The Birmingham age-herald. [volume] (Birmingham, Ala.) 1902-1950, 1922-11-26

senic trioxid ratsbane to its various names,
must be taken internally in considerable guam
titles, compared to some other drugs, before the
fatal result be achieved. 1t is beyond posi-
oty for this drug to be used in ring whose
imum content would be few drops. Such guam
tty of white arsenic as could be placed in the
largest ring, in the form Of solution, would prob
ably not kill if swallowed, and if applied to cut,
abrasion would have only local effect. Hence,
elry through the inhalation of vapor, through
slight external contacts and the like 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 possibility here
and we are forced back upon animal substances
and the minerals.
Neither prussic (hydro-cyanc) nor cyanic acid
was known until three centuries after the Borgian
period, and it is only these substances, in their
rarest and most concentrated forms, that stand out
among modern chemicals possibilities On this line
of reasoning, them the stories of these ring poison
ings are fctions the medieval assassins knew
animal poisons other combinations of noxious
substances whose powers have been forgotten. The
possibility of having used extracts from certain
animals, especially sea creatures, is not to be de-
Med for the potency of some serpent venoms re-
mains a proof of the power Of animal
tons. Nor is it beyond the range of possibility
that mineral and vegetable poisons may have been
condensed and combined in some mysterious way
ty the experimenters of that day, in the of
whose constant search for the elixir Of life many
strange results likely to have been achieved
A MOTHER factor needs to be considered. The
IN IL.
Of medicine and its complete darkness as
regards antiseptics and hygiene, which matters
we're then known only by the despised and expelled
Moors and Arabs, must have been an age when
,osons, comparatively harmless, might have
oegot deadly results. When it is remembered that
the first physicians Of the age ground up rubes
and pearls in a mortar and administered their dust
to Pope to save him from disease and when one
ray read in thousand old volumes of the filthy
and disgusting indictments then applied by doc
tors who than leeches and magi-
clans, it is not hard to believe that the treatment
Of men suffering from small doses Of poisons Of
ten did more to hasten their deaths than the drugs
of the poisons.
One other deadly possibility presents itself.
At the close Of the Borgian reign good many
adventures were already returning from voyages
to the newly discovered West Indies. With them
they brought according to Bloch and other
thorities, that dread scourge Of humanity which
the French long called the Italian sickness. This
blood Nisease was then far more deadly than
At present, for it attacked population which had
not been made even partly immune. Eve know
what ravages such mild ailments measles caused
among the innocent Eskimos and South Sea Island
ers) Whether the prisoners Of that period under
stood the contagious nature of this fearful disease
and managed to convey it to selected-vctims by
- ofLo
iewery is certainly matter for grave doubt, yet
the possibility remains.
ON the other hand it seems highly probable that
the students of those days knew something
Of the results of infections, even if they had