Among the many mysterious facts associated with the human body, not the last place is occupied by the so-called divine judgment, or hordes (from the Anglo-Saxon "ordal" - sentence, court). It has been used to identify offenders literally since biblical times and on all continents. In total, about twenty modifications of the "divine judgment" are known: trial by lot, fire, water, "meeting with a corpse", etc.
One of the most interesting and, at the same time, mysterious hordes is the so-called poison test. This ritual ceremony allowed not only to identify the offender, but also to punish him. That is, it did not even require a verdict, because the result for the perpetrators was the same - their inevitable death, which occurred during the procedure. People who were innocent of a crime did not have to worry about their fate - for them the trial ended without any consequences!
The procedure for identifying a criminal with the help of poison took place in a solemn atmosphere, and, as a rule, all people living in a given settlement (for example, a village), including strangers, took part in it.
As for the poisons used in such tests, information about them is rather scarce. These poisons are mainly of plant origin and belong to the group of alkaloids: morphine, strychnine, quinine, caffeine, atropine, ephedrine. They were extracted from the respective plants, aqueous solutions were made, which were then followed by the subjects.
As a rule, the drug prepared for such cases was tested in the presence of all the subjects on some small animal or bird, and only after that it was drunk in an equal dose by everyone, starting with the sorcerer …
One of the most ancient references to the use of poison in "legal investigations" is contained in the book "India" by the famous scientist of the Ancient East Abu Reikhan Al-Biruni.
Listing the types of "divine judgments", he writes: "A stronger oath is that the accused is offered to drink aconite, called brahmana, and this is one of the most nasty types of aconite, and if he (the suspect) speaks the truth, drinking does not harm him." …
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A detailed description of the "divine judgment" was described in his book "African Roads" by the well-known in the past Soviet international journalist V. B. Jordan. Here is what he writes: Many ways have been found in African societies to identify the culprit. When tested with poison, for example, among the Iele people, the branches of the ethnic group of the Congolese Bakuba, the accused and from several villages were placed together, as it were, in a corral, behind a fence.
For three days they were fed only bananas, as they were believed to help them survive during the trials. Friends and relatives of the accused were there, trying to keep their spirits up. The first to taste the poisonous composition were the elders of the village, who in such a strange way proved their "purity" - suitability for testing. After that, everyone and the accused drank their own dose. The elders forced them to move - to run or to mumble, believing that the movement helped the stomach to reject the poison. Some began to vomit, which was a good sign.
Others reacted differently. They were in pain, they wanted to be left alone. But the elders began to beat them, forced them to flee, until they fell and died from weakness and exhaustion. Death, confirming the guilt of a person, was immediately both a sentence and a punishment.
One cannot think that the “divine judgment” was completely unjust, that it was tantamount to absurd arbitrariness. It was believed that the poison can only act on the culprit. The person who actually committed the crime was as convinced of this as the innocent accused. Therefore, the resistance of the organism to the action of the poison was different in the first and second, and this, of course, played a significant role."
The above facts undoubtedly indicate that the effect of the poison on suspects in a particular crime was selective - death overtook only the perpetrators, bypassing those not involved in the crime.
But how to explain this amazing fact?
First, attention should be paid to the fact that the subject was injected poison in a completely natural way - through the mouth. And as numerous experiments show, if a poison enters the gastrointestinal tract, its toxicity sharply decreases, for example, 15-25 times compared with its intravenous administration into the body. But the digestion process is known to be influenced by many factors, including the excitation of the nervous system.
An innocent person in a “divine trial” is naturally not as excited as a criminal who is under pressure from the burden of his deed. And therefore the guilty person is in a state of the most severe nervous tension - stress! In extreme situations, when the body is overexcited, fundamental changes uncontrollable by consciousness take place in it.
And, first of all, an instant release of adrenaline, the usual supply of which in the body is designed for several days of normal life. Following the release of adrenaline, the frequency and power of the heart contraction rises sharply and the intensity of metabolic processes increases: blood pressure begins to rise rapidly, the coronary vessels of the heart and skeletal muscles expand, and the peristalsis of the stomach weakens.
Thus, the contents of the stomach do not mix, the processes of digestion are extinguished, processing is inhibited, including the destruction and detoxification of the ingested poison, which, presumably, leads to the death of the perpetrator of the crime.
Probably, one more circumstance plays a certain role in this phenomenon. Everyone knows the expression "died of fear", but probably not everyone knows that behind it there is an experimentally confirmed fact that was demonstrated back in medieval Europe. The man sentenced to death was announced that he would be executed by cutting the veins in his arms.
Then he was blindfolded and superficial (without damaging blood vessels) skin incisions were made in the appropriate places. And to simulate the flow of blood from the veins, warm water was dripped there. And what do you think? The subject was dying away before our eyes, and his death was accompanied by all the characteristic symptoms of severe blood loss!
So it is not excluded: the fear in which the criminal resides but the time of the "divine judgment" is an additional impetus to the tragic outcome …
Another type of ordeal is the water trial. This method is described even in the sacred ancient Iranian book "Avesta" (IX-VII centuries BC), as well as in the ancient Indian Laws of Manu, known in the edition of the II century BC.
At the beginning of the new era, this type of ordeal was used by many peoples living in Western Europe: the ancient Celts, Franks, Normans. In the I-II millennia AD, water testing was also used in India, as reported by Al-Yiruni. It also took place in Russia, as the Russian pro-expert and writer Serapion Vladimirsky (XIII century) writes about.
The water test was especially widespread during the Inquisition. It was also of a public nature, however, like any type of execution at that time.
This type of ordeal was carried out on rivers, lakes or ponds, sometimes in fresh water reservoirs. A person suspected of committing a crime was stripped and tied in a cruciform manner, and the thumb of the right hand was attached to the big toe of a young foot and vice versa.
After that, a long rope was attached to it, the end of which was held, and thrown into the water. And if a person began to sink immediately, he was declared innocent. When he swam on the surface, it was believed that he was guilty of his misdemeanor, and then, more often than not, he went from the water to the flame, that is, to the fire.
The fire tests were carried out similarly to the water tests. The accused had to go through the fire, hold his hand in the fire, or take a red-hot iron in his hands and walk some distance with it.
This kind of God's judgment had its own characteristics. After the trial, the defendant was bandaged with his burnt hands, and after three days the bandages were removed and the wounds were examined.
If the burns healed cleanly and quickly, then the accused was found innocent. If the wound became inflamed and did not heal, but this was considered evidence of guilt. This was followed by execution or other punishment determined by the court.
Eyewitnesses to such experiments argued that the subjects could sometimes be on the surface of the water, without submerging, for about half an hour and swam like a wine cork.
Of course, it can be assumed that a person did not drown because in the critical situation in which he found himself, some unusual physiological processes took place in his body that kept him afloat.
For example, it is known that during hysteria, the stomach and intestines are filled with an unnaturally large volume of gases. By choosing an appropriate diet on the eve of the test, it was possible to induce artificial flatulence, which allowed the subject to hold out for some time on the surface of the reservoir.
But the trouble is that a person weighing 70 kilograms, in order to reduce his specific gravity to 0.5 (the density of a dry tree), would require about seven buckets of gas, which is many times the volume of the intestine!
Of course, if you look at this phenomenon through the eyes of a skeptic, then it can be recognized as a well-prepared falsification. But just why was the Inquisition to fence this whole vegetable garden, if all the same then it would be necessary to "adjust" the results ?!