Evening star., 1922-11-26

form or another was the chief poison
| employed in the evil work of the
| assassins who played so great a part
in the political, social and private
life of men at the dawn of modernity.
1t is quite apparent that arsenic, some
forms of which are practically taste
less. was the favorite drug Of Pope
Alexander VI (Borgia) and his son
Caesar, for these royal killers usually
made away with their enemies by
inviting them to feasts and dosing the
wine cups. Guicciardini recites that
on one occasion Alexander himself
got the poisoned chalice and became
| violently i'll, but was saved because
he knew In time what had happened
and what counter-measures to take.
tiff finally died by the hand Of another
drug user.
The celebrated Toffana. who re-
signed as chief poisoner at Naples a
little later. with the Aqua Toffana or
Acquetta di Napoli. sold in little
phials marked Mamma of st. Nicholas
of Bari" appears to have employed
arsenic extensively also, and her con-
fession on the rack, in which she ad-
mitted the destruction of about 800
persons, mostly the husbands of dis
contented wives made no mention of
more subtle chemicals. Hieronyma
Spara, who piled her Infamous voca-
tion in the reign of a later pontiff.
Alexander VII, was similarly prose-
cuted and failed to reveal any deeper
secret of the poisoner's art.
The most powerful of the arsenic
poisons and now the commonest-
white metallic arsenic. arsenic trioxid
or ratsbane, to use it's various
names-must be taken internally in
considerable quantities. compared to
some other drugs, before til fatal
result can be achieved. 1t is beyond
possibility for this drug to be used
In a ring whose maximum content
tity of white arsenic as could be
placed. even in the largest ring. in
the form of a solution, would prob
ably not kill if swallowed, and if ap-
piled to a cut or abrasion would have
only local effect. Hence, if the
stories of deadly poisonings through
jewelry. through the inhalation of
vapor, through slight external con-
facts and the like. are to be credited,
the investigator must suppose that
the renaissance knew other drugs
than those commonly used by its
murderers. None of the vegetable
poisons seems to offer itself as pos
sibility here and we are forced back
upon animal substances and the
minerals.
x X X X
n AIEITHER prussic (hydro-cyanic)
~ nor cyanic acid was known until
three centuries after the Borgian
period, and 1t is only these sub
stances, in their rarest and most con-
centrated forms, that stand out
among modern chemicals as possi-
bilities. On this line of reasoning,
then, the stories of these ring poison
ings are fictions or the medieval
assassins knew of animal poisons OF
other combinations of noxious sub
stances whose powers have been for
gotten. The possibility of having
used extracts from certain animals,
especially sea creatures, is not to be
denied, for the potency Of some SER
peant venoms remains as a proof of
the power of animal secretions. Nor
is it beyond the range of possibility
that mineral and vegetable poisons
may have been condensed and COM
.bined in some mysterious way by the |
experimenters Of that day, in the
course of whose constant search for
the elixir Of life many strange re-
suits are likely to have been achieved
Another factor needs to be considered
The Renaissance, with its almost total
ignorance Of medicine and its complete
darkness as regards antiseptics and hy-
giene, which matters were then known
only by. the despised and expelled Moors
and Arabs, must have been an age when
poisons, now comparatively harmless,
might have begot deadly results. When
it is remembered that the first physi-.
clans Of the -aga ground Hp xalhies -andl