Croton oil

During World War II, the United States Navy added a small amount of croton oil to the neutral grain spirits that powered torpedoes. The oil was intended to prevent sailors from drinking the alcohol fuel. Sailors devised crude stills to separate the alcohol from the croton oil, as alcohol evaporates at a lower temperature than croton oil.Ostlund, Mike. [https://books.google.com/books?id=9ABtEMGBmhYC&pg=PA88 Find 'em, chase 'em, sink 'em], Globe Pequot, 2006, p. 88. {{ISBN|1-59228-862-6}}

Norwegian partisans among workers at a factory, ordered by the Quisling government to turn over a catch of sardines to the Nazi German government for shipment to Saint-Nazaire (a U-boat base of operations) arranged with the British for a large shipment of croton oil to covertly poison the sardines, whose fishy taste was expected to conceal the tampering.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ZDZ1f44NvJcC&pg=PA190|title=Deceptions of World War II|author=William B. Breuer|date=2002|publisher=Wiley & Sons|isbn=9780471207474}}

In "The Bulletin" (9 Dowry Square, Hot Wells, May 29, 1845,) the Reverend Richard Harris Barham wrote a medically inspired poem to relieve the anxiety of a very dear friend a month before his own death on June 17, 1845. The attending doctor advises his patient, among other treatments for a sore throat that is producing barely a sound: "... Please put out your tongue again! / Now the blister! / Ay, the blister! / Let your son, or else his sister, / Warm it well, then clap it here, sir, / All across from ear to ear, sir; / That suffices, / When it rises, / Snip it, sir, and then your throat on / Rub a little oil of Croton: / Never mind a little pain! / Please put out your tongue again! ..." The patient was Barham, who had accidentally swallowed a piece of pear core that got into his windpipe on October 28, 1844. Despite the "professional" advice and the very painful and "highest quality" treatments of the time being given freely to him by Doctors Roberts and Scott, and by the eminent surgeon Mr. Coulson, for "violent vomiting", "inflamed throat", and catching "a cold" in April 1845, Barham died.

"Medicinal" croton oil was supplied in the California Genocide to dying Indian groups.The California Indians, a clever satire on the government's dealings with its Indian wards. From his Crusoe's island ... 1864, p. 284-308, Publication date 1919? John Ross Browne, 1821-1875 https://archive.org/details/californiaindians00browrich/page/8/mode/2up accessed 30 March 2023

In Thomas Wolfe's 1929 novel Look Homeward Angel, 18-year-old Steve Gant and a friend sneak into neighbors' barn. In the barn, Steve and his friend find a liquor bottle that the husband hid from the wife; they drink the entire bottle. For revenge, the husband refills the bottle with croton oil. When Steve and his friend return to the barn and find the bottle refilled, they drink from it. This time they get very sick.

In John Steinbeck's novel East of Eden, published in 1952, Kate uses it to murder Faye and inherit her whorehouse. Faye is poisoned with a combination of first strychnine (unsuccessfully) and then two drops of croton oil, on a salad of home-canned beans, mimicking accidental botulism poisoning. To allay suspicion, Kate also poisons herself with cáscara sagrada which gives the same cathartic symptoms, but to a non-fatal degree.{{Cite book

|title=Critical Companion to John Steinbeck

|author=Jeffrey D. Schultz

|author2=Luchen Li

|chapter=East of Eden

|page=68

|isbn=1438108508

|year=2005

|publisher=Infobase Publishing

}}{{Cite book

|title=East of Eden

|year=1986

|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780140049978

|url-access=registration

|last=Steinbeck |first=John

|authorlink=John Steinbeck

|chapter=21:4

|publisher=Penguin Books

|isbn=978-0-14-004997-8

}} Steinbeck also alludes to croton oil in In Dubious Battle, chapter 7.{{cite book

|first=John |last=Steinbeck |authorlink=John Steinbeck

|others=Introduction and notes by Warren French

|page=99

|title=In Dubious Battle

|isbn=0-14-30-3963-6

|lccn=92-10702

|location=New York, New York

|publisher=Penguin Books

|year= 2006 |orig-year =1936}}

In the movie They Rode West, released in 1954 and starring Robert Francis, an Army post's previous physician was widely disliked because he frequently prescribed croton oil for the troops.

In the 1966 movie El Dorado starring John Wayne, cayenne pepper, hot mustard, ipecac, asafoetida, croton oil, and gunpowder are the ingredients in an emetic administered to the drunken sheriff J. P. Harrah (Robert Mitchum) to sober him up and prevent him from drinking for the foreseeable future. Arthur Hunnicutt's character Bull expresses great surprise that the extract's use will be risked.

In Bernard Cornwell's 1994 historical fiction Copperhead, the second book of The Starbuck Chronicles, Nate Starbuck is force fed croton oil over a number of days whilst being interrogated by the Confederate authorities after he is accused of being involved in the attempted passing of sensitive military information to the Union.{{Cite book|title=Copperhead|last=Bernard.|first=Cornwell|date=1994|publisher=HarperCollinsPublishers|isbn=0060177667|edition=1st |location=New York, NY|oclc=28584240}}

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Category:Vegetable oils