The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1890-01-10
POISON AND PRISONERS.
Some Of the Deadly Drugs Of the Past
and Those Who Used Them.
1nsidious Working Of Mysterious Compounds
-Hsllish Schsming Of Cowardly Murdsrsrs
in Past Ages-Awful Destruction ofHuman
Life By 1nhuman Intriguers Against 30

In Past Ages-AWful Destruction Of Human
Life BY Inhuman Intrigusrs Against 30
cisty.
The art of poisoning appears to have
possessed a curious fascination for the
human mind from the earliest ages
When the world was quite young and
the desire to poison was unassisted by
scientific research, simple but fatal
weapons, such as hemlock, deadly
n1ghtshade, the berries of the view 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 "a berry little
larger than pea, with dark brown
exterior inclosing a wrinkled shell and
a yellowish. oily seed) to pay off old
grudges. In Bengal the Thugs are
supposed to employ decoction of the
datura, or ordinary thorn apple, to
Supply before killing or robb;ng their
victims; and another decoction of this
plant is frequently used by Mussulmen,
producing short and pleasureable
frances, but speedily bringing about
death; while daturine, which is proba-
bly, one of the strongest narcotic poi
sons known, is freely employed in
Africa, and from it comes the fatal
fdri' OF the gypsies, according to poison
skillfully extracted from the fangs of
the cobra capello is said to be the
means of sending an enemy to the
''happy hunting grounds"
Poisoning in the European continent
was brought to highest perfection
about the sixteenth or seventeenth GEN.
fury, and at one time became a verita-
BILE epidemic in England, so much so
that dabbling in this devilish art was
ordered to be punished by the horrible
death of being boiled.
Universal history hands us down the
Borgias as heading the list of remarka-
BILE prisoners, and to be regarded with
horror by mankind; but bad as they
were surely not so detestible as the
miscreants who, to serve some trivial,
selfish end, or from greed or vengeance
or jealousy, administer, in cold blood,
the treacherous death cup, and watch
with sympathetic faces the death throes
OF their unsuspecting victims.
Awful as the assertion seems. it is a
positive fact that poisoning has a far
stronger fascination for women than it
has for men. Women, whom we in
vest with softer hearts and more gentle
feelings than the other sex, have more
frequently committed this especial
crime with an appalling sang troid,
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
twinkling of an eye into eternity by
the draught provided by Spara, the
old Roman fortune tcller-a potent in
fallible draught which quickly grew so
popular that it was sold for two CEN
turtles freely, finally under the agree
eSOlO Ac1Ao VI Mduud VI OG NlCOlds
This same mixture, which modern
science specifies as aqua di perugia,"
is said to have been as clear as crystal
and entirely tasteless, and to have
possessed the curious property of act
ing always at the given time-a day,
week, or more, according to the will
or plan of the purchaser.
Stories wonderful and problematical
are told us as to the real mode of pre-
pairing this celebrated poison; for in
stance 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 ad-
iunct. It is any way an undisputed
fact that this same aqua di perugia, no
matter of what it was composed, killed
over 600 or 700 persons in an incred-
IDLY short space of time.
A Double Hit