The citizen. (Honesdale, Pa.) 1908-1914, 1911-09-20
ARSENICAL ASSASSINATION.
Historical Criminals Employed POis-
on to Attain Murderous Desires.

OH 10 Altaln MufueIOuS DeSlfeS.
Arsenic as a means of procuring
the death of ones enemies has a
long history. In the fourteenth CEN
tury II was favorite instrument of
the professional poisoner. Charles
the Wicked recommended it to one
of his agents.
Go thou to Paris" he directed;
" do what l tell thee and l will re-
ward thee well. There is a thing
which is called sublimed arsenic. If
a man eat a bit the size of a pea he
will never survive.
. Take it and powder it; and then
thou shalt be in the house of the
King, of the Count de Valois his
brother, the Dukes of Berry, Bur-
gundy and Bourbon, draw near and
betake thyself to the kitchen, to the
larder, to the cellar, or any other
place where thy point can be best
gained, and put the powder in the
soups, meats or wines, provided thou
canst do it secretly; otherwise do it
not"
Two great criminal schools arose
from the moral chaos of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries in Venice and
in other parts of Italy, when even
the State itself sometimes approved
of secret assassination by poison.
Foremost in the use of drugs thus
used was arsenic, says American
Medicine. There is a mass of data
relating to these Italian poisoners.
Tofana the Poisoner.
They became famous for their
knowledge of poisons as we'll as by
the notoriety which came to them
from their associations with the
fiendish Tofana. She was the inven-
tor of one of the most destructive
and most subtle poisons of the per-
iod, aqua Tofana.
This famous murderess, a Sicilian
by birth, in her early years had re-
sided at Palermo, where she was
known to have delved into the Sc
crets of poisons. Later she went to
live in Naples, and by the exercise
of her profession she made such
name for herself that history will
never forget it.
This woman's poison, the aqua To-
fana, was distributed by her espec-
tally to young married women desir-
GUS of ridding themselves of their
spouses. The better to conceal the
nature of her potion she put It up
III ollldll NIdlS iudlhtu hduId Ol
st. Nicholas of Bari" which she or
namented with an image of the
saint.
Quickly the fame of this drug
spread to Rome. The ladies of the
imperial city ayailed themselves of
its use to get rid of obnoxious hus-
bands or to make way for others
more acceptable. In 1863 so many
young husbands died in Rome that
an investigation was started by the
authorities of the city, which result
ed in the discovery of society of
young matrons banded together for
the purpose of poisoning their hus-
bands. These women were under
the direction of one Hieroyma Spara,
pupil of Tofana. Spara and many
of her society were put to death af-
ter confessing, under torture, to
numerous crimes.
In a letter to Hoffman, Garelli,
the physician to Charles the Sixth
of Austria, writes that his sovereign
informed him that while Governor
of Naples, during the trial of To-
fana, he had an opportunity of eX-
amining the documents of the case
and that he found from them aqua
Tofana to be crystalized arsenic in
water. Ihe symptoms OF the poison
ing by this solution as recorded by
Hoffman correspond in detail to
symptoms of arsenic poisoning.
From Italy this poison found its
way into France, where in 1870.
there was another era of secret
poisoning by arsenic. This time it's
perpetrator was not one of the low
er class, but an intimate of the court
of Louis XIV, Maria Margaret, Mar
quise de Brinyilliers. An educated
daughter of the captain of the court
guard, married to an over-indulgent
husband who would not suspect her
fidelity, she fell a ready victim to
the wiles of Villainous soldier, Jean
Baptiste de Gauden, Seigneur de st.
CroiX.
While incarcerated in the Bastile
he was taught the preparation of
poison by a state prisoner named
Eli. After his release from confine-
ment he took to professional poison
ing as a means of filing his Golfers
with gold. He was killed instantly
by the fumes of poison he was pre-
pairing. His domination over the
marquise seems to have been absolute
and she became a jealous accom-