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'Doctors, this is cyanide... the tongue burns


__Kratos__

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This could be another first of sorts from India's suicides capital - Kerala. A bankrupt jeweller in Palakkad has demolished the legend about people tasting cyanide dying before they could pick up a pen and write down what it really tastes like. This man tasted the poison, addressed a note in some detail to doctors on it, then died.

State Health Secretary Vishwas Mehta says he is contacting experts to see if this note could be of some use to science. Forensic department sources say there is plenty of scientific literature theoretically deducing cyanide's taste from analysing its known chemical properties - but they have yet to see any that says someone had actually tasted the deadly stuff, and then documented it.

Police say 32-year-old Prasad, said to be a reader of crime thrillers, had checked into a seedy lodge in Palakkad last week, deciding to die. A small time gold jewellery trader, Prasad had gone bankrupt after a couple of north Indian conmen sold him spurious ornaments passed off as gold. He carried the cyanide with him - it is commonly used in gold extraction work everywhere.

Prasad mixed the cyanide in a tumbler, stirred it with the bottom of his pen, then sat down to write the suicide note to his kin. The police presume that by the time he was nearly done with it, he would have been absently chewing on the pen's bottom with the cyanide on it. His suicide note abruptly goes off course to address doctors:

''Doctors, (this is) potassium cyanide. I have tasted it. It comes through slowly at the beginning, and then it burns, the whole tongue burns and feels hard. The taste is very acrid...I had read in some novel about killing a man discreetly with cyanide. It was smeared on the pages of a book that he was reading, and when he touched his tongue with his finger to turn the book's pages, he died and no one suspected... I am now convinced how easily someone can kill another using this...''

Forensic officials say Prasad's description of its taste tallies with the surmises in scientific journals. A mere 300 mcg of cyanide could kill a man. The police think that though the poison might have begun acting fast while he wrote and chewed on his pen, Prasad would have collapsed and died immediately after he drank up the remaining portion of the deadly brew as well. The autopsy has now confirmed it was potassium cyanide.

Source

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At least we now know how it tastes. :P

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So if i taste something like this Im going to die :unsure::no:

Well at least he found his pupose in life to tell the world what cyanide tastes like. But then what if he was wrong? :hmm:

Oh well still sad story for someone to give up like that

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acrid... what's that tast like? bleech? That's the only description on the taste. Oh and it might be spicy?

I've heard it's a terrible way to go, with convulsions and all.

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Who cares what it tastes like? :P By the time you figure out what it is your dead.

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Who cares what it tastes like? :P By the time you figure out what it is your dead.

I agree. If your going to kill yourself, just go and do it. It's somewhat pointless to

tell us what the poison tastes like if you can't do anything about it when it's finally

noticed.

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Curiosityt killed the cat

He wasn't curious....he wanted to commit suicide...he just wrote down what it tasted like..

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Luckily he didn't say it tasted like chicken.

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^^ Even if it did taste like chicken I doubt many people would drink it just for the hell of it.

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what makes me go :blink: if you know your dying wouldn't you want your last words to the world to be a bit more profound or meaningful.

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That whole tongue burning and getting hard part I'd imagine would be his tongue going numb and the burning possibly his nerves dying off? Just a guess.

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"This cyanide stuff really gives me some spunk! It's like I've got a whole new will to liv...*plop*"

Morbid humor.

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"This cyanide stuff really gives me some spunk! It's like I've got a whole new will to liv...*plop*"

Morbid humor.

:lol::tu:

Yeah that'd be the luck...

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I've heard it's a terrible way to go, with convulsions and all.

when you're posioned with cyanide you die because the cyanide prevents your blood from carring oxygen.

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when you're posioned with cyanide you die because the cyanide prevents your blood from carring oxygen.

so you sufficate in a way? Wow bad way to go

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