Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-06-14
POISONING As an ART.
TERRIBLE CAREER OF THE MARQUIsE
DE BRINvILLIERs.
The Cup of Cold Poison Has Always Pos
sessed CURIOUS Fascination
Notable Prisoners.

The art of poisoning appears to have
possessed curious fascination for the hui
man mind from the earliest ages. When
the world was quite young and the desire
to poison was unassisted by scientific re-
search, simple but fatal weapons, such as
hemlock, deadly nightshade, the berries OF
the yew tree or the seeds of the common
laburnum were adopted.
The natives of the East and West Indies
resort to opium, tobacco and principally to
cocculus Ca berry little larger than pea,
with dark-brown exterior inclosing
wrinkled shell and yellowish, oily seed)
to pay off old grudges. In Bengal the
thugs are supposed to employ decoction
of datura. or ordinary thorn apple, to
stupefy before killing or robbiug their vic
tins: and another decoction of this plant
is frequently used by Mussulmans, produc-
ing short and pleasurable frances, but
speedily bringing about death; while datur-
inc, which is probably one of the strongest
narcotic poisons known, is freely employed
in Africa, and from it comes the fatal "dri"
of the gypsies, according to poison lore.
Among the red Indians the poison skill
fully extracted from the fangs of the cobra
capello is said to be the means of sending
an enemy to the "happy hunting grounds"
Poisoning on the European continent
was brought to the highest perfection
about the fifteenth or sixteenth century,
and at one time became veritable cpl
demic in England, SO much SO that dab
bling in this devilish art was ordered to be
punished by the horrible death of being
boiled.
Universal history hands us down the
Boreias as heading the list of remarkable
poisoners and to be regarded with horror
by mankind; but bad as they were, they
were surely not so detestable as the mis-
creants, who, to serve some selfish trivial
end, or from greed of vengeance or jeal-
ousy, administer in cold blood the treach-
erous death-cup and watch with sympa-
thetic faces the death-throes of the unsus-
pectiDg victims.
Awful as the assertion seems, it is a pos
tive fact that poisoning has far stronger
fascination for women than it has for men.
Women, whom we invest with softer
hearts and more gentle feelings than the
other sex, have more frequently committed
this especial crime with an appalling sang
froid, which has, without doubt, tended to
elude all suspicion.
How many trusting but uninteresting
husbands, how many handsome but tickle
lovers were dispatched in the twirling of
an eye into eternity by the draught pro-
vided by Spara, the old Roman fortune tel
ler-a potent, infallible draught which
quickly grew so popular that it was sold
for two centuries freely, finally under the
agreeable name of 'Manna of st. Nicola"
Stories wonderful and predetermined are
told us as to the real mode ofpreparing this
celebrated poison; for instance, the saliva
of human being driven almost crazy by
continuous tickling of the soles of the feet
was one of the principal ingredients in the
composition; also that the foam on a rabid
dogs tongue.was an essential adjunct 1t
is any way an indisputed fact that this
same aqua di perugia, no matter of what it
was composed, killed over six or seven
hundred persons in an incredibly short
space of time.
Poisoning came to climax in France
under the fourteenth Louis, when the
women La Voisin and La Vigoureux piled
the trade qnite undisturbed-and it was
many years before they met their Just due
by being burned alive. And just before
the same period the well-known Cardinal
de Bongy rid himself of his numerous
creditors by poisoning, escaping through
Church influence all punishment forhis
crime.
To show the taste for poisoning that ex-
listed at this time We can quote the soldier
who, on being told off to rid the Duke of
Guise of an enemy by assassination, de-
mu red to this method of killing, saying
thu ne was quite willing to poison the in
dix ciual in question. About 1910, too, the
famous, or rather infamous, Marquise de
Brayilliers came prominently to the FORE
History gives her as an anomalystical be-
ing enough-a rare compound Of cruelty,
passion and piety-a cool and smiling
murderess, bearing brave front and placid
brow to hide black heart-and yet al
most bigot in her creed.
Under guise of charity she moved
among the sick and poverty-stricken, an APP
parent angel of goodness, utteling divine
precepts and words of comfort to the ac-
tual victims of her fiendish art-for to
test the diabolical connection called "suc-
cession powder" she carried on wholesale
slaughter among the unfortunate inmates
of the Hotel Dieu, and. having thoroughly
convinced herself of its efficacy in the de-
struction Of human life. she at once COM
menced to experimentalize on her own
father out OF vengeance for his supposed
share in the incarceration OF St. Croix-.
her lover-in the Bastile.
7. -
this monster in womans loveliest shape
could have deliberately gone on, month
after month, administering the fatal mix
ture interlarded with filial care and hypo-
critical fondness, until, her patience ex-
hausted, she arrived at the apex of her
desire by a double dose.
Though this tragedy occurred centuries
ago, il does not require very vivid imag-
ination TO picture the last hours of the
unfortunate Dreux dAubray, blessing with
his dying breath the devoted attendant in
his mysterious illness. the daughter whose
fair face had bent so tenderly. over his
own, and whose soft, white hand had so
carefully smoothed his pillow.
Once he was buried la belle Marquise,
shielded by her rank, but principally by
her worldwide reputation for goodness
and piety, from suspicion even, went on
her way rejoicing.
She had reyenged the wrongs of her
lover by killing her father
Her designs ON her husband only proved
abortive by the antidotes given him by st.
Croix, who il was believed was 10th to
have the widow thrown on his hands, but
at the same time he assisted her in remov-
ing her brothers and sisters out Of her
path, so that She might be left sole posses
sor of the dAuhray fortune.
After this ensIed life of lavishness, in
trigue and unhoiy orgies, while the Mar
quise de Brinvilliers toDk Paris by storm
with her brilliancy and the beauty that
was 4 revelation.
But murder win out
St. Croix, who had with lnheard-of
callousness made away with life after life,