snape's preparations of the drug as a treatment for
lycanthropy are also an important plot point in the third novel. In the TV series
Dexter, serial killer
Hannah McKay (a love interest of protagonist
Dexter Morgan) has a history of using aconite to murder her victims. This family of poisons makes a showing in S. M. Stirling's 2000 science fiction novel,
On the Oceans of Eternity, where a renegade warlord is poisoned with aconite-laced food by his own chief of internal security. In the 2000s television show
Merlin, the titular character attempts to poison Arthur with aconite while under a spell. In the 2010s TV series
Forever, Dr. Henry Morgan identifies the plants in the villain's greenhouse as specifically
Aconitum variegatum, which he has used to create a poison to release into the ventilation system of
Grand Central Terminal. In the television series
Game of Thrones (2011-2019), a Tywin Lannister's commander is assassinated by a dart, identified by Tywin as "Wolf's Bane" due to its scent. In the second season of the BBC drama
Shakespeare and Hatherway, episode 9, a tennis player is poisoned through the skin of his palm by aconite smeared on the handle of his racquet. In the third season of "You," Love Quinn murders her first husband, James, after injecting him with Aconite after James asked for a divorce. Love admits to Joe (the protagonist) that she killed James "accidentally" and then tells Joe she poisoned him with Aconite through skin contact after he grabbed a knife to protect himself after he asks Love for a divorce. When Love approaches Joe (who is believed to be dying from Aconite and is "paralyzed"), he stabs her with a needle with his own mixture he created from Love's Aconite substance. Joe tells Love, while she is paralyzed, that he knew what was growing in their backyard and tells her, "You did this to yourself." In the 2024
Netflix thriller
Carry-On, the Traveller (played by
Jason Bateman) murders some of his targets by poisoning them with aconitum.
In mysticism Wolf's bane is used as an analogy for the power of divine communion in
Liber 65 1:13–16, one of
Aleister Crowley's
Holy Books of Thelema. Wolf's bane is mentioned in one verse of
Lady Gwen Thompson's 1974 poem "Rede of the Wiccae", a long version of the
Wiccan Rede: "Widdershins go when Moon doth wane, And the werewolves howl by the dread wolfsbane." ==Gallery==