A brief history of dope detection in racehorses.

In an age when doping was almost a way of life it was only a short step from the poisoning of man to the poisoning of animals. In classical antiquity there are examples of both doping to win and doping to lose. Diomedes, the son of Aries and Cyrene, fed his horses on human flesh to make them savage and unbeatable, while Medea used an opiate to stupefy the dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece. Although the reference in the book of Maccabees to the use of the juice of grapes and mulberries to rouse the war elephants to battle is probably an imprecise translation, according to Marco Polo there seems little doubt that these animals were given wine for this purpose. It is said that in Roman times *hydromel, a mixture of water and honey, was used to improve the performance of chariot horses.