The doctors and the flower

I recalled with horror the story of the contest of doctors:

One of the two doctors competing in the presence of their sultan - the one often depicted in pink - made a poison green pill strong enough to fell an elephant which he gave to the other doctor, the one in the navy-blue caftan. That doctor first swallowed the poisonous pill, and afterward, swallowed a navy-blue antidote that he'd just made. As could be understood from his gentle laughter, nothing at all happened to him. Furthermore, it was now his turn to give his rival a whiff of death. Moving ever so deliberately, savouring the pleasure of taking his turn, he plucked a pink rose from the garden, and bringing it to his lips, inaudibly whispered a mysterious poem into its petals. Next, with gestures that bespoke extreme confidence, he extended the rose to his rival so he might take in its bouquet. The force of the whispered poem so agitated the doctor in pink that upon bringing the flower to his nose, which bore nothing but its regular scent, he collapsed out of fear and died. - Orhan Pamuk's MY NAME IS RED