Poison dress

The tale known as "The Poison Dress", or "Embalmed Alive" features a dress that has in some way been poisoned. This is a recurring theme throughout legends and folk tales of various cultures, including ancient Greece, Mughal India, and the United States. Although lacking evidence suggesting that some American urban legends are directly linked to the classical tales, they share several common motifs.

In Greek mythology, when Jason left the sorceress Medea to marry Glauce, King Creon's daughter, Medea took her revenge by sending Glauce a poison dress and a golden coronet, also dipped in poison. This resulted in the death of the princess and, subsequently, the king, when he tried to save her.

The Shirt of Nessus is the shirt smeared with the poisoned blood of the centaur Nessus, which was given to Hercules by Hercules' wife, Deianira. Deianira had been tricked by Nessus into believing that his blood would ensure that Hercules would remain faithful. According to Sophocles' tragedy The Women of Trachis, Hercules began to perspire when he donned the shirt, which soon clung to his flesh, corroding it. He eventually threw himself onto a pyre on Mount Oeta in extreme agony and was burnt to death.

Numerous tales of poison khilats (robes of honour) have been recorded in historical, folkloric, and medical texts of British Indianists. Gifts of clothing were common in major life-cycle rituals in pre-industrial India, and these stories revolve around fears of betrayal, inspired by ancient custom of giving khilats to friends and enemies as demonstrations of a social relationship or a political alliance.

In 1870, Norman Chevers, M.D., a Surgeon-Major to the Bengal Medical Service, authored Manual of Medical Jurisprudence for India, describing unusual crimes involving poisons native to India. The book included three cases of poison khilat death, attributing the cause of one of the deaths to lethal vesicants impregnating the fabric of the robe and entering the victim's sweat pores.

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