Part 28

It has been shown elsewhere (Vol. I., page 52) how intimate was the connection between ancient pharmacy and poisoning. In Greek the terms came to be almost synonymous, and there is an echo of the same association of ideas in the words Poison and Potion, which a few centuries ago were used in English without much distinction.

The priests of Egypt, the Æsculapians of Greece, and perhaps still more the herbalists of that country and of Italy, necessarily learnt many things from their studies of medicinal plants. They found herbs which would cause sleep, furnish dreams, and confuse the brain. They professed and perhaps believed in their ability to accomplish far more with their philtres than the vegetable world was capable of, but the common people had no means of checking their claims, and such science as there was tended to support them. In the palaces of kings, in the tents of generals, and in all the high places where intrigues, jealousies, and enmities found their fullest scope, pharmaceutical skill was much sought after; in some cases to dispose of rivals, but more usually to counteract the murderous schemes which in those times constituted so large a portion of statecraft. There was nothing the brave men of old dreaded so much as secret poisoning. It is impossible to say how far this crime was practised. Suspicion and terror may have exaggerated its records, but on the other hand it is equally possible that thousands of deaths may have occurred from poisons which were not attributed to that cause.

Hecate and her daughters Medea and Circe figured prominently in Greek legends as inventors and discoverers of poisons. The magic arts for which they were all famous were closely associated with deadly drugs. They were supposed to live in the island of Colchis, the name of which still recalls a vegetable which for many centuries retained the reputation of possessing the most venomous properties. Colchicum was discovered by Medea, but to Hecate is attributed the earliest use of aconite.

Kings studied pharmacy and invented antidotes. Orpheus, the physician and poet, who preceded Æsculapius, wrote a poem on precious stones, in which he relates that Theodomas, son of Priam, King of Troy, had learned how to administer these as antidotes to poisons. The marvellous properties of the antidote invented by Mithridates, King of Pontus, is one of the commonplaces of medical history. Down to the seventeenth century theriaca, emeralds, and bezoar stones were the antidotes to all poisons recognised by the faculty.

BIBLICAL POISONS.

No case of poisoning either suicidal, murderous, or accidental, is alluded to in the Bible, unless we regard the story of the wild gourds (2 Kings, ch. iv, v. 39) as coming within the last description. The suicide by poison of Ptolemeus Macron is mentioned in 2 Maccabees, ch. x, v. 13, but though this was a frequent practice among the Greeks and Romans when the New Testament was written, no allusion to it is found in the sacred writings. It may be that the apostles who include “pharmakeia” among the crimes of the heathen had in mind the degradation of the art to homicidal purposes, but it is more likely that they only intended to denounce its application to the service of lust or its consequences.

The word Rosh occurs eleven times in the Old Testament, and is usually rendered gall, often in association with wormwood. In two instances, however (Hosea, ch. x, v. 4, and Amos, ch. vi. v. 12), it is translated hemlock in the authorised version, and this is retained in the revised version for the passage in Hosea. Apparently the word was a generic one for pernicious or nauseous weeds; but as Rosh also means head some commentators have thought that the poppy was intended.

The word translated poison in Deut. ch. xxxii, v. 24, Job, ch. vi, v. 4, Psalms, lviii, v. 4, and cxl, v. 3, is Chemah, and always means something burning. It is often used to indicate fierce anger. The verse mentioned in Job is obviously a reference to the very ancient practice of dipping arrows into some poison, an application of pharmacy from which we derive our term toxicology.

POISONING IN ROME.

Livy tells the story of the earliest of the poison leagues. He is dependent on older historians for his facts, as the alleged events happened some three centuries before he wrote; about the year 330 B.C. in fact. A number of patricians died one after the other, their illnesses presenting similar symptoms, but the causes of these could not be traced. At last, however, a female slave gave information to the Ediles of a group of twenty Roman ladies of the highest position who, she said, occupied themselves in concocting poisons, and administering them to their husbands or others who had become inconvenient to them. The confederacy was directed by two women named Cornelia and Sergia, and although Livy says 20, some accounts give the number of the conspiratresses as 170, while others total it at 366. Cornelia and Sergia were brought before the magistrates, and indignantly denied that they had done more than prepare wholesome beverages and medicines. On this the slave, whose own life was in jeopardy, demanded that they should themselves be required to take some of these compounds. They were granted permission to consult with their associates before doing this, and in the interval they all poisoned themselves. Livy states that this story is not told by all the contemporary narrators.

Later Roman history leaves little doubt that poisoning became a profession, or rather was frequently associated with the pharmacy of the period, as it had been in Greece. Theophrastus, who wrote about 300 B.C., alludes to a poison prepared from aconite which could be so administered as to take effect at a defined future time, three months, six months, a year, or longer after it was taken, the victim gradually growing weaker. It was perhaps in consequence of this belief that the possession or cultivation of aconite was made a capital offence. Pliny states that Calpurnia Bastia, one of the Catiline conspirators, was poisoned by aconite.

Locusta was one of the noted poison compounders of the Roman empire. She had been condemned to death in the reign of Claudius, but probably by the influence of the Empress Agrippina, she was pardoned and was employed by that infamous woman. Claudius was getting on in years, and was showing more affection for his own son Britannicus than for his stepson Nero, whom at the solicitation of Agrippina he had adopted and made his heir. The empress therefore resolved to get rid of Claudius, but she was afraid to use a suddenly acting agent, and Locusta was ordered to compound something which should produce a fatal effect, but not immediately. It was to be so compounded that it would destroy the emperor’s reason lest in the course of his proposed illness he should take measures to supplant Nero by Britannicus. Locusta had to pretend to be able to fulfil this commission, and the poison she prepared was mixed in a dish of mushrooms. Claudius having eaten some of these was soon taken ill and had to be carried from the table, but as this was what usually occurred at his dinner not much notice was taken of the event. His physician gave him an emetic, and he was in a fair way to recover, but Agrippina, frightened at the possible exposure, employed another minion to apply more of Locusta’s poison on a feather to his throat, under the pretence of making him vomit more. He soon died. Tacitus and Suetonius relate how Nero used Locusta later to help him rid himself of Britannicus, and also of his old tutor Burrhus, who had wearied him with his remonstrances. Locusta was executed in the reign of Galba A.D. 68.

Among other famous Romans believed to have perished by poison were Germanicus and Drusus. Caligula ordered a deadly ointment to be given to an impolitic gladiator named Columbus, who had unwisely worsted the emperor with the fencing foils, to be applied to his wounds. The poor wretch died in consequence. These are only samples of Roman poisonings.

POISONS IN ANCIENT TIMES.

The poisons known to the ancients cannot be with certainty identified. The one to which the power of philtres was principally attributed was mandragora, which was said to produce various hallucinations and temporary madness. It is most likely, however, that in many of the cases where this drug is named the poison actually used was belladonna root. Hannibal, fighting against a large army of African rebels, simulated retreat, but left on the field of battle a quantity of vases of wine in which “mandragora” had been infused. The savages drank the wine, which reduced them to a condition of stupor. Then the Carthaginian hero returned and gained an easy victory over his helpless foes. Henbane seeds infused in wine made the head light, and gave the impression of having travelled through the air. Stramonium, dulcamara, hellebore, opium, Indian hemp, vervain, mezereon, and many other drugs, were in the stock-in-trade of the philtre mongers and conjurers, and the legends related by Pliny and others about the properties possessed by these herbs are sometimes nonsense, but are too often based on their real powers.

There was a ranunculus which grew in Sardinia, which was credited with the power of promoting gaiety. It was called the Herba Sardonica. It occasioned spasmodic contraction of the muscles of the face and so simulated a laugh. Hence our expression “sardonic grin.” The employment of haschish by the Saracen warriors to make themselves fierce and reckless in battle is not a mere legend. The sect who introduced it in the armies of Islam were called hashashin, the origin of our word “assassins.” The reputation of the myrtle as an invigorator of the brain, and its consequent adoption by poets as a garland round their brows, is a sample of a more innocent tradition.

Several of the Greek and Roman medical authors, Galen among others, profess a cautious reticence in regard to poisons. But there is a treatise in existence in verse, by Nicandor, which gives such toxological knowledge as was familiar to the men of science of the second century before the Christian era. Among venomous animals were included salamanders, leeches, toads, cantharides, and the sea-hare (Lepus marinus). The blood of bulls (probably putrefied) was a poison in use by the Athenians. The honey of Heracleus had a certain fame, for it was alleged that the soldiers of Xenophon having regaled themselves with this luxury were all so intoxicated with it that the whole army lay on the field as if they were dead. Next day all recovered. It is supposed to have been a honey extracted from narcotic flowers.

The vegetable poisons known to the ancients have mostly been named. But cherry laurel, elaterium, certain fungi, and smilax, probably our mezereon, should be added. The mineral poisons in more or less use were arsenic, in the form of orpiment and realgar, cinnabar, and metallic mercury, which was reputed to be poisonous. Nicandor alludes to litharge, ceruse, and gypsum. By the last he may have meant quicklime. Berthelot translated from Olympiodorus (sixth century) the description of a process for making white arsenic from the sulphide. The product was called “alum, white and compact.” The animal kingdom furnished the Romans with at least one famous poison which they extracted from the Lepidus marinus (in the Linnean system, Aplysia depilans) which they knew as the sea-horse. According to Philostratus it was by this poison that Domitian removed Titus.

POISONINGS IN THE MIDDLE AGES.

The belief in the skill of the compounders of philtres and mysterious charms grew rather than diminished in the Middle Ages and as alchemy developed. In Sir Walter Scott’s “Talisman,” the tale of the Crusades, the western physician says, “The oily Saracens are curious in the art of poisons, and can so temper them that they shall be weeks in acting upon the party, during which time the perpetrator has leisure to escape. They can impregnate cloth and leather, nay, even paper and parchment, with the most vile and subtle venoms.”

Official records of the trial of a minstrel named Wondreton in Paris, in 1384, give a copy of instructions alleged to have been given to the accused by Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, who had employed this Wondreton to poison the then King of France, Charles VI, his brother, two uncles, and several dukes. The scheme was extraordinarily crude, although Charles the Bad was reputed to be an adept in alchemy. The minstrel was to buy “arsenic sublimat” from the hotels of the apothecaries in Pampeluna, Bordeaux, Bayonne, and other towns through which he would pass. He was to powder this, and get into the kitchens of the eminent persons who were to be his victims, and then, when he could do it with safety, he was to sprinkle some of the powder in the soups and meats served to the masters. Wondreton was arrested before he had done any mischief, and was executed.

King John of England is alleged to have caused Maud Fitzwalter to be killed in the Tower by a poisoned egg because she would not yield to his illicit passion.

The sorcery practised so largely in the Middle Ages must have 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