In ancient times, there was a criminal law called: swallowing gold. Why do people die when they swallow gold?
"It is often said that raw gold can fall to death, which is cleaner than hanging." Say that finish, second sister you opened the box and found a piece of raw gold. I don't know how much it weighs. She swallowed raw gold with tears in her eyes and swallowed it several times. So I quickly dressed my clothes and jewelry and lay on the kang. Now people don't know, and ghosts don't know.
However, this seemingly cleaner way to die than hanging, will it really die without pain? What is the principle of suicide by swallowing gold, is it poisoning or other reasons? Will such extravagant punishment be used in ancient times?
Was swallowing gold poisoned to death? The ancients did think that swallowing gold would lead to poisoning and death, but now medical research has found this statement wrong.
Because the gold in gold nuggets is insoluble in gastric acid and digestive enzymes in the intestine. In 20 15, the world health organization proposed that gold foil can be used as food ingredients. Gold is a normal food additive without any material reaction, so we see that many foods are covered with a layer of gold foil to reflect the high-grade food.
In other words, no matter how much gold you eat, it can't be absorbed by the body, but will be excreted by our digestive tract.
The reason why Sister You died of swallowing gold was not gold poisoning, but the biggest possibility was that ancient metallurgy was backward, which led to the adulteration of heavy metals and other minerals as soon as possible. Heavy metals usually refer to metals with a relative specific gravity greater than 5. The most harmful heavy metals are aluminum, mercury, arsenic and cadmium. When these heavy metals exceed a certain limit in the human body, poisoning symptoms will appear.
After poisoning, people will have nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhea and so on. , then dizziness, acute pulmonary edema or respiratory failure, and finally died of unbearable pain. Therefore, the death of Second Sister You after swallowing gold is not necessarily "cleaner than suicide", but a painful death.
It is one of the conjectures that Sister You died of gastrointestinal bleeding poisoning, and the death of the ancient people who swallowed gold was either heavy metal poisoning or gastrointestinal bleeding.
"Compendium of Materia Medica" records: "The flesh and blood, for lai, can be so long in the stomach?"
In fact, if the human body swallows anything hard, not only gold, it will cause massive bleeding in the digestive tract, and it will suffocate to death during swallowing.
We can imagine that no matter you Erjie or any one of the ancients, after swallowing such a large piece of gold, gastrointestinal bleeding may occur. When the amount of bleeding is below 400ml, there will be no obvious symptoms, but once there is a lot of bleeding, there will be dizziness, palpitation, cold sweat, syncope, shock and other symptoms. With the increase of bleeding volume, hematemesis will occur, and systemic circulation failure will lead to death.
Therefore, whether it was poisoning or massive gastrointestinal bleeding caused by gold nuggets, ancient people could not be rescued by medical skills at that time after swallowing gold to commit suicide. Although A Dream of Red Mansions doesn't record the later situation of Second Sister You in detail, it is conceivable that her death process must be extremely painful.
It should be noted that the so-called "swallowing gold" in ancient times is not what we call gold now. It is possible to say that other metals, such as "bullion" before the Han Dynasty, are actually copper. If real gold is used as punishment, the ancients will be rich, because the output of gold has been very low since the history of China.
The punishment of "swallowing gold" is only a fig leaf declared to the outside world. For example, arsenic is called He Ding Hong, so the "gold" in the penalty may be mercury or mercury, which can kill people at any time.