A new exhibition curated by University of Aberdeen students will examine the role dosage plays in turning substances from a part of our diets or healthcare to a deadly poison.

‘Toxic Relationships: The Dose Makes the Poison’ will open online and with a highlights display in the University’s Sir Duncan Rice Library on August 16.

The exhibition has been created by University of Aberdeen Museum Studies postgraduate who students have spent the summer developing the concept and selecting objects from the institution’s extensive collections.

The subject is inspired by a quotation from the pioneering Renaissance physician Paracelsus, who stated that “All things are poison, and nothing is without poison; the dosage alone makes it so a thing is not a poison,” which survives as an adage – ‘The Dose Makes the Poison’ - still used in contemporary toxicology.

The exhibition examines the role dosage plays in the effects of poisonous substances in four distinct themes: Poisons and Food, Poisons and Healthcare, Poisons for Pleasure and Beauty, and Poisons and Conflict.

John Nolan, one of the exhibition curators, says the team started with the objective to have visitors re-examine their understanding of poisons and the varied roles they play in human society.

He said: “We wanted visitors to question how they interact with and understand poisons in their lives, from the obviously benign caffeine dose in a cup of tea up to the obviously harmful arsenic dose in an assassin’s cup.

“Similarly we explore the opium poppy and its pharmaceutical derivatives like morphine where the difference between medically vital pain relief and fatal overdose is one of dosage.”

The students sourced their exhibition’s objects by venturing into the stores of the University’s extensive museum collections.

Curator Ceri Gauton believed this to be one of the most crucial aspects of the exhibition process. She added: “Visiting the store rooms is a privilege available to only a few students each year, which highlights the importance of the display of these artefacts to public education.” 

While the entire exhibition will be visible online, a selection of objects will be available for public viewing in a display case in Sir Duncan Rice library across from the café. Some of the items in the physical display will include a historic opium pipe and tea brick, as well as Vietnamese snake wine ‘seized at either Aberdeen harbour or airport’. 

Other items sourced from collections are only available in the online exhibition as they require special storage due to their hazardous nature, such as an early 20th century radium compress and mercury thermometer as well as a sample of the notoriously toxic arsenic ore.

This exhibition will be run until February 2025 and can be viewed online at www.abdn.ac.uk/toxic