num_pages: 304
description: The story of poison is the story of power. For centuries royal families have feared the gut-roiling vomit-inducing agony of a little something added to their food or wine by an enemy. To avoid poison they depended on tasters unicorn horns and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. Servants licked the royal familys spoons tried on their underpants and tested their chamber pots.Ironically royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics medications and filthy living conditions. Women wore makeup made with mercury and lead. Men rubbed turds on their bald spots. Physicians prescribed mercury enemas arsenic skin cream drinks of lead filings and potions of human fat and skull fresh from the executioner. The most gorgeous palaces were little better than filthy latrines. Gazing at gorgeous portraits of centuries past we dont see what lies beneath the royal robes and the stench of unwashed bodies; the lice feasting on private parts; and worms nesting in the intestines.In The Royal Art of Poison Eleanor Herman combines her unique access to royal archives with cutting-edge forensic discoveries to tell the true story of Europes glittering palaces: one of medical bafflement poisonous cosmetics ever-present excrement festering natural illness and sometimes murder.
language: English
title: The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul
publisher: St. Martin's Press