frequently developed into poisoning. The philtres were to a large
extent the same as those which the Romans had used. Opium, belladonna,
datura, _Cannabis Indica_, and arsenic were capable of producing
astonishing effects, and there was but little chance of detection
except the chance which was just as likely to result in the conviction
of an innocent as a guilty person. Poisons, or at least the terror
of them, played a considerable part in the history of Italy in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the country acquired
the nickname of Venenosa Italia. Even earlier the famous Venetian
“Council of Ten” was believed to have made a systematic business
of assassination by poison. It employed experts and had a regular
tariff--so much for a king, so much for a duke and downwards, which
was allowed, plus expenses. The crime having been accomplished, the
books of the Council recorded the fee, and the single word “factum” was
added. The Medicis and the Borgias, and other of the great aristocrats
of the nation are supposed to have kept skilled poisoners in their
pay. Giambaptista Porta, Mercurialis, and other scientific men wrote
treatises on toxicology as it was understood at the period, coloured
with exaggerated fancies such as would impress the common public, and
tempt the criminally inclined. Porta, for example, describes the “magic
unction” which witches were believed to employ. It was this which
gave them power to fly through the air. He attributes this virtue to
belladonna. With dulcamara they made a drugged cheese which they gave
to travellers, and which had the effect of inducing the victims to
fancy themselves beasts of burden. In this condition the adepts could
set them to any work they wanted done, and, this performed, they gave
them an antidote which restored them to their proper senses.
CREDULITY IN REGARD TO POISONS.
Terror of poisons became epidemic in many countries, and eager
credulity welcomed any alleged antidote. Ambrose Paré relates an
incident in which he was an actor. He, a Protestant, was principal
physician to Charles IX, the wretched author of the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew. His story of the experiment which that king had made
with a bezoar stone is related on page 18. There was also an Archduke
Ferdinand of Austria who in the same century invented an antidote to
poisons. It was composed of sapphire, hyacinth, emerald, ruby, and
garnet. He also, according to Matthiolus, tried an experiment similar
to the one narrated by Paré. A Bohemian, condemned to be hanged,
was given 2 grains of arsenic. In four hours he had become livid,
prostrate, and apparently dying. He was given a dose of Ferdinand’s
powder in a glass of white wine, and recovered. Matthiolus also states
that Pope Clement VII made such experiments on condemned criminals.
In the reign of Henry VIII of England in 1530 an Act was passed making
the crime of poisoning punishable by boiling alive. This was enacted
in consequence of several deaths believed to have been due to poisons
which had occurred in the household of the Bishop of Rochester. In 1542
it is recorded in the chronicles of the time that a young woman named
Margaret Davie was “boyled alive in Smithfield” for having poisoned
persons in three houses in which she had lived. The savage punishment
was reduced to hanging in 1547 in the reign of Edward VI. In Queen
Elizabeth’s reign in 1598 two men were hanged on a charge of having
placed poison in her saddle.
Italian poisoners are alleged to have found abundant employment in
France. Catherine de Medici took with her to Paris her astrologer,
Cosmo Ruggieri, and the people believed that he was responsible for
the death of Charles IX. The ambitious queen has found many defenders,
but the fiend capable of planning the massacre of St. Bartholomew may
support a few extra crimes. Exili went to Paris in the next century
with the reputation of having poisoned 150 persons in Rome. Michelet
says this miscreant had been in the employment of Marie Olympia, Queen
of Rome under Innocent X, and implies that it was on her account that
he exercised his chemical skill. He had also been in the service of
Queen Christina of Sweden, but this employment was apparently not a
criminal one. The latter queen had only engaged Exili to instruct her
in alchemy. It was from this teacher that the famous poisoners of
Paris were alleged to have learned their arts. It is not possible,
however, to ascertain the limits of exaggeration in the accounts which
gossiping chroniclers give of that epoch. Royal edicts were issued
forbidding “all sorts of sorcery or magic, divinations, philtres,
invocations of demons, drinks to win love, enchantments to trouble the
air or excite hail or tempests, to destroy the fruits of the earth or
the milk of beasts, mathematics [which meant astrology], auguries, and
interpretations of dreams.” But though the practice of the “diabolic
arts” was punishable by death, it flourished abundantly, but it is not
necessary to accept the estimate of a diarist named L’Estoile, who,
describing the execution of a witch named La Miraille in 1587, stated
that the number of such persons in Paris at that date exceeded thirty
thousand.
Perfumery and the publication of almanacks were businesses which
covered many of the malfeasances struck at in the edict just quoted,
and no doubt there was a widespread belief in the miraculous
toxicological skill of the fortune tellers, who naturally wished their
predictions to be verified. “Tasters” were employed in the houses of
the wealthy, dishes of “electron” which it was believed would tarnish
if poisons were placed on them, and Venetian glass, which was warranted
to fly into atoms if the wine poured into it had been contaminated,
were in frequent use. As Rogers has written
Brave men trembled if a hand held out
A nosegay or a letter, while the great
Drank only from the Venice glass that broke,
That shivered, scattering round it as in scorn
If aught malignant, aught of thine was there,
Cruel Tophana.
But probably nine-tenths of the crimes suspected were the mere result
of the disordered fancies of the age. Knowing as we do on what
frivolous evidence women were condemned as witches, it is permissible
to be sceptical in regard to the testimony received by the frightened
judges when one of these notorious criminals came before them. Nor are
the alleged confessions of the women themselves necessarily conclusive.
The so-called witches often supplied details of their negotiations
with Satan, and of their Sabbatic excursions; and hysterical women in
all ages have been addicted to the relation of fictitious narratives
circumstantially describing both their vicious and their virtuous
exploits. The rapid putrefaction of a corpse was considered to be
sufficient evidence that the cause of death had been poison, though it
is likely that the poisons then in use would have tended to preserve
the body.
THE MARCHIONESS OF BRINVILLIERS
was one of the most interesting of the historic poisoners. She was the
daughter of the civil lieutenant of Paris, Dreux d’Aubray, and her
career as a criminal coincides with the early years of Louis XIV’s
reign. She is described as elegant, “petite,” sweet in her disposition,
and modest in her demeanour. According to her own confessions, produced
at her trial, sometimes admitted, and sometimes denied by her (and
characterised by Michelet as confused and impossible, and probably
composed under the influence of fever), she commenced her career
of crime at the age of 7 years by incestuous intercourse with her
brother. She accused herself also of arson. She married the Marquis de
Brinvilliers when she was about 20, and after helping him to dissipate
their joint fortune, she obtained an order of separation as far as
property was concerned, but continued to live with him as well as with
his intimate friend, a sinister person who called himself Ste. Croix,
and professed to have been a cavalry officer. His real name was Godin,
and Michelet, who investigated all the court documents dealing with the
case, makes him apparently the agent, and ultimately the victim, of an
arch-fiend of the name of Penautier, a cleric who at least profited
largely by the sudden deaths of various persons. He describes Ste.
Croix as a person of austere manners and as the author of some ascetic
books. Penautier was never formally accused, and it is not easy to
disentangle the intrigues associated with the case. Whatever these may
have been, Madame’s father, disgusted with the scandal created, got
Ste. Croix placed in the Bastille. There it is alleged he met with the
notorious Italian poisoner, Exili, and learned from him a number of
poison secrets, though it is doubtful if the art was a new one to him.
Perhaps Penautier got him released; anyhow he went in to the Bastille
poor, and came out rich. He married and set up a fine establishment.
But he still continued his liaison with the marchioness. During his
imprisonment that lady had occupied herself in visiting and consoling
patients in the hospitals. Now, according to the usual story, she
made use of them by giving them poisoned confectionery, and watching
the effects, merely for practice. Then she began to dose her father.
His illness lasted eight months, his murderess nursing him tenderly
meanwhile. Two brothers were also victims, and then she planned the
death of her husband, but according to Mme. de Sévigné her accomplice,
Ste. Croix, saved him by providing an antidote. The marquis lived to
see his wife punished, but was one of those who exerted himself to
get a pardon for her. Ste. Croix next died suddenly, in consequence,
it is said, of his accidentally dropping a glass mask which he wore
when compounding his poisons. This story, says Michelet, is a fable.
A case of poisons in packets was found in his rooms, each neatly
labelled with its effects. These, it was alleged, were addressed to the
marchioness, who managed to escape to England, Penautier giving her
letters of credit, says Michelet. Michelet says the packets of poison
were addressed to Penautier. The marchioness was soon after taken at
a convent at Liège by a detective who, pretending to be an Abbé, made
love to her and induced her to go for a walk with him, when lie handed
her over to his men, who took her to Paris. She was tortured (only
formally, says Michelet), convicted, marched to Notre Dame with a rope
round her neck to make the “amende honorable,” then decapitated, and
her body burned.
One of the witnesses at her trial declared that the marchioness once
showed her a little box containing some white stuff, and said there
were a number of successions in that little parcel. The witness said
she was the daughter of an apothecary and recognised that the substance
shown her was sublimate.
It has been discussed by experts whether the poison on which Ste.
Croix and his mistress chiefly relied was arsenic or sublimate. Most
likely it was arsenic. A certain Guy Simon, an apothecary, was employed
to experiment with it, and to discover its composition if possible.
His report is worth quoting at some length as an illustration of the
condition of toxicological science at that period, and incidentally of
the simple faith in the almost miraculous powers of the poisoners which
evidently possessed all classes at that time.
According to Chapuis (“Traité de Toxicologie”), Simon at first dropped
a little of the liquor in the phials on oil of tartar and sea water,
but nothing was precipitated. Then he digested some of it in a mattrass
on a sand-bath, but on distilling it no substance of acid or acrid
taste was yielded, and no fixed salts were left. Having poisoned a
pigeon, a dog, and a fowl with the liquid, he could only discover on
opening the dead bodies a little clotted blood in the ventricule of the
heart. Some of the powder deposited by the liquid was given to a cat
which vomited for half an hour and then died.
Simon explains that poisons generally sink to the bottom of water, and
when tested by fire the innocent part is dissipated and only the acrid
and piquant principle remains. But this poison of Ste. Croix’s, floated
on water, and tried by fire, left only something sweet and innocent.
It in fact ruled the elements, and killed animals without leaving
any trace. Utterly baffled, the expert concludes: “It is a terrible,
diabolic, intangible (_insaissable_) poison.”
TOFANA.
About the same time the woman Tofana was selling her Aquetta di
Napoli in Italy, but she was not brought to justice until 1709,
when she confessed to the Pope and the Emperor Charles VI that her
drops contained arsenic, and that by them she had caused the deaths
of more than six hundred persons. The Emperor repeated her story to
his physician, Garelli, by whom it was communicated to Hoffmann, who
published it in his “Rational Medicine.” She preferred to prepare her
drops by rubbing arsenic into the broken joints of a hog just killed
and then collecting the juice. Tofana took refuge in a convent and
lived for some twenty years after her condemnation. A letter from the
English Secretary of State to the Commissioners of Customs, dated July
29, 1717, is on record, cautioning them against admitting a liqueur
called Aqua Tufania from Italy, as accounts of its dangerous character
had been received from the British envoys at Naples and Genoa.
THE CHAMBRE ARDENTE.
After the execution of the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, secret
poisoning, far from being suppressed, appears to have become almost
fashionable. The Government at least pretended to believe in widespread
conspiracies. It may have been a political trick, as has been alleged,
to get rid of some inconvenient opponents; but, however this may have
been, a special commission was appointed by the French Government to
inquire into the truth of certain rumours, and this commission acquired
the title of the Chambre de Poisons, or Chambre Ardente. Louis XIV
consented to the institution of this special court on learning that the
notorious Ste. Croix, the coadjutor of Mme. de Brinvilliers, had at
one time nearly secured the position of maître d’hôtel in his palace
at Versailles. It principally concerned itself with the revelations
made by two women who called themselves La Voisin and La Vigoureux,
who with an unfrocked priest, who had assumed the name of Le Sage, had
carried on a fortune-telling business of enormous extent in the city.
They claimed the power of exhibiting the devil to their clients, and
it was charged against them that they had sold a powder of succession
to those who would pay for it. Many highly connected aristocrats were
implicated, and some faced the commission while others left the country
rather than expose themselves to the shame of exposure. La Voisin had
kept records of her business, but those which were produced displayed
rather the ridiculous than the criminal side of the conspiracy. The
Duchesse de Foix had come to her for bosoms; Madame de Varsi wanted
hips. Others had paid her fancy prices for petitions written with
a special ink guaranteed to make them loved by the king. La Voisin
was extremely insolent to her judges, and apparently she and her
accomplices were all sentenced to be burned. According to Voltaire the
sentence was executed in the case of all of them; but the account given
by Madame de Sévigné, and by historians who lived nearer the period, go
to show that the death punishment was only inflicted on La Voisin.
NEGRO CÆSAR’S ANTIDOTE.
In Prestwich’s “Dissertation on Poisons” (1775) an extract is given
from the “Carolina Gazette” of May 9, 1750 stating that the General
Assembly, the governing body of the colony, had authorised the
publication of “Negro Cæsar’s Cure for Poison.” The General Assembly
had purchased Negro Cæsar’s freedom, and granted him £100 a year for
life as the price of this formula. It consisted of roots of plantain
and wild horehound (? of each) 3 oz. boiled together in two quarts of
water down to 1 quart and strained. Of this the patient was to drink
one-third every morning fasting for three consecutive mornings. Certain
conditions of diet were laid down, and it was quaintly added that if
after the three days’ treatment no benefit had resulted it was “a sign
that the patient has either not been poisoned, or has been by such
poison as Cæsar’s antidote will not remedy.”
ARSENIC EATING.
About the middle of the 19th century some discussion took place in
various popular and medical journals in reference to the alleged
practice of eating arsenic in Styria and the neighbouring countries.
Drs. Christison, Swaine Taylor, and Pereira were somewhat more than
sceptical, but several doctors and others wrote confirming the
statements from their personal knowledge. One of the most notable
testimonies was contributed by Dr. Craig Maclagan of Edinburgh in the
“Edinburgh Medical Journal” (1865). Dr. Maclagan had visited Styria
and had introductions to several doctors in that country who had
reported cases known to them. Two men were brought to Dr. Maclagan at
the village of Liegist in Middle Styria, and in his presence took, one
about 4½ and the other 6 grains of white arsenic. Dr. Maclagan brought
home some of the substance which the Styrian doctor had given to these
men, and on testing it found it to be genuine white arsenic. He also
brought back some samples of the urine voided by the men some time
after eating the arsenic, and found in it distinct evidence of the
presence of the poison. The arsenic was taken by the men on a piece
of bread, and in one case was washed down with a draught of water.
How extensive was the habit, Dr. Maclagan could not say. The peasants
called it Hydrach or Huttereich; the correct word was said to be
hutten-rauch, furnace smoke. One of the men took his dose about twice
a week, the other generally once a week. They had of course begun
with doses of less than a grain. It was understood to be a tonic and
stimulant, and to aid the respiration in climbing. It was also believed
to promote sexual desire. Having acquired the habit the occasional dose
was much missed if omitted for long.
IMMUNITY.
The modern employment of serums in the treatment of zymotic diseases
goes a long way towards explaining the fact of the immunity of
individuals in respect to bacterial poisons. But the possibility of
immunity against such poisons as arsenic, opium, or serpent venom
appears to rest on a different basis. In 1896 Professor (now Sir)
Thomas R. Fraser, M.D., F.R.S., reported to the Royal Institution a
long investigation dealing with the alleged resistant power of certain
tribes or sects in India, Africa, &c., who can suffer the bites of
unquestionably venomous snakes without becoming seriously affected.
After quoting numerous reports from old and recent works showing that
this immunity is an actual fact, Professor Fraser described a long
series of experiments extending over many years with venom which he
had obtained from India, America, Africa, and Australia. The venom, he
stated, is a complex substance and is not a ferment. Ascertaining the
minimum lethal dose for each animal he experimented on frogs, cats,
rabbits, guinea pigs, and other animals, and beginning with one-tenth,
one-fifth, or one-half of that dose, and gradually increasing it, he
found it possible to administer four or five times, and in the case
of rabbits up to even fifty times the lethal dose. From the immunised
animal a serum was prepared which was antidotal in very minute
quantities if mixed with the venom, but if administered separately by
hypodermic injection, though at the same moment with the venom, some
twelve and a half times as much was found to be necessary, and it was
estimated for a normal bite of an average man no less than 11½ ounces
would have to be administered hypodermically soon after the bite to
prevent probably a fatal result. The most interesting observation
was that the poison taken into the stomach was almost innocuous, and
yet exercised a protective effect. In many of the narratives given
by travellers describing the feats of the snake charmers it has been
related that they will squeeze the venom from the serpent’s mouth and
swallow it. This would evidently be one of their methods of rendering
themselves proof against the poison when injected by a bite. Professor
Fraser’s paper is published in full in “Nature” April 16 and 23, 1896.
The author gives his reasons for believing that the action of the
antidote is chemical.
MODERN TOXICOLOGY.
Systematic and scientific investigation of alleged poisoning was
scarcely known before the end of the eighteenth or the beginning of
the nineteenth centuries. The advance of chemical and physiological
knowledge, however, was soon applied to the more certain detection of
the criminal use of toxic agents. Orfila’s “Traité de Toxicologie,”
published in 1814, the result of a multitude of experiments, was
the work which led the way in the establishment of exact tests. Dr.
Swaine Taylor in England, Sir Robert Christison in Scotland, Casper
in Germany, and a host of other medical chemists pursued the subject,
and gradually toxicology reached an assured position. How slow was this
attainment may be gathered from the testimony of an expert in a French
murder trial in 1823 that globules of fatty mutton had been mistaken
for white arsenic.
To Marsh’s arsenic test, made known in 1836, may be traced the
practical fall of the poison which for so many centuries had reigned
supreme among the deadly agents employed by the most cowardly but
most dreaded of the tribe of assassins. The power of proving the
presence of the metal which was afforded by the method then set forth
brought out the chemical expert, and led to angry controversies. The
skilled experimenter was apt to be very confident of his results, and
naturally others who claimed to be as skilful as himself disputed his
conclusions. Theories of the almost universal diffusion of arsenic were
vigorously maintained, and on one occasion in France, in 1839, when
Orfila had demonstrated the presence of arsenic extracted from the
organs of the person supposed to have been poisoned, Raspail undertook
to extract as much from the judge’s armchair.
Meantime the resources of the poisoners had been vastly extended by the
discovery of the alkaloids. Many of these substances possessed extreme
toxic power, and the invention of the means of detecting them was
necessarily a gradual process. It was attained, though; and it may be
asserted that at present either by chemical or physiological tests the
recognition of the administration of any of the dangerous alkaloids is
as certain as is that of the metallic poisons.
About the year 1870 a new complication occurred when an Italian
chemist named Dr. Selmi proved that putrefactive animal matter and
certain bacteria yielded alkaloidal products, often poisonous, to which
the name of ptomaines was given. Selmi was engaged as an expert in the
investigation of a case in which it was suspected that an individual
had been poisoned. A product was obtained, apparently an alkaloid, but
which Selmi could not identify with any known vegetable substance.
He came to the conclusion that it was of animal origin, and after
a long series of experiments he proved his theory. Several eminent
toxicologists at first asserted that ptomaines could be distinguished
from vegetable alkaloids by the property of yielding Prussian blue with
ferric salts. This test, however, proved fallacious as several series
of vegetable alkaloids, notably the pyridic and the allylic, gave the
same reaction. The distinction between animal and vegetable alkaloids
is a delicate one, and has to be established by an accumulation of
chemical evidence.
Leucomaines, which are also alkaloidal products, are distinguished from
ptomaines by being formed in the body from living tissues, as a result
of their activity. These were first separated by Armand Gautier in
1886. Their constitution is more complex than is that of the ptomaines,
but they are not generally of a poisonous character.
XXIII
PHARMACY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
“The advance in every section of chemistry during this century
(the 19th), and especially during the latter half of it, has
literally been by leaps and bounds. Although practically a
creation of our own time, no branch has been more fruitful in
result, in suggestion, or in possibility, than that of organic
analysis.”
(SIR THOMAS E. THORPE:--“Essays in Historical Chemistry,” 1894.)
Three great achievements characterise the pharmacy of the nineteenth
century, namely, the discovery of alkaloids in its early years, of
anæsthetics in the middle period, and of synthetic organic products in
its later years.
ALKALOIDS.