POISONERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3100, 13 August 1913, Page 76

POISONERS.

A XT) SOME DEADLY POISONS. The thought of •accidental poisoning is far from pleasant, observes a writer in the New York Tribune: but this is an age of poisons, and several of the stocks-in-trade of the professional poisoner of mediieval Rome and Paris are now to bo found in the average medicine chest in tiie form of salves, disinfectants, and lotions. Corrosive sublimate and its twin sister-in-evil, arsenic, were the chief ingredients used by La Toffana. Hieronyma Spa-ra, La Voisin, Saiute Croix, and many others—a most infamous band of human beings, ft seems, indeed, that the noxious charm cast over these two drugs by the professional poisoner has clung to them until the present day. So many cases of accidental poisoning by corrosive sublima'e (bichloride of mercury) are on record that it would require volumes So narrate them. - No Antidote.— Tbit the accidental deaths, and even the suicides, by means of mercury pale when compared with the fate, of the unfortunates who have succumbed to il in_ the hands of the wilful poisoner. No antidote being known, it has ever been popular. When Charles IX heard that an antidote) to corrosive sublimate had been discovered in a substance known as bezoar.

he sent for a certain cook who had committed a slight theft. He resolved to put the matter to the test without further delay, and fed the cook with corrosive sublimate with the generosity tor which his kingly hand was famous, afterwards giving him bezoar in similar quantities. The cook was promptly racked with agony and died with obliging swiftness. T’he antidote was discredited, and the King breathed freely in the knowledge that nis most reliable poison was yet invincible. it is written that three recipes for the preparation of a sure poison are preserved in the "Secreta Secretissima” in the Venetian archives for the years 1540-44. One 'of them shows that a famous mediaeval poison consisted of certain proportions of corrosive sublimate, white arsenic, arsenic trisulphide, and arsenic trichloride —a concoction that would seem sufficiently powerful to blast the heart of a joss oi’ adamant. The infamous Ste. Croix was taught the use of corrosive sublimate with other poisons when imprisoned in the same cell with the notorious Italian Kxili, and Ste. Croix, who was later killed in one of his own noxious experiments, taught his art to the terrible Marquise de Brinilliers, a Frenchwoman of radiant beauty, who slew her father and two brothers, attempted the life of her sister, and sent to the lower world some of people for the simple Iqve of poisoning them for some trivial slight, either real or fancied. Opium, antimony, arsenic, and corrosive sublimate were among the secrets of her trade.

—ln the Middle Ages

But turning from the mecuri.il field, •what a wealth of “poison lore" i-s to bo found in the other poisons of the Middle Ages! It remained for Sejanue, Agrippina, and Nero to add to the lustre of their naim» by one of the earliest recorded uses of the professional pouoner. “Agrippina, she mother of Nero,” Dr Wainwright tells us. “being desirous of disposing of Claudius for political reasons, caused a poison to be prepared by an expert poisoner, Locusta, who had already been condemned to death for her infamous practices, but saved that her nefarious art might be employed. This same Locusta prepared the poison with which Xero despatched Britannicus, the son of Agrippina, and his half-brother, whom his father, Claudius, desired to succeed him as Emperor. This poison, we are told, caused the death of Britannicus as soon as taken. For this service the Emueror pardoned Locusta. rewarded her liberally, and gave her pupils to instruct in her art in order that it might not be lost.”

It is said that this poison was known to the Carthaginians and that it probably Consisted, as did most of the toxins, of such plants at aconite, hemlock, and popnv. Poisons also are said to have been prepared from the bodies of shellfish, particularly a violet-coloured liquid from the juices of a mollusc, that caused swift and certain death. To-day we have a list of death-dealing poisons that would have set the mediaeval sorcerer and poisoner agape with delight and amazement. Many of these jKiisons are used for manufacturing purposes, and are vended by the carload. Many others are in the average home of the average citizen, ranged upon medicine shelves with romance far afield, but with all their old danger remaining. The strangest of all modern poisons, however, is ihe Brazilian Wourahli poison that causes death in three and one-quarter minutes, that has no known antidote, and that will kill by the scratch of an arrowhead that allows the drug to make iris way into the veins. It is used by the aborigines of the Amazon Valley largely for hunting purposes, a-s it leaves the flesh perfectly sweet and wholesome.