Latest / Poison Romance and Poison Mysteries / Poison Romance and Poison Mysteries

Transcript

Poison Romance and Poison Mysteries · Poison Romance and Poison Mysteries

• 0:00
  Prephecies Preface to first edition. In response to the wishes of many who read
• 0:07
  this work when it appeared in serial form, it is now reproduced with much
• 0:12
  additional matter, which I hope may prove of value to those interested in the
• 0:17
  fascinating subject of poisons and the study of toxicology. It has been my endeavor
• 0:24
  to collect, in the following pages the scattered fragments of historic and romantic lore
• 0:30
  connected with poisons from the earliest period, and to recount the stories of some
• 0:36
  notable poison mysteries of ancient and modern times. I am indebted to the works
• 0:42
  of doctor winter Blythe for many facts concerning the poisons of antiquity. C J.
• 0:49
  S. T. Eighteen ninety nine, Preface to new Edition. In
• 0:55
  presenting a new edition of this work to my readers, the opportunity has been
• 1:00
  taken to introduce several new chapters, one of which deals with the poison mystery
• 1:06
  which recently aroused such widespread interest in the United States. In response to suggestions,
• 1:12
  detailed accounts of the Horsford case and the Lambeth poison mysteries have also been
• 1:19
  added. C. J. S. T. End of Prephecies, Chapter
• 1:26
  one, Poisons of antiquity, long before the action of vegetable and mineral substances
• 1:34
  on human beings and animals was known. It is probable that poisonous bodies in
• 1:40
  some form were used by primitive man. When injured in battle by perhaps a
• 1:47
  flint arrow head or stone axe, he sought for something to revenge himself on
• 1:52
  his enemy. In his search after curative remedies, he also found noxious ones,
• 1:59
  which produce duced unpleasant effects when applied to the point of a weapon destined
• 2:05
  to enter the internal economy of an opponent. He doubtless also became aware that
• 2:12
  the spear points and arrow heads on which the blood of former victims had dried
• 2:16
  caused wounds that rapidly proved fatal owing to the action of what we now call
• 2:23
  septic poisons. This probably led to experiments with the juices of plants until something
• 2:30
  of a more deadly character was discovered. This was the very earliest age of
• 2:36
  poisoning, when pharmacy was employed for vicious or revengeful purposes. Thus we find
• 2:43
  that almost every savage nation and people has its own peculiar poison. In Africa,
• 2:50
  the seeds of Strophanthus hispidus or combe a most virulent poison are used for
• 2:58
  this purpose, while explorers tell us that the ancient Pygmy race of Central Africa
• 3:04
  employ a species of red ant crushed to a paste to tip their arrows and
• 3:09
  spears. The South American Indians poison their arrow heads with curari or urari produced
• 3:16
  from a species of Strychnos and other plants, while the Melas and hill tribes
• 3:23
  of India use aconite and other poisonous juices and extracts. The Antiaris toxicaria is
• 3:30
  also used as an arrow poison by the Melas. The bushmen of the South
• 3:37
  African district Kalahari use the juice of the leaf beetle Diamphidia and its larva for
• 3:44
  poisoning their arrowheads. Lewin, who calls the beetle Diamphidia simplex, found in
• 3:51
  its body besides inert fatty acids, a toxalboomin which causes paralysis and finally death.
• 4:00
  According to Berm, the poison from the larvae also belongs to the toxalbuomens,
• 4:04
  and Stark states that it causes the dissolution of the coloring matter of the
• 4:10
  blood and produces inflammation. A halo of mystery sometimes intermixed with romance, has
• 4:17
  hung about the dread word poison from very early times. In the dark days
• 4:23
  of mythology, allusions to mysterious poisons were made in legend and saga. Thus,
• 4:30
  a country in the far north was supposed to be ruled and dominated by
• 4:33
  sorcerers and kindred beings, all of whom were said to be children of the
• 4:39
  sun. Here dwelt Aites, Perces, Hecate, Media, and Circe.
• 4:46
  Hect was the daughter of Pursus and married to Aites, and their daughters were
• 4:50
  Medea and Circe. Aetes and Persis were said to be brothers, and their
• 4:56
  country was afterwards supposed to be colchless. To Hecatae is ascribed the foundation of
• 5:02
  sorcery and the discovery of poisonous herbs. Her knowledge of magic and spells was
• 5:10
  supposed to be unequaled. She transmitted her power to Medea, whose wonderful exploits
• 5:15
  have been frequently described and depicted, and who, by her magic arts,
• 5:19
  subdued the dragon that guarded the Golden Fleece and assisted Jason to perform his famous
• 5:28
  deeds. Hecate's garden is described by the poets as being enclosed in lofty walls
• 5:34
  with thrice folding doors of ebony, which were guarded by terrible forms, and
• 5:40
  only those who bore the leavened rod of expiation and the concealed conciliatory offering could
• 5:46
  enter. Towering above was the temple of the dread Sorceress, where the ghastly
• 5:54
  sacrifices were offered and all kinds of horrible spells worked. Medea was also learned
• 6:00
  in sorcery and an accomplished magician. It is related that after her adventures with
• 6:06
  Jason, she returned with him to Thessaly. On their arrival, they found
• 6:12
  Aeson, the father of Jason, and Peleus, his uncle, who had
• 6:16
  usurped the throne, both old and decrepit. Medea was requested to exert her
• 6:23
  magical powers to make the old man young again, an operation she is said
• 6:28
  to have speedily performed by infusing the juice of certain potent plants into his veins.
• 6:35
  Some years after, Medea deserted Jason and fled to Athens, and shortly
• 6:41
  afterwards married Egeus, king of that city. Egeus had a son by a
• 6:46
  former wife named Theseus, who had been brought up in exile at length he
• 6:53
  resolved to return and claim his parentage. But Medea, hearing of this,
• 6:58
  and for some reason greatly resenting it, put a poisoned goblet into the hands
• 7:02
  of Eegius at an entertainment he gave to Theseus, with the intent that he
• 7:08
  should hand it to his son. At the critical moment, however, the
• 7:13
  king cast his eyes on the sword of Theseus and at once recognized it as
• 7:17
  that which he had delivered to his son when a child, and had directed
• 7:21
  that it should be brought by him when a man, as a token of
• 7:26
  the mystery of his birth. The goblet was at once thrown away, The
• 7:30
  father embraced his son, and Medea fled from Athens in a chariot drawn by
• 7:36
  dragons through the air. Circe's charms were of a more seductive and romantic character.
• 7:44
  She is said to have been endowed with exquisite beauty, which she employed
• 7:48
  to allure travelers to her territory. On their landing, she entreated and enticed
• 7:55
  them to drink from her enchanted cup. But no sooner was the draft swallowed
• 8:01
  than the unfortunate stranger was turned into a hog and driven by the magician to
• 8:07
  her sty, where he still retained the consciousness of what he had been and
• 8:11
  lived to repent his folly. Gula, the patroness of medicine and a divinity
• 8:18
  of the Acadians, was regarded by that ancient people as the mistress and controller
• 8:24
  of noxious poisons as far back as five thousand years b c. According to
• 8:31
  some authorities, the Hebrew word cassaf translated in the Old Testament Scriptures as which
• 8:37
  meant poisoner. Scott states the witches of Scripture had probably some resemblance to those
• 8:45
  of ancient Europe, who, although their skill and power might be safely despised
• 8:50
  as long as they confined themselves to their charms and spells, were very apt
• 8:56
  to eke out their capacity for mischief by the us use of actual poison,
• 9:01
  so that the epithet of sorceress and poisoner were almost synonymous. The oldest Egyptian
• 9:09
  king, Mines and Attilus Philometer, the last king of Pergamus, were both
• 9:15
  learned in the knowledge of the properties of plants. The latter monarch also knew
• 9:20
  something of their medicinal uses, and was acquainted with Henbane, Aconite, hemlock,
• 9:26
  Hellebore, et cetera. Other Egyptian rulers cultivated the art of medicine,
• 9:31
  and there is little doubt that probably through the priests, who were the chief
• 9:35
  practitioners of the art of healing, they gathered a considerable knowledge of the properties
• 9:41
  of many poisonous and other herbs. Prussic acid was known to the Egyptians and
• 9:48
  prepared by them in a diluted form from the peach and other plants. It
• 9:54
  is highly probable, indeed, that the priests had some rudimentary knowledge of the
• 10:00
  process of distillation and prepared this deadly liquid from peach leaves or stones by that
• 10:07
  method. The penalty of the peach is alluded to in a papyrus now preserved
• 10:13
  in the Louver, which points to the liquid being used as a death draft.
• 10:20
  The ancient Greeks, like the Chinese of today, looked upon suicide under
• 10:24
  certain conditions as a noble act, for which poison was the usual medium.
• 10:31
  Their death cup was mainly composed of the juice or extract of a species of
• 10:37
  hemlock called by them cicuta. The Chinese from remote times are supposed to have
• 10:43
  used gold as a poison, especially for suicidal purposes, and at the present
• 10:50
  day, when a high official or other individual puts an end to his life,
• 10:54
  it is always officially announced he has taken gold leaf, a curious phrase
• 11:01
  which probably has its origin in antiquity. Nicander of Colophon, a Greek physician
• 11:09
  who lived two four to one thirty eight b c. In his work on
• 11:13
  Poisons and their Antidotes, the earliest on the subject known, describes the effects
• 11:18
  of snake venom and the properties of opium henbanying Colchicum, cantharides, hemlock,
• 11:26
  aconite, tuxicum, probably the venom of the toad, bupretess, the salamander,
• 11:33
  the sea hare, the leech, u decomposed bull's blood, milk,
• 11:39
  and certain fungi, which he terms evil fermentations of the earth, and as
• 11:46
  antidotes for the same he mentions lukewarm oil, warm water, and mallow or
• 11:52
  linseed tea to excite vomiting. The same writer also made a rough classification of
• 12:00
  the poisons known in his time twenty two in all, and divided them into
• 12:05
  two classes, viz. Those which killed quickly and those which killed slowly.
• 12:13
  Of the minerals, arsenic antimony, mercury, gold, silver, copper,
• 12:18
  and lead were used by the Greeks. The antidote recommended in case of poisoning
• 12:24
  being hot oil, and other methods to induce vomiting and prevent the poison being
• 12:30
  absorbed into the system. Bull's blood is classed as a poison by various ancient
• 12:35
  writers, and it is recorded that uin Midas, king of Phrygia, Plutarch
• 12:41
  and Themisticles killed themselves by drinking bull's blood. It is probable that some strong
• 12:48
  poisonous vegetable substance, such as secuta, was mixed with the blood. Diascorides
• 12:56
  throws a further light on the poisons of antiquity in his great work on Materia
• 13:01
  Medica, which for fifteen centuries or more remained the chief authority on that subject.
• 13:07
  He mentioned catharides, copper, mercury, lead, and arsenic. Among
• 13:13
  the animal poisons are included toads, salamanders, poisonous snakes, a peculiar kind
• 13:20
  of honey, and the blood of the ox, probably after it had turned
• 13:24
  putrid. The sea hare is frequently alluded to by the ancient Greeks, and
• 13:31
  was evidently regarded by them as capable of producing a very powerful poison. Domitian
• 13:37
  is said to have administered it to Titus. It is supposed to have been
• 13:43
  one of the genus Aplecia among the gastropods, and is described by the old
• 13:48
  writers as a dreadful object which was neither to be touched nor looked upon with
• 13:54
  safety. Among the poisonous plants enumerated by Diascorides are the poppy, black and
• 14:01
  white hellebore, henbane, mandragora, hemlock, eliterin, and the juices of
• 14:07
  species of Euphorbia and Apuchinia. Medea is said to have been the first to
• 14:13
  introduce colchicum. The black and white hellebore were known to the Romans and used
• 14:20
  by them as an insecticide, and Pliny states that the Gauls used a preparation
• 14:26
  of arotrum to poison their arrows. Arsenic was employed by the Greeks as a
• 14:31
  caustic and for removing hair from the face, while copper, mercury and lead
• 14:37
  were used in their medical treatment. The study of poisons was forbidden for a
• 14:43
  long period, and Galen mentions the fact that only a few philosophers dared to
• 14:48
  treat the subjects in their works. In the East, poisons have been used
• 14:54
  from remote times, not only for the destruction of human life, but also
• 15:00
  for destroying animals, arsenic, aconite, and opium being employed by the Asiatics
• 15:05
  for these purposes. The Hindus have many strange traditions concerning poisons, some being
• 15:13
  attributed with the property of causing a lingering death, which can be controlled by
• 15:18
  the will of the poisoner, but this is doubtless more legendary than correct.
• 15:24
  One curious and mysterious substance mentioned by blythe and known in India as mucor phycomeses,
• 15:31
  is stated to be a species of fungi. When the spores are administered
• 15:37
  in warm water, they are said to attach themselves to the throat and rapidly
• 15:43
  develop and grow, with the result that in a few weeks all the symptoms
• 15:46
  of consumption develop and the victim is rapidly carried off by that fatal disease.
• 15:54
  The early Hebrews were also acquainted with certain poisons, the words rush and azema
• 16:00
  being used by them as generic terms. Arsenic was known to them as sa
• 16:06
  aconite as boshka, and ergot simply as song. The ancients attributed to poisonous
• 16:12
  properties to certain bodies simply on account of their origin being mysterious and obscure and
• 16:21
  Many of these errors and traditions have been handed down for centuries. As an
• 16:26
  instance of this, the belief that diamond dust possessed deadly poisonous properties seems to
• 16:33
  have existed until recent times. Many mysterious deaths in the Middle Ages were attributed
• 16:38
  to it. There is little doubt that death might be caused by the mere
• 16:44
  mechanical effect of an insoluble powder of this kind if it were possible to introduce
• 16:49
  it into the stomach in sufficient quantity. But powdered glass or sand would have
• 16:56
  the same effect as diamond dust viz. In causing violent irritation of the stomach.
• 17:03
  Yet some of these old traditions have a substratum of fact. The poisonous
• 17:08
  properties of the toad have long been regarded as fabulous, but recent investigation has
• 17:15
  proved that the skin of a species of toad secretes a poison similar in action
• 17:21
  to digitalis. The venom of the toad has had the reputation of possessing poisonous
• 17:27
  properties from a very early period, and was probably one of the earliest forms
• 17:33
  of animal poison known. The old tradition that King John was poisoned by a
• 17:38
  friar who dropped a toad into his wine was regarded as a ridiculous fable until
• 17:45
  some years ago, when it was discovered that the skin of the toad secretes
• 17:49
  a body, the active principle of which fhrinnin is a poison of considerable power.
• 17:56
  One of the most curious uses to which the toad has been put is
• 18:02
  recorded on a medical diploma now in the library of Ferrara, which was granted
• 18:07
  to one Generoso Marini in sixteen forty two. Marini, having made application for
• 18:15
  a Ferrari's diploma in medicine, the judge in whom the power of granting such
• 18:19
  degrees was invested, ordered him to exhibit some efficient proofs of his capability to
• 18:26
  practice the medical art. Marini at once agreed to comply with their demand,
• 18:32
  and the result is recorded in his diploma, which was discovered by Citadella in
• 18:37
  the archives of Ferrara, and is translated as follows. Having publicly examined and
• 18:45
  approved the science and knowledge of medicine of Signor Geroso Marini, and his possession
• 18:51
  of the wonderful secret called Orvietano, which he exhibited on the stage built in
• 18:56
  the center of this our city of Ferra, in presence of its entire population,
• 19:03
  so remarkable for their civilization and learning, and in presence of many foreigners
• 19:08
  and other classes of people, we hereby certify that also in our presence,
• 19:15
  as well as that of the city authorities, he took several living toads,
• 19:19
  not those of his own providing, but from a great number of toads which
• 19:25
  had been caught in fields in the locality by persons who were strangers to him,
• 19:30
  and which were only handed to him at the moment of making the experiment.
• 19:36
  An officer of the court then selected from the number of toads, collected
• 19:41
  five of the largest, which the said Genero Sommarini placed on a bench before
• 19:47
  him, and in presence of all assembled spectators, he with a large knife,
• 19:52
  cut all the said toads in half. Then, taking a drinking cup,
• 19:56
  he took in each hand one half of a dead toad and squeezed from
• 20:02
  it all the juices and fluids it contained into the cup, and the same
• 20:07
  he did with the remainder. After mixing the contents together, he swallowed the
• 20:12
  hole, and then, placing the cup on the bench, he advanced to
• 20:17
  the edge of the stage, where for some minutes he remained stationary then he
• 20:22
  became pale as death, and his lens trembled, and his body began to
• 20:27
  swell in a frightful and terrible manner, and all the spectators began to believe
• 20:34
  that he would never recover from the poison he had swallowed, and that his
• 20:38
  death was certain. Suddenly, taking from a jar by his side some of
• 20:45
  his celebrated Orvietano, he placed a portion of it in his mouth and swallowed
• 20:49
  it instantly. The effect of this wonderful medicine was to make him vomit the
• 20:56
  poison he had taken, and he stood before the spectator in the full enjoyment
• 21:02
  of health. Footnote. The celebrated or Vietano was doubtless some preparation of antimony.
• 21:08
  End footnote. The populace applauded him highly for the indisputable proof he had
• 21:15
  given of his talent, and he then invited many of the most learned of
• 21:19
  those present to accompany him to his house, and he there showed them his
• 21:25
  dispensary, as well as his collection of antidotes, and among them a powder
• 21:30
  made from little vipers, a powerful remedy for curing every sort of fever,
• 21:36
  as he had proved by different experiments he had made on people of quality and
• 21:41
  virtue, all of whom he had cured of the fever from which they were
• 21:45
  suffering, et cetera. In consequence of the rare talent exhibited by Signor General
• 21:52
  Soomarini, and as a proof of our love and respect for his wisdom,
• 21:57
  we have resolved, by the authority placed in our hands publicly, to reward
• 22:03
  him with a diploma, so that he may be universally recognized, applauded and
• 22:08
  respected. In witness thereof, we have set our hands and the public seal
• 22:15
  of the Municipality of Ferrara data in Ferrara con gandisimo a ploso il Di twenty
• 22:22
  six Lugio, sixteen forty two Johannes Cajitanes Modoni indexapianum Civitats Ferrari Franciscu Saltami concillarios.
• 22:37
  But although the toad under certain conditions was credited with poisonous properties during the
• 22:44
  Middle Ages, it was esteemed a valuable remedy for the plague, and was
• 22:48
  employed for that purpose in Austria as late as the year seventeen twelve. Kentarides
• 22:55
  or Spanish fly was very commonly used as a poison in medieval times, the
• 23:00
  usual method of administering being to chop it up and mix it with pepper.
• 23:06
  It is said to have been the first poison tried on the unfortunate Sir Thomas
• 23:11
  Overbury, although his murderers finally finished him off with corrosive sublimate. Poisoned rings
• 23:18
  are said to have been the invention of the Italians, who fashioned rings in
• 23:22
  which the poison was inserted in a receptacle where the jewel is usually set.
• 23:29
  Attached to the inner part of the ring was a sharp point which, when
• 23:33
  the hand of the wearer was grasped, scratched the flesh and injected the poison.
• 23:40
  Rings were also used for carrying strong poisons secretly, such as arsenic or
• 23:45
  corrosive sublimate, and in this manner many were enabled to commit suicide after being
• 23:52
  imprisoned. Hyuscyamus, commonly called henbane, is an herb which has been employed
• 23:59
  from remote times. Benedictus Crispus, Archbishop of Milan, in a work written
• 24:04
  shortly before a. D. Six eighty one, alludes to it under the
• 24:08
  name of Hyosciamus and Symphoniaca, and in the tenth century its virtues are particularly
• 24:17
  recorded by Masser Floridus. In the early Anglo Saxon works, it is called
• 24:22
  henbell and sometimes belline. In a French herbil of the fifteenth century, it
• 24:29
  is called hanibane or henneben. From a very early period, it has been
• 24:34
  employed as a sedative and anodyne for producing sleep, although simple hallucinations sometimes accompany
• 24:42
  its use. An old tradition states that once on the refectory of an ancient
• 24:49
  monastery, the monks were served with henbane instead of some harmless root, in
• 24:55
  error by the cook. After partaking of the dish, they were seized with
• 25:00
  the most extraordinary hallucinations. At midnight, One monk sounded the bell from mattens,
• 25:06
  while others walked in the chapel and opened their books but could not read.
• 25:11
  Others sang roistering drinking songs and performed Mountebank antics, which convulsed the others
• 25:18
  with uncontrollable laughter, and the pious monastery, for the nonce, was turned
• 25:23
  into an asylum. Certain stones, which were sold for large sums of money,
• 25:29
  were supposed to change color when brought near a poisonous substance, and they
• 25:33
  were consequently much sought after by high personages. The horn of the unicorn was
• 25:38
  said to become moist when placed near poisoned food. Bickman records his belief that
• 25:45
  several slow poisons were known to the ancients, which cannot now be identified.
• 25:51
  The Carthaginians also seemed to have been acquainted with similar poisons, and, according
• 25:56
  to tradition, administered some to Regulus, the Roman general. But we cannot
• 26:03
  endorse Bickmann's belief. An incident which happened to the army led by Mark Antony
• 26:10
  against the Parthians, and described by Plutarch, is said to have been caused
• 26:15
  by aconite. At one time during the expedition, the soldiers, being very
• 26:21
  short of provisions, sought for roots and potherbs, and met one that brought
• 26:26
  on madness and death. The eater immediately lost all memory and knowledge, busying
• 26:33
  himself at the same time in turning and moving every stone he met with,
• 26:37
  as if he were on some important pursuit. The camp was full of unhappy
• 26:44
  men, stooping to the ground and digging up and removing stones, till at
• 26:48
  last they were carried off by bilious vomiting. Whole numbers perished, and the
• 26:53
  Parthians still continued to harass them. Antony is said to have frequently exclaimed oh
• 27:00
  the ten thousand, alluding to the army which Xenophon led in retreat both a
• 27:07
  longer way and through more numerous conflicts, and yet led in safety. Nine
• 27:15
  active or virulent poisons are mentioned by most ancient writers on Indian medicine, many
• 27:22
  of which are at present not identified. Most of them are apparently varieties of
• 27:26
  aconite. Besides these, they employed Opium gunga, datura, roots of Nerium
• 27:33
  odorum and Gloriosa superba, the milky juices of Caloptopus gigantia and Euphorbia nerifolia,
• 27:44
  white arsenic orpiment, and the poison extracted from the fangs of serpents. Most
• 27:49
  of the older Sanskrit manuscripts are written on paper prepared with orpiment to preserve them
• 27:56
  from the ravages of insects. Varieties of datura yield atropine, a powerful poison.
• 28:03
  These plants were frequently employed in India for putting a sudden end to domestic
• 28:10
  quarrels, and to this practice may be traced the origin of the custom of
• 28:14
  sati or widow burning, as the Brahmins found from experience that by making a
• 28:19
  wife's life conterminus with the husband's, the average husband lived considerably longer. It
• 28:29
  is worthy of note that the diamond was celebrated as a medicinal agent by the
• 28:33
  Hindus, who prepared it by roasting seven times and then reducing it to powder.
• 28:40
  It was given in doses of one grain as a powerful tonic end of
• 28:47
  Chapter one, Chapter two. Poisons and superstition. Among the ignorant, poisons
• 28:56
  have ever been closely associated with superstition, and thus we found in the dark
• 29:00
  ages, even among the more civilized nations of the West, a belief in
• 29:04
  the occult concerning those things, the action of which they did not understand.
• 29:11
  To most of the poisonous herbs used by the ancients, certain curious superstitions were
• 29:17
  attached. The mandrake, in particular, excited the greatest veneration. On this
• 29:22
  account, it is supposed this plant is the same which the ancient Hebrews called
• 29:29
  dudaiem. That these people held it in the highest esteem in the days of
• 29:33
  Jacob is evident from the notice of his having been found by Reuben, who
• 29:38
  carried it to his mother, and the inducement which tempted leah to part with
• 29:44
  it proves the value then set upon this remarkable plant. It was believed to
• 29:48
  possess the property of making childless wives become mothers. Mandrake was among the more
• 29:56
  important drugs employed by the ancients for producing anesthe Doses of the wine made from
• 30:02
  the root were administered before amputating a limb or the application of the hot iron
• 30:07
  cattery. Pliny says, mandrake is taken against serpents, and before cutting and
• 30:14
  puncture, lest they be felt. Sometimes the smell is sufficient. According to
• 30:21
  Apulius, half an ounce of the wine would make a person insensible, even
• 30:26
  to the pain of amputation. Lyman states it was this wine, mingled with
• 30:30
  myrrh, that was offered to the Savior on the cross, it being commonly
• 30:36
  given to those who suffered death by crucifixion to allay in some degree their terrible
• 30:41
  agonies. In Shakespeare's time, mandrake still kept its place in public estimation as
• 30:48
  a narcotic. Thus we have Cleopatra asking for the drug that she may sleep
• 30:52
  out this great gap of time while her antony is away, and Iago,
• 30:57
  when his poison became against to work in the mind of the more exclaims,
• 31:03
  not poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of this world shall
• 31:08
  ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep. Some of the old names applied to
• 31:15
  the plant, such as semehomo and anthropomorphon, refer to the appearance of the
• 31:22
  root, while the term love apples applied to the fruit relates to their imaginary
• 31:27
  aphrodisiacal properties. It is mentioned in the scriptures in connection with such episodes.
• 31:34
  Josephus states Baras, supposed to be Mandrake, was capable of expelling demons from
• 31:41
  those possessed. Demosthenes, the Athenian orator, is said to have compared his
• 31:48
  lethargic hearers to those who had eaten mandrake. The Escorides states that a drachma
• 31:55
  of mandragora taken in a draft or eaten in a cake causes infatuation and takes
• 32:01
  away the use of reason. The Greeks bestowed on it the name of Circium,
• 32:07
  derived from the which circe. They believed that when the man drake was
• 32:12
  dragged up from the earth, it gave a dreadful shriek and struck the daring
• 32:16
  person dead who had had the presumption to pull it up. The method of
• 32:22
  obtaining it, therefore, was by fastening the plant to the tail of a
• 32:25
  dog, who thus drew the root from the ground. The shriek was supposed
• 32:30
  to be due to an evil spirit who dwelt in the plant. The Romans
• 32:35
  also were very particular in the manner in which they obtained the root. Pliny
• 32:38
  tells us that he who would undertake this office should stand with his back to
• 32:44
  the wind, and before he begins to dig, make three circles round the
• 32:47
  plant with the point of a sword, and then, turning to the west,
• 32:52
  proceed to take it up. The small roots, which are much twisted
• 32:57
  and gnarled, sometimes bear a resemblance to the form of man, and this
• 33:02
  was turned to account by some of the old German doctors, who fashioned them
• 33:07
  into rude images and sold them as preventives of evil and danger. They called
• 33:13
  them a brunees. These images were regularly dressed every day and consulted as oracles,
• 33:20
  and were manufactured in great numbers. They were introduced into England in the
• 33:25
  time of Henry the Eighth and met with ready purchasers to increase their value and
• 33:31
  importance. The roots were said by the venders to be produced from the flesh
• 33:36
  of criminals which fell from the gibbet, and that they only grew in such
• 33:39
  situations. Lord Bacon notices their use in the following paragraph. Some plants there
• 33:46
  are but rare that have a morsy or downy root, and likewise that have
• 33:52
  a number of threads like beards, as mandrakes, whereof witches and impostors make
• 33:59
  an ugly image, giving it the form of a face at the top of
• 34:02
  the root, and these strings to make a broad beard down to the foot.
• 34:09
  Madame de Genlis states that the mandrake roots should be wrapped in a sheet,
• 34:15
  for that then they will bring increasing good luck. The plant is still
• 34:20
  used medicinally in China, where it is said to be largely taken by the
• 34:24
  Mandarins, who believe it will give them increased intellectual powers and prolong their lives.
• 34:31
  From recent investigation, the activity of the mandrake root is proved to be
• 34:36
  due to an alkaloid called mandragorine. The black hellebore, Malampas root or Christmas
• 34:45
  rose, another poisonous plant known to the ancients, was believed to have magical
• 34:50
  properties. It was called after Malampus, a great physician who flourished at Pylos
• 34:57
  about one hundred years after the time of Moses or about one thousand, five
• 35:00
  hundred and thirty years before the birth of Christ. He is reputed to have
• 35:06
  cured the daughters of Prtus, king of Argos, of mental derangement with hellebore.
• 35:13
  Plenty mentions that the daughters of Curtis were restored to their senses by drinking
• 35:17
  the milk of goats which had fed on hellebore black. Hellebor root was used
• 35:22
  by the ancients to purify their homes and to hallow their dwellings, and they
• 35:28
  believed that by strewing it about it would drive away evil spirits. This ceremony
• 35:34
  was performed with great devotion and accompanied with the singing of solemn hymns. They
• 35:39
  also blessed their cattle in the same manner with hellebor to keep them free from
• 35:45
  spells of the wicked. For these purposes, it was dug up with many
• 35:49
  religious ceremonies, such as drawing a circle round the plant with a sword,
• 35:53
  then turning to the east. A humble prayer was finally offered up by the
• 35:59
  devote to Apollo and Esclapius for leave to dig up the root. The flight
• 36:05
  of the eagle was particularly attended to during the ceremony, for when this bird
• 36:10
  approached near the spot during the celebration of the rite, it was considered so
• 36:15
  ominous as to predict the certain death of the person who uprooted the plant.
• 36:21
  In the course of the year, others ate garlic previous to the right,
• 36:27
  which was supposed to counteract the poisonous effluvia of the plant. Discorides relates that
• 36:32
  when Carnades, the Syrinac philosopher undertook to answer the books of Zeno, he
• 36:39
  sharpened his wit and quickened his spirit by purging his head with powdered hellibore.
• 36:45
  It is recorded that the Gauls never went to the chase without rubbing the point
• 36:51
  of their arrows with this herb, believing that it rendered all the game killed
• 36:54
  with them. The more tender it is of this plant, yuvanull sarcastically observed
• 37:01
  misers need a double dose of hellebore. With several uncivilized nations in Africa,
• 37:08
  the practice of compelling persons accused of crime or witchcraft to undergo the ordeal of
• 37:15
  swallowing some vegetable poison is still carried on for this purpose. Certain tribes in
• 37:21
  Western Africa use the Klibar being, sometimes called the ordeal being, which contains
• 37:27
  a powerful poisonous principle called phisostigmine. It was customary at one time in old
• 37:35
  Klibar and the mouth of the Niger, where the plant grows, to destroy
• 37:39
  it whenever found a few only being preserved to supply seeds for judicial purposes,
• 37:46
  and of these seeds the store was kept in the custody of the native chief.
• 37:52
  Witchcraft, indeed, may be said to play the chief part in the
• 37:55
  daily life of all African natives, and to witchcraft they attribute every ill that
• 38:00
  befalls them. Two classes of witchcraft are supposed to exist, the one practiced
• 38:07
  secretly by evildoers, and the other practiced by the witch doctors with the view
• 38:13
  of destroying the effects of the former. Witch doctors are in fact the greatest
• 38:17
  power in the land. They hold the lives of all in their hands and
• 38:22
  are daily employed to satisfy the passions of their neighbors. According to native ideas,
• 38:30
  says one who has had a long experience among the native tribes, death
• 38:35
  or sickness never occurs through natural causes, but is always the result of somebody's
• 38:39
  act. Whenever anyone is accused of having practiced witchcraft or of having committed any
• 38:45
  other crime, kalibarbin or muabbe is used to decide the case. The taking
• 38:52
  of these is the great trial by ordeal, and usually, except when the
• 38:57
  accuser is a witch doctor, a accused and accuser have both to submit to
• 39:01
  the test. Chiefs, however, may appoint a deputy to undergo the ordeal
• 39:07
  in their stead. Nave consists of a specially prepared drug, usually made by
• 39:14
  scraping the wood of a certain tree known to the witch doctors. This is
• 39:17
  mixed with water and both parties swallow the decoction. In a very short time,
• 39:23
  the drug begins to act. Vomiting sets in, followed by convulsions and
• 39:29
  death. Of course, in most cases the result depends on the dose given.
• 39:35
  Sometimes both accuser and accused are seized with vomiting. In that case the
• 39:39
  natives say that the medicine has been badly prepared, and the operation is repeated.
• 39:45
  At other times, both die. In that case also the medicine was
• 39:51
  no good, But the trial cannot be renewed. As may be readily understood,
• 39:55
  when the guilt of one of the parties has been established. By his
• 40:00
  death, his property is at once looted, his wife and children being killed.
• 40:06
  So great, however, is the faith of the natives in the infallibility
• 40:09
  of the muave test, and they so fully believe that in case of innocence
• 40:14
  they will be proof against the deadly effects of the drug, that they will
• 40:19
  never hesitate to submit themselves to the trial. In fact, they will frequently
• 40:23
  volunteer to go through it, and insist upon taking muave even when falsely accused.
• 40:30
  From this account, it will be easily seen that the witch doctor who
• 40:34
  prepares the muave can easily get rid of any person he may wish. In
• 40:38
  some districts, the drug used for the trial, instead of causing death when
• 40:44
  it has not acted as an emetic, merely causes purging. But the result
• 40:50
  is the same as the man is at once put to death. This is
• 40:53
  probably due to a weaker decoction of the drug having been prepared. The same
• 41:00
  traveler states, in many instances his own men have offered to take moave in
• 41:05
  order to refute the slightest charge. Trial by ordeal, which still survives in
• 41:10
  the Dark Continent, was practiced by other and more civilized nations in the early
• 41:16
  Christian era end of Chapter two, Chapter three. Royal and historic poisoners.
• 41:27
  Poison appears to have been employed as a political agent from a very early period
• 41:31
  of history, and numerous stories have been handed down of royal personages who used
• 41:37
  this secret and deadly method of ridding themselves of troublesome individuals and removing enemies from
• 41:45
  their path. They also at times became the victims of jealous rivals by the
• 41:51
  same nefarious means. One of the earliest traditions we have of this kind is
• 41:57
  that of Frisa, who poisoned the Qui Queen Statura during the reign of Ardazak
• 42:01
  SI's second Memnon BC four five three fifty nine, by cutting her food with
• 42:08
  a poisoned knife. The notorious Nero doubtless resorted to the use of poison more
• 42:15
  than once, as may be inferred from the story of the death of his
• 42:19
  brother Britannicus, who it is said was poisoned by his orders. Britannicus was
• 42:25
  dining with his brother and the imperial family, and as was the custom of
• 42:30
  the Romans, hot water was brought round by slaves to the table, the
• 42:36
  water being heated to varied degrees to suit the taste of the drinker. According
• 42:40
  to the story, the cup of water handed to Britannicus proved to be too
• 42:45
  hot, and he gave it back to the attendant slave, who added cold
• 42:50
  water to it, which addition is supposed to have contained the poison. For
• 42:54
  no sooner had he swallowed the draft than he fell back, gasping for breath.
• 43:00
  His mother, Agrippina and Octavia, his sister, who were also at
• 43:05
  the table, became terror stricken. But Nero, unmoved, calmly remarked that
• 43:10
  he often had such fits in his youth without danger, and the banquet proceeded.
• 43:16
  It is thought probable that the poison given was Prussic acid in some form.
• 43:22
  A curious superstition existed in early times and is still entertained by the ignorant
• 43:29
  that if the body rapidly decomposes after a sudden death, it is to be
• 43:32
  attributed to the effects of poison. So when Britannicus died, it is recorded
• 43:39
  that the Romans attempted to conceal his discolored face by means of paint. During
• 43:45
  the Roman period, poisoning was reduced to a fine art, and the skilled
• 43:51
  or professional poisoner obtained large amounts of money for his services. The Borgia's favorite
• 43:58
  method of administration a lethal dose was by means of a species of hypodermic injection.
• 44:05
  The greatest craft and cunning used to be exerted in order to introduce poison
• 44:09
  into the system, and there are many old traditions concerning the subtle methods employed,
• 44:15
  although a number of these are doubtless more legendary than correct. Thus,
• 44:22
  Tissault states that John, King of Castile owed his death to wearing a pair
• 44:27
  of boots which were supposed to have been impregnated with poison by a Turk.
• 44:31
  Henry the sixth is said to have succumbed through wearing poisoned gloves, and Louis
• 44:37
  fourteen and Pope Clement seven through the fumes from a poisoned taper. King John
• 44:45
  is supposed to have been poisoned by matter extracted from a living toad placed in
• 44:50
  a Zvois sail bowl, while Pope Alexander the sixth is said also to have
• 44:54
  fallen a victim to poison, after which, according to the chronicler, his
• 45:00
  body presented a fearful spectacle. A document drawn up by Charles, King of
• 45:06
  Navarre throws some light on this systematic manner in which the poisoning of obnoxious persons
• 45:13
  was carried out in medieval times. It is in the form of a commission
• 45:16
  to one Wonderton to poison Charles the sixth, the Duke of Valois, brother
• 45:22
  of the king, and his uncles, the Dukes of Berry, Burgundy and
• 45:27
  Bourbon. It runs, go thou to Paris. Thou canst do great service.
• 45:32
  If thou wilt do what I tell thee, I will reward thee well.
• 45:37
  There is a thing which is called sublimed arsenic. If a man eat
• 45:43
  a bit the size of a pea, he will never survive. Thou wilt
• 45:47
  find it in Pampeluna, Bordeaux, Bayon, and in all the good towns.
• 45:52
  Thou wilt pass at the apothecary shops, take it and powder it.
• 45:58
  And when thou shalt be in the house of the King of the Count de
• 46:01
  Valois, his brother and the Dukes of Berry, Burgundy and Bourbon, draw
• 46:07
  near, and betake thyself to the kitchen, to the larder, to the
• 46:09
  cellar, or any other place where thy point can best be gained. And
• 46:15
  put the powder in the soups meats or wines, provided that thou canst do
• 46:21
  it secretly, otherwise do it not. It is satisfactory to learn that the
• 46:27
  miscreant, who was entrusted with this diabolical commission, was detected in time and
• 46:34
  executed in thirteen eighty four. It is related of Charles the Ninth, that,
• 46:39
  having suspected one of his cooks of stealing two silver spoons, he resolved
• 46:45
  to try the effect of bezoor, which at that time was highly recommended as
• 46:50
  an antidote to poisons. So, thinking a good opportunity had arrived for testing
• 46:55
  its properties, his majesty administered to the un unfortunate cook first a large dose
• 47:02
  of corrosive sublimate, and then a dose of the reputed antidote. But the
• 47:07
  unlucky man fell a victim to the experiment and died in great agony in seven
• 47:13
  hours, in spite of other efforts to save him. There is an old
• 47:17
  tradition that King John also figured as a poisoner, and got rid of the
• 47:22
  unfortunate maud Fitzwalter by means of a poisoned egg. The story is a romantic
• 47:29
  one and is related by Hepworth Dixon in her Majesty's Tower. In the reign
• 47:35
  of King John, the White Tower received one of the first and fairest of
• 47:39
  a long line of female victims, in that of Maud Fitzwalter, who was
• 47:45
  known to the singers of her time as Maud the Fair. The father of
• 47:50
  this beautiful girl was Robert Lord Fitzwalter of Castle Byard on the Thames, one
• 47:55
  of John's most powerful and greatest barons. Yet the King, during it is
• 48:01
  said, a fit of violence or temper with the Queen, fell madly in
• 48:06
  love with the fair Maud. As neither the lady herself nor her powerful sire
• 48:12
  would listen to his disgraceful suit, the King is said to have seized her
• 48:16
  by force at Dunmow and brought her to the tower. Fitzwalter raised an outcry,
• 48:22
  on which the King sent troops into Castle Baynard and his other houses,
• 48:28
  and when the baron protested against these wrongs, his master banished him from the
• 48:32
  realm. Fitzwalter fled to France with his wife and other children, leaving poor
• 48:37
  Maud in the tower, where she suffered a daily insult in the King's unlawful
• 48:44
  suit. But she remained abdurate and refused his offers. On her proud and
• 48:50
  scornful answer to his overtures being heard, John carried her up to the roof
• 48:54
  and locked her in the round turret standing on the northeast endingle of the keep.
• 49:00
  Maud's cage was the highest and chilliest den in the tower, but neither
• 49:07
  cold, solitude nor hunger could break her strength, and at last, in
• 49:12
  the rage of his disappointed love, the king sent one of his minions to
• 49:15
  her room with a poisoned egg, of which the brave girl ate and died
• 49:22
  bluff. King hal at one period of his life, was apprehensive of being
• 49:27
  poisoned, and it was commonly believed that am Boleyn attempted to dose him.
• 49:31
  It is recorded that the king, in an interview with young Prince Henry,
• 49:37
  burst into tears, saying that he and his sister, the Princess Mary,
• 49:42
  might thank God for having escaped from the hands of that accursed and venomous Harlot,
• 49:47
  who had intended to poison them. According to the French Chronicles, after
• 49:53
  the death of Gaultier Guifart, Count Buckingham in the early part of the twelfth
• 49:59
  cent centery, Agnes, his widow, became enamored with Robert, Duke of
• 50:04
  Normandy, and attached herself in an illicit manner to him, shortly after which
• 50:08
  time his wife, Sibilly died of poison. Pope Alexander the sixth and his
• 50:15
  son, the Duke of Valentinois, employed Arsenic to carry out their fiendish plans
• 50:22
  not only on their enemies, but on their friends also. Thus perished by
• 50:27
  their hands the Cardinals of Capua and Modena, and Alexander himself by a cup
• 50:32
  intended for Adrian, Cardinal of Cornetto, who had invited the Pope to a
• 50:37
  banquet in the vineyard of Belvedere, was destroyed instead of his host. Lucretia
• 50:45
  Borgia, famous in romance and song for her poisoning propensities, was a daughter
• 50:51
  of Pope Alexander the sixth and sister of Cesar Borgia. She married Giovanni Skvortza,
• 50:58
  Lord of Pizarro, in furtiyeeen ninety three, but being a woman of
• 51:01
  haughty disposition and evil temper, their life was anything but a happy one,
• 51:07
  and after living together for four years, Alexander dissolve the marriage and gave her
• 51:13
  to Alphonso the second of Naples. Two years had barely passed before her second
• 51:17
  husband was assassinated by hired Ruffians of Caesar Borgia, so Lucretia took unto herself
• 51:24
  a third husband, in the person of Alphonso deaste A, son of the
• 51:30
  Duke of Ferrara. She led a wild and unhappy life and was accused of
• 51:35
  poisoning and almost every form of crime, although it is stated by several modern
• 51:40
  historians that many of these charges were unfounded. Although tradition has inflicted her with
• 51:47
  a bad character, she is said to have been a liberal patroness of art
• 51:52
  and literature in her time. She died in fifteen twenty three. In fifteen
• 51:58
  thirty six, the dpho Fa, eldest son of Francis the First, died
• 52:02
  suddenly, and suspicion attached to Sebastian Modicusilli, a fierase who held the part
• 52:10
  of cupbearer, bribed, as was supposed by Catherine of Medicis, in order
• 52:15
  to secure the crown to her husband, Henry, Duke of Orleon, who
• 52:21
  became Dauphin in consequence of his elder brother's death. The story of the Countess
• 52:27
  of Somerset, who was tried with others for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury
• 52:31
  in the Reign of James the First forms an interesting episode in the history of
• 52:37
  romantic poisoning. Robert, Earl of Essex, son of Queen Elizabeth's favorite and
• 52:43
  who afterwards became Commander in Chief of the Parliamentary Forces, married at the age
• 52:49
  of fourteen Francis Howard, a younger daughter of the Earl of Suffolk, the
• 52:53
  bride being just a year younger than her husband. The match had been arranged
• 52:58
  and brought about through the influence of relatives who thought it expedient that the young
• 53:04
  bridegroom should be sent off to travel on the continent immediately after the marriage had
• 53:08
  taken place, and he remained away for three or four years. During this
• 53:14
  period, the countess, who was brought up at court, developed into a
• 53:17
  very beautiful woman, but seems to have been equally unprincipled and capricious. On
• 53:23
  the return of the Earl from his travels, she shrank from all advances on
• 53:28
  his part, and showed the utmost repugnance to her husband on all occasions.
• 53:34
  Their dispositions were entirely different. He loved retirement and wished to live a quiet
• 53:39
  country life, while she, who had been bred at court, and accustomed
• 53:45
  to adulation and intrigue, refused to leave town. The King about this time
• 53:51
  had a number of young men of distinguished appearance and good looks attached to the
• 53:55
  court, and of these one, Robert Carr, at length became an exclusive
• 54:01
  favorite. Between him and the self willed young countess, there sprang up an
• 54:07
  attachment which, at least on her side, amounted to infatuation. Her opportunities
• 54:14
  for meeting her lover were short and rare, and in this emergency she applied
• 54:19
  to a missus Turner, who introduced her to Doctor Foreman, a noted astrologer
• 54:24
  and magician at that time, and he, by images made of wax and
• 54:30
  other devices of the black art, undertook to procure the love of Carr to
• 54:35
  the lady. At the same time he was also to practice against the Earl
• 54:39
  in the opposite direction. These measures, however, were too slow for the
• 54:45
  wayward countess, and having gone to the utmost lengths with her inamorata, she
• 54:50
  insisted on a divorce and a legal marriage with him. One of Carr's greatest
• 54:55
  friends was Sir Thomas Overbury, a young courtier and a man of honor and
• 55:00
  kindly disposition. He was much against this intimacy and besought his friend to break
• 55:07
  it off, assuring him it would ruin his prospects and reputation if he married
• 55:13
  the lady. Carr unwisely made this known to the Countess, who at once
• 55:17
  regarded Overbury as a bitter enemy and resolved to do what she could to overthrow
• 55:23
  him. The pair plotted together with evident success for the unfortunate Sir Thomas was
• 55:30
  shortly afterwards committed to the tower by an arbitrary mandate of the King. Next,
• 55:36
  he was not allowed to see any visitors, and finally his food was
• 55:39
  poisoned, and after several unsuccessful attempts on his life, he at last died
• 55:45
  from the effects of poison. Cantharides, nitrate of silver spiders, arsenic and
• 55:52
  last of all, corrosive sublimate are said to have been administered in turn to
• 55:58
  this unfortunate individual. Meanwhile, the Countess obtained a divorce from her husband on
• 56:04
  the ground of impotency, and married Carr, who was soon afterward made Earl
• 56:08
  of Somerset by King James. Two years elapsed before the murder of Sir Thomas,
• 56:15
  Overbury was brought to light when the inferior criminals, Missus Turner and the
• 56:21
  others were convicted and executed, but the Earl of Somerset and his Countess,
• 56:27
  although found guilty with their accomplices, received the royal pardon. The happiness of
• 56:32
  the Earl and Countess, however, was not of long duration, as it
• 56:37
  is stated they afterwards became so alienated from each other that they resided for years
• 56:43
  under the same roof, with the most careful precautions that they might not by
• 56:47
  any chance come into each other's presence. The Missus Turner, implicated in the
• 56:53
  crime, is said to have been the first to introduce into England the yellow
• 56:59
  starch that was then applied to Ladies Roughs. Her last request was that she
• 57:04
  should be hanged in a rough dyed with her own yellow starch, which is
• 57:08
  said to have been carried out. According to some historians, Robert Dudley,
• 57:15
  Earl of Leicester, prime Minister and favorite of Queen Elizabeth, was a poisoner
• 57:20
  of the most diabolical description. His ambition to marry his royal mistress, whose
• 57:27
  shrewd woman as she was, seems to have had no insight into his unscrupulous
• 57:31
  character, was the cause of his moving every human obstacle from his path by
• 57:37
  insidious methods. The murder of his wife, Amy Robzart was the first of
• 57:43
  a long series of murders carried out doubtless at his instigation. He was next
• 57:50
  suspected of causing the death of Lord Sheffield, of whose lady he was an
• 57:53
  admirer. The Earl of Essex is said to have been another victim. His
• 57:59
  death is described in the language of the time as having been due to an
• 58:02
  extreme flux caused by an Italian receipt. The maker whereof was a surgeon that
• 58:09
  then was newly come to my Lord from Italy, a cunning man and sure
• 58:15
  in operation. The inventor of this recipe was known as one doctor Julio,
• 58:21
  who was said to be able to make a man die in what manner of
• 58:23
  sickness you will. The death of the Earl of Essex took place when on
• 58:29
  his way home from Ireland with the object of revenging himself on the Earl of
• 58:34
  Leicester for his domestic wrongs. The next victim is said to have been Cardinal
• 58:38
  Chatillien, who, having accused the Earl of preventing the marriage of the Queen
• 58:44
  to the King of France, was journeying back to Dover when he was taken
• 58:49
  suddenly ill and died in Canterbury. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a wealthy city magnet
• 58:55
  and a tool of the earls, whom tis said he used to thwart the
• 59:00
  doings of the Lord Treasurer. Sir William Cecil was another victim. Having heard
• 59:07
  that Sir Nicholas was revealing some of his secrets, he invited him one night
• 59:10
  to supper at his house in London, and at supper time hurriedly went to
• 59:15
  the court, to which he said he had been called suddenly by her Majesty.
• 59:21
  Sir Nicholas proceeded with the meal in his absence, and soon after was
• 59:25
  seized with a violent vomiting from which he never recovered. According to an old
• 59:31
  chronicler, the day before his death, he declared to a dear friend all
• 59:37
  the circumstances and cause of his complaint, which he affirmed plainly to be poison
• 59:43
  given him in a sallet at supper, inveighing most earnestly against the Earl's cruelty
• 59:50
  and bloody disposition, and affirming him to be the wickedest, most perilous and
• 59:55
  perfidious man under heaven, the chronicle continues, And for his art of poisoning,
• 1:00:02
  it is such now and reaching so far as he holdeth all his foes
• 1:00:07
  in England and elsewhere, as also a good many of his friends in fear
• 1:00:13
  thereof. And if it were known how many he hath despatched in that way,
• 1:00:17
  would be marvelous to posterity. His body physician, one doctor Bailey openly
• 1:00:24
  proclaimed the fact that he knew of poisons which might be so tempered that they
• 1:00:30
  should kill the party afterwards, at what time it should be appointed? Which
• 1:00:35
  argument belike, says the writer of Lester's Commonwealth pleased well his lordship of Leicester.
• 1:00:42
  The tool who carried out the murder of the Earl of Essex is said
• 1:00:45
  to have been one Crompton, Yeoman of the Bottles. Together with Godwick Lloyd.
• 1:00:52
  Lester was suspected of being the instigator of many murders, which probably he
• 1:00:57
  may have had nothing to do with. Such was the feeling of dislike against
• 1:01:01
  him. Among others was Lady Lennox, who died in a mysterious manner shortly
• 1:01:07
  after being visited by the Earl. He is said to have kept in his
• 1:01:12
  employ several needy but unscrupulous physicians ready to administer the Italian comfortive, as the
• 1:01:19
  poison was called. At his bidding with the Earl of Essex. One missus
• 1:01:24
  Alice Drackett, a godly gentlewoman, is also said to have been poisoned.
• 1:01:30
  This lady happened to be accompanying the Earl on her way towards her own house,
• 1:01:36
  when, after partaking of the same cup, she was also seized with
• 1:01:39
  violent pain and vomiting, which continued until she died a day or two before
• 1:01:45
  the Earl succumbed. When she was dead, says the chronicler, her body
• 1:01:51
  was swollen into a monstrous bigness and deformity, whereof the good Earl, hearing
• 1:01:57
  the day following, lamented the case greatly and said, in the presence of
• 1:02:01
  his servants, Ah, poor Alice, the cup was not prepared for thee
• 1:02:07
  albeit it was thy hard fortune to taste thereof. End of Chapter three,
• 1:02:15
  Chapter four. Professional poisoners. The criminal destruction of life by poison has been
• 1:02:22
  practiced from ancient times. Very little was known of toxicology in those days,
• 1:02:27
  and even the symptoms often passed unrecognized or were attributed to natural causes, and
• 1:02:34
  the poisoner's fiendish work was frequently undiscovered and rendered easy. In the early Christian
• 1:02:40
  era, poisoning indeed became quite a profession, and convenient individuals could be hired
• 1:02:46
  with little difficulty to administer a deadly dose to an enemy or rival. Agrippina,
• 1:02:52
  in refusing to eat some apples offered to her at table by her father
• 1:02:58
  in law Tiberius, must have had suspicions of this kind. Locusta, who
• 1:03:04
  is said to have supplied the poison by which Agrippina got rid of Claudius,
• 1:03:08
  and who also prepared the dose for Britannicus according to the order of his brother
• 1:03:14
  Nero, is the first professional poisoner of whom we have record. In the
• 1:03:19
  year b c. Three thirty one, an epidemic broke out in Rome,
• 1:03:23
  which was supposed to proceed from corrupt air, but it was observed that the
• 1:03:29
  principal patricians only were the victims. Their deaths, however, were attributed to
• 1:03:36
  infection. For poisoning was then scarcely known in Rome, nor was there a
• 1:03:40
  law for its punishment. In the general grief, a female slave presented herself
• 1:03:46
  to the edeal curule Quintus Fabius, and accused more than twenty Roman ladies of
• 1:03:52
  poisoning, designing specially Cornelia, a lady of an illustrious family of that nas
• 1:04:00
  name, and Sergia, another patrician lady. It is recorded that as many
• 1:04:04
  as three hundred sixty six ladies were similarly accused, but Cornelia and Sergia were
• 1:04:12
  detected in compounding their fatal potions. When led before the popular Assembly, they
• 1:04:17
  maintained their preparations were harmless remedies. The slave, seeing herself accused as a
• 1:04:24
  false witness, asked that the ladies should be required to swallow their own potions,
• 1:04:30
  which they did and by so doing avoided a more shameful death later.
• 1:04:35
  There were doubtless many, both men and women of the baser sort, who
• 1:04:41
  professed to practice alchemy and had dealings in the black arts, who, for
• 1:04:45
  suitable consideration, would procure poison for criminal purposes. In medieval times, a
• 1:04:53
  law was passed in Italy rendering the apothecary who knowingly sold poison for criminal purposes
• 1:05:00
  is liable to a heavy penalty. And yet secret poisoning was practiced to a
• 1:05:04
  very large extent, and there were probably many like the poor apothecary of Mantua
• 1:05:11
  in Romeo and Juliet, who, in response to Romeo's demand for poison,
• 1:05:15
  replied my poverty and not my will consents. From the fifteenth to the seventeenth
• 1:05:23
  century, two great criminal schools arose in Venice and Italy. The Venetian poisoners,
• 1:05:30
  who first came into notoriety, flourished in the fifteenth century. At that
• 1:05:35
  period, the mania for poisoning had risen to such a height that the governments
• 1:05:41
  of the states were formally recognizing secret assassination by poison and considering the removal of
• 1:05:47
  emperors, princes, and powerful nobles by this method. The Notorious Council of
• 1:05:55
  Ten met to consider such plans, and an account and record of their proceedings
• 1:06:00
  still exists, giving the number of those who voted for and who voted against
• 1:06:05
  the proposed removal, the reasons for the assassination, and the sum to be
• 1:06:11
  paid for its execution. Thus, these conspirators quietly arranged to take the lives
• 1:06:17
  of many prominent individuals, and when the deed was executed, it was registered
• 1:06:23
  on the margin of their official record by the significant word foctomb. On December
• 1:06:30
  fifteenth fifteen forty three, John of Ruguba, a Franciscan brother, offered the
• 1:06:35
  Council a selection of poisons and declared himself ready to remove any person whom they
• 1:06:42
  deemed objectionable out of the way. He calmly stated his terms, which for
• 1:06:47
  the first successful case, were to be a pension of fifteen hundred ducats a
• 1:06:53
  year, to be increased on the execution of future services. The President,
• 1:06:59
  Skuelando Duoda and Pietro Guarini, placed this matter before the Council on January fourth,
• 1:07:06
  fifteen forty four, and on a division, it was resolved to accept
• 1:07:12
  this patriotic offer and to experiment first on the Emperor Maximilian. John, who
• 1:07:18
  had evidently reduced poisoning to a fine art, submitted afterwards a regular graduated tariff
• 1:07:27
  to the Council, which ran as follows, For the Great Sultan five hundred
• 1:07:31
  ducats, For the King of Spain one hundred and fifty ducats including the expenses
• 1:07:36
  of the journey, et cetera, for the Duke of Milan, sixty ducats,
• 1:07:42
  for the Marquis of Mantua, fifty ducats for the Pope one hundred ducats.
• 1:07:47
  He further adds at the foot of the document. The farther the journey,
• 1:07:51
  the more eminent the man, the more it is necessary to reward the
• 1:07:57
  toil and hardships undertaken, and the heavier must be the payment. The school
• 1:08:02
  of Italian poisoners became prominent in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the magnitude
• 1:08:09
  of their operations during that period struck terror into the hearts of the chief nobles
• 1:08:14
  and rulers of that country. The mania for secret poisoning seems to have seized
• 1:08:19
  on all classes, from the highest to the lowest, and no one who
• 1:08:25
  made an enemy was safe. Portai, in his work published in fifteen eighty
• 1:08:30
  nine, gives some account of the poisons used at the time, and seems
• 1:08:34
  to have made a study of the subject. He describes methods for drugging wine,
• 1:08:40
  a favorite medium of administration, with belladonna root, and also mentions nux
• 1:08:46
  vomica, aconite, and hellebore. In his account of poisonous bodies, he
• 1:08:53
  gives the following recipe for compounding a very strong poison, which he calls venenium
• 1:08:59
  lupinum. Take of the powdered leaves of aconitum lycotonum toxus baccata with powdered glass,
• 1:09:09
  caustic lime, sulfide of arsenic and bitter almonds. Mix them with honey
• 1:09:15
  and make into pills the size of a hazelnut. He also recommends a curious
• 1:09:20
  mixture to poison a sleeping person. It is composed of a mixture of hemlock
• 1:09:26
  juice, bruised stramonium, belladonna, and opium. This is to be placed
• 1:09:31
  in a leaden box with a perfectly fitting cover and allowed to ferment for several
• 1:09:38
  days. It is then to be opened under the nose of the intended victim
• 1:09:42
  while asleep. So long as the individual only got the smell and did not
• 1:09:46
  swallow the compound, it certainly would not do him much harm. The most
• 1:09:54
  notorious of the Italian poisoners was the woman Tofana or Tophania, who carried on
• 1:10:00
  her practice from the latter end of the seventeenth century until she was brought to
• 1:10:05
  justice in seventeen o nine. Tofauna resided first at Palermo, but removed to
• 1:10:12
  Naples in sixteen fifty nine during the pontificate of Alexander the seventh. This later
• 1:10:17
  circi gained large sums of money by the sale of certain mysterious preparations she compounded,
• 1:10:25
  which were afterwards proved to be simply solutions of arcinious acid. These were
• 1:10:30
  circulated throughout Italy in small glass pials bearing the image of a saint and labeled
• 1:10:36
  various names, such as Acatadnapoli or the Mana of Saint Nicholas Abari and Acqua
• 1:10:45
  Tofana. Any One in the secret could buy the poison for its supposed use
• 1:10:50
  as a cosmetic or other innocent property, and then employ it for any purpose
• 1:10:57
  they wished. This infamous woman carried on her nefarious trade from girlhood until she
• 1:11:01
  was nearly seventy years of age, without ever having fallen into the meshes of
• 1:11:06
  the law, and it had stated over six hundred persons were poisoned through her
• 1:11:13
  instrumentality. She dealt only with individuals after due safeguards had been built up,
• 1:11:19
  and she changed her abode so frequently and adopted so many disguises that her detection
• 1:11:26
  was rendered very difficult. She also called in the aids of religion and superstition,
• 1:11:32
  and those who were uninitiated in the history of her deadly elixir imagined it
• 1:11:38
  to be a certain miraculous oil, which was supposed to ooze from the tomb
• 1:11:43
  of Saint Nicholas. The popes Pious the third and Clement the fourteenth are said
• 1:11:49
  to have fallen victim to its use. The composition of the Acetadinapoli was long
• 1:11:56
  a profound secret, but it is said to have been known by them Emperor
• 1:12:00
  Charles the sixth of Austria. According to a letter addressed to Hoffmann by Garceli,
• 1:12:05
  physician to the Emperor, he informed the latter that, being governor of
• 1:12:11
  Naples at the time, that the aketta was the dread of every noble family
• 1:12:16
  in the city, and when the subject was investigated legally, he had an
• 1:12:20
  opportunity of examining all the documents, and that he found the poison consisted of
• 1:12:27
  a solution of arsenic in aqua cymbalaria. The dose was said to be from
• 1:12:32
  four to six drops in water, and that it was colorless, transparent,
• 1:12:38
  and tasteless. When the manufacture and sale of the poison was at last traced
• 1:12:43
  to Tofauna, she took refuge in a convent, from which the abbess and
• 1:12:47
  archbishop refused to give her up, and so continued to sell the water for
• 1:12:53
  twenty years longer, and evaded punishment for the time. Public indignation was roused
• 1:12:59
  to such a pitch that at last the convent was broken into by a body
• 1:13:02
  of soldiers, who secured Tofauna and handed her over to the authorities. She
• 1:13:09
  was tortured until she confessed in seventeen o nine, and then strangled, her
• 1:13:14
  body being thrown into the garden of the convent which had sheltered her. Aquatofana
• 1:13:20
  was reputed to possess some very peculiar properties, and among others, that of
• 1:13:26
  causing death at any determinate period, after months, for example, or even
• 1:13:31
  years of ill health, a common supposition attributed to poisons in the Middle Ages.
• 1:13:38
  Its alleged effects were graphically described by barons as follows. A certain indescribable
• 1:13:45
  change is felt in the whole body, which leads the person to complain to
• 1:13:48
  his physician. The physician examines and reflects, but finds no symptoms either external
• 1:13:56
  or internal. No vomiting, no inflammation, no feaver. In short,
• 1:14:00
  he can only advise patients strict regimen and laxatives. The malady, however,
• 1:14:08
  creeps on, and the physician is again sent for Still he cannot detect any
• 1:14:13
  symptoms of note. Meanwhile, the poison takes firmer hold of the system.
• 1:14:18
  Languor, wearisomeness, and loathing of food continue. The nobler organs gradually become
• 1:14:25
  torpid, and the lungs in particular, at length began to suffer. In
• 1:14:30
  a word, the malady from the first is incurable. The unhappy victim pines
• 1:14:35
  away insensibly, even in the hands of the physician, and thus is he
• 1:14:41
  brought to a miserable end through months or years, according to his enemy's desire
• 1:14:47
  Tofauna had many imitators, and some time after her death a similar scheme was
• 1:14:53
  attempted, with a poisonous solution reputedly sold as a cosmetic called the Aceta de
• 1:14:59
  per Perugia. It is said to have been prepared by killing a hog,
• 1:15:03
  disjointing it, strewing the pieces with white arsenic, which was well rubbed in,
• 1:15:10
  and finally collecting the juice which dropped from the meat itself. This preparation
• 1:15:15
  was supposed to be much stronger and more powerful poison than arsenic itself, but
• 1:15:20
  doubtless had the same fatal effect. It is a curious fact that most of
• 1:15:27
  the notorious poisoners in medieval times were women, and indeed, in later years
• 1:15:32
  the frail sex seems to have retained a special predilection for this form of crime.
• 1:15:39
  In the year sixteen fifty nine, a secret society of women, most
• 1:15:44
  of whom were young wives, belonging to some of the best and wealthiest families
• 1:15:47
  of Rome, was discovered in that city, the sole or chief object of
• 1:15:53
  which was to destroy the lives of the husbands of the members. They met
• 1:15:58
  at regular intervals at the house of one Hieronyma Spara, a woman reputed to
• 1:16:03
  be a witch, who provided her fellow associates and pupils with the required poison,
• 1:16:09
  and planned and instructed them how to use it. Operations had been carried
• 1:16:15
  on for some time when the existence of the society was discovered, and says
• 1:16:19
  a chronicler, the hardened old hag passed the ordeal of the rack without confession,
• 1:16:27
  but another woman divulged the secrets of the sisterhood, and the La Spara,
• 1:16:30
  together with twelve other women implicated, were hanged. Many others who were
• 1:16:36
  guilty in a lesser degree were publicly whipped through the streets of the city.
• 1:16:43
  In the seventeenth century, the Mania for poisoning seems to have spread to France,
• 1:16:48
  and great interest was excited by the disclosures which followed the discovery of Axilli's
• 1:16:54
  conspiracy to poison a number of persons. Madame de Montespont, one of the
• 1:17:00
  favorites of Louis fourteen, a woman of great beauty, died very suddenly at
• 1:17:05
  the age of twenty six on June thirty, sixteen seventy two, and it
• 1:17:11
  was generally believed she had been poisoned. The rumor seems to have been set
• 1:17:15
  on foot by one of her husband's old servants, who professed to know the
• 1:17:19
  individual who had administered the fatal dose. This man said, he who was
• 1:17:26
  not rich withdrew immediately afterwards into Normandy, where he bought an estate on which
• 1:17:31
  he lived with grandeur a long time. The poison was powder of diamonds mixed
• 1:17:39
  instead of sugar with strawberries. Voltaire, who believed the whole story to be
• 1:17:45
  a myth, states the court and city believed the princess had been poisoned with
• 1:17:50
  a glass of water or succery, after which she felt terrible pains and soon
• 1:17:56
  after was seized with the agonies of death. But natural malignity of mankind and
• 1:18:01
  a fondness for extraordinary incidents were the only inducements to this general persuasion. The
• 1:18:09
  glass of water could not be poisoned, since Madame de Lafayette and another person
• 1:18:14
  drunk what remained without receiving the least injury from it. The princess had been
• 1:18:19
  a long time ill of an abscess which had formed itself in the liver for
• 1:18:25
  some time. The young Chevalier de Lorraine, the favorite of the Duke of
• 1:18:30
  Orleans, rested under suspicion, it being openly stated that the motive was to
• 1:18:34
  revenge the banishment and imprisonment which his behavior to the Princess a short time before
• 1:18:42
  had drawn upon him. Public opinion was strengthened in the belief that the princess
• 1:18:46
  had met her death through poison by the fact that just at this time the
• 1:18:51
  mania for secret poisoning seemed to spread over France. About this date, a
• 1:18:58
  German apothecary and alchemist named Glazier settled in Paris, together with two Italians,
• 1:19:04
  one of whom was called Exili. Their professed object was a research to discover
• 1:19:11
  the Philosopher's Stone. Having lost the little they possessed in a very short time.
• 1:19:16
  In the pursuit of this chimera, they commenced the secret sale of poisons
• 1:19:23
  through the confessional. Their nefarious trade became known to the Grand Penitentiary of Paris.
• 1:19:30
  This dignity gave information to the government and the two suspected Italians were promptly
• 1:19:35
  sent to the Vestille, where one of them died. But Egzili, while
• 1:19:41
  still in prison, managed to carry out his business and found ready purchasers for
• 1:19:45
  his secrets, and the number of deaths attributed to poison increased to such an
• 1:19:50
  extent that a special court for the investigation of poisoning cases, called Le Chambre
• 1:19:58
  Dante was formed. A few years later, the whole of France was aroused
• 1:20:02
  by the confession of the Marquise de Brimvillier of having poisoned her father, two
• 1:20:09
  brothers and a sister. Her husband. The Marquis de Brimvillier invited a friend,
• 1:20:15
  one Captain Saint Croix, who was an officer in his regiment, to
• 1:20:19
  lodge in his house. The too agreeable person of the lady of the house
• 1:20:25
  speedily charmed the visitor, and to her credit, she endeavored to inspire her
• 1:20:30
  husband with a fear of the consequences, but he obstinately persisted in keeping his
• 1:20:34
  young friend in the house with his wife, who was both young and handsome,
• 1:20:40
  with the result they soon conceived a passion for each other. The father
• 1:20:45
  of the Marquise, one Lieutenant d'Aubray, was greatly incensed on hearing of his
• 1:20:49
  daughter's indiscretions, and obtaining a letter, de Cachet had the captain sent to
• 1:20:56
  the bastille. Here, Saint Croix was placed in the same cell as exili
• 1:21:00
  and the latter soon instructed him how he might easily revenge himself. The Marquise,
• 1:21:06
  who found means of visiting her lover, was informed how to obtain the
• 1:21:11
  poison, and at once commenced operations on those members of her family who were
• 1:21:16
  most incensed against her, with the result that first her father, then her
• 1:21:21
  brothers and sister fell victims to her revenge. Suspicion resting on her, she
• 1:21:28
  fled into Belgium and was arrested at Liege. A full confession of her crimes,
• 1:21:33
  written by her own hand, was found upon her. She was eventually
• 1:21:39
  beheaded and burnt near Notre Dame in July sixteen seventy six, Saint Croix is
• 1:21:45
  said to have accidentally succumbed to the effects of poisonous fumes in his own laboratory.
• 1:21:51
  The authorities, on examining his effects, as he left no family,
• 1:21:57
  came across a small box to which paperwork was attached, which contained a request
• 1:22:01
  that after his death, it might be delivered to the Marquise de brad Villiers,
• 1:22:06
  who resides in rue Neuve Saint Paul. This paper was signed and dated
• 1:22:13
  by Saint Croix on May twenty five, sixteen seventy two. On the box
• 1:22:18
  being opened, it was found to contain a large collection of various poisons,
• 1:22:24
  including corrosive, sublimey, antimony, and opium. When the Marquise heard of
• 1:22:30
  the death of her lover, she at once made every effort to obtain the
• 1:22:32
  box by bribing the officers of justice, but failed. La Chose the servant
• 1:22:40
  of Saint Croix laid claim to the property, but was arrested as an accomplice
• 1:22:45
  and imprisoned. On confessing many serious crimes. He was broken alive on the
• 1:22:50
  wheel. In sixteen seventy three. Evidence was brought to prove at the trial
• 1:22:57
  of de Bravagnier that both She and san Qui Croois were secretly combined with other
• 1:23:01
  persons accused of similar crimes. Some distinguished people were implicated, including Pinacier,
• 1:23:10
  a receiver general of the clergy, who was afterwards accused of practicing her secrets
• 1:23:15
  one crime seemed to bring another to light, and two persons named La Voissi
• 1:23:20
  and La Viguerier, a priest named Lossage, and several others were next hailed
• 1:23:26
  before the tribunal and charged with trading with the secrets of exili and inciting people
• 1:23:31
  with weak minds to the crime of poisoning. It was alleged that, through
• 1:23:36
  their instrumentality, a large number of married women had hastened the decease of their
• 1:23:43
  husbands. The Chambre Ardonte, or burning Court, as it was commonly called,
• 1:23:48
  was established at the Arsenal near the Bastille and was rarely idle. Persons
• 1:23:54
  of the highest rank were cited to appear before it, among others, two
• 1:23:59
  nieces of Cardinal Mazarin, the Duchess of Buillon, and the Countess de Soissant,
• 1:24:04
  mother of Prince Eujane. The Countess de Soisson had to retire to Brussels.
• 1:24:12
  The Martial de Luxembourg was the next sensational arrest. He was carried to
• 1:24:16
  the Bastille and submitted to a long examination, after which he was allowed to
• 1:24:23
  remain fourteen months in prison. Lavoisin and his accomplices were eventually condemned and burnt
• 1:24:30
  at the stake, which seemed to put a check on this series of abominable
• 1:24:33
  crimes which spread throughout France from sixteen seventy to sixteen eighty. Maria Luisa,
• 1:24:42
  daughter of Louis the fourteenth, who married Charles the second, King of Spain,
• 1:24:46
  is said to have died from the effects of poison in sixteen eighty nine.
• 1:24:51
  Voltaire states it was undoubtedly believed that the Austrian ministers of Charles the second
• 1:24:58
  would get rid of her be because she loved her country and might prevent the
• 1:25:01
  king her husband from declaring for the Allies against France. They even sent her
• 1:25:08
  from Versailles what they believed to be a counter poison. This did not arrive
• 1:25:14
  until after her death. In the Memoirs of the Marquis de don Jo,
• 1:25:18
  he says the king announced the death of his daughter at supper. In these
• 1:25:23
  words, the Queen of Spain is dead, poisoned by eating of an eel
• 1:25:29
  pie, and the Countess d'epernis, and the Camara, Zapeta and Nina,
• 1:25:34
  who eat of it after her, are also dead of the same poison.
• 1:25:40
  It is more than probable the unfortunate Queen and her ladies succumbed to some putrefactive
• 1:25:46
  poison in the fish itself, and were not killed by intent. Nothing was
• 1:25:53
  known of animal poisons in those days, and such was the state of the
• 1:25:56
  public mind that nearly every sudden death was at once attributed to poison. The
• 1:26:02
  close of the reign of Louis fourteen was marked by the sudden deaths of no
• 1:26:08
  less than six members of the royal family in close succession. The public sorrow
• 1:26:14
  and excitement were great, and rumors and suspicions of poisoning were revived with fury.
• 1:26:19
  Unexampled. The prince had a laboratory, and, among other arts,
• 1:26:25
  studied chemistry. This was considered by the ignorant to be sufficient proof, and
• 1:26:30
  the public outcry became terrible. On a visit of the Marquis de Canelais,
• 1:26:35
  the Prince was found extended on the floor, shedding tears and distracted with despair.
• 1:26:43
  His chemist and fellow worker Humber ran to surrender himself at the Bstille,
• 1:26:48
  but they refused to receive him without orders. The prince was so beside himself
• 1:26:55
  on hearing the public outcry and suspicions, that he demanded to be put in
• 1:27:00
  prison so that his innocence might be cleared by judicial forms. The letter de
• 1:27:06
  Cachet was actually made out, but not signed. The marquis alone kept his
• 1:27:12
  head and prevailed upon the prince's mother to oppose Elettre de Cachet. The monarch
• 1:27:17
  who granted it and his nephew who demanded it were both equally wretched, says
• 1:27:23
  the historian. The Poudre des Assesson, famous in Paris as a secret poison,
• 1:27:30
  was at one time supposed to consist of diamond dust, but, according
• 1:27:33
  to Haller, was really composed of sugar of lead. This was used by
• 1:27:39
  several notorious criminals during the seventeenth century. End of Chapter four, Chapter five
• 1:27:48
  poisoning plots. The use of poison as an instrument for political purposes during the
• 1:27:56
  Middle Ages soon spread over Europe, and the dread of wholesale poisoning caused numerous
• 1:28:02
  panics. Some of these alarms may probably have been circulated by unscrupulous traders who
• 1:28:10
  had articles to sell or some business interest to forward. But of others authentic
• 1:28:15
  records exist. June six is still kept as a public holiday in Malta.
• 1:28:21
  Upon that day, a century and a half ago, while the island was
• 1:28:26
  still possessed by the Knights of Saint John, a jew waited on the grand
• 1:28:30
  Master and revealed to him a plot that had been planned for exterminating the whole
• 1:28:35
  population at a stroke. This man kept a coffee house frequented by the Turkish
• 1:28:42
  slaves, and understanding their language, he had overheard suspicious remarks among his customers.
• 1:28:48
  The grand Master, believing the truth of the man's statement, took immediate
• 1:28:54
  action. The slaves indicated were at once seized and put to torture, and
• 1:28:59
  they confessed a design of poisoning all the wells and fountains on the island,
• 1:29:04
  and to make the result surer, each of the conspirators was to assassinate a
• 1:29:10
  Christian. One hundred and twenty five were found guilty. Some were burnt,
• 1:29:15
  some broken on the wheel, while others were ordered to have their arms and
• 1:29:19
  legs attached to two galleys, which, on being rowed apart, would thus
• 1:29:25
  dismember them. Whether these frightful punishments were carried out it is impossible to say,
• 1:29:31
  but the fact remains that the people of Malta still commemorate their escape from
• 1:29:36
  poisoning. To the present time, wholesale poisoning appears to have been a common
• 1:29:43
  practice in Eastern countries, especially in India and Persia. The wells or other
• 1:29:49
  water sources were usually chosen as the medium for disseminating the poison, and in
• 1:29:56
  this way whole villages have often been destroyed by by some miscreant. Another extraordinary
• 1:30:02
  poisoning plot was discovered in Lima towards the close of the nineteenth century. During
• 1:30:09
  the Insurrection of seventeen eighty one, A rich tathique who professed loyalty, went
• 1:30:14
  to a chemist's shop and asked for two hundred pounds of corrosive sublimate. He
• 1:30:19
  was willing to pay any price. The chemist had not anything like that amount
• 1:30:26
  in stock, and, not wishing to send such a good customer away,
• 1:30:30
  substituted two hundred pounds of alum. On the following day, all the water
• 1:30:35
  in the town was found to be impregnated with alum. An examination being made
• 1:30:41
  of the reservoir. It was found that the fence around it had been broken
• 1:30:45
  down and the banks strewn with alum, and the water rendered undrinkable. England
• 1:30:51
  has remained practically free from crimes of this kind. In fifteen thirty a case
• 1:30:57
  occurred which caused great public indignity. Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, was accustomed
• 1:31:03
  to entertain a number of poor people daily. One afternoon, a large number
• 1:31:08
  of his humble guests, together with some of the officers of the household,
• 1:31:13
  were taken ill. Two died, and after an examination of the food had
• 1:31:17
  been made, it was declared the yeast had been poisoned. Parliament took up
• 1:31:23
  the investigation, and the bishop's cook, one Richard Rowe, was found guilty.
• 1:31:30
  He was tried and sentenced to be boiled alive as a terrible example to
• 1:31:34
  others. Boiling seems to have been a favorite punishment for poisoners during the Middle
• 1:31:41
  Ages, a fact which doubtless shows the abhorrence in which crimes of this kind
• 1:31:45
  were held. It is further recorded that on March seventeenth, fifteen twenty four,
• 1:31:53
  Margaret Davy Made was boiled in Smithfield for poisoning three households. She had
• 1:32:00
  dwelled in. Among Queen Elizabeth's statesmen, poison would appear to have been regarded
• 1:32:05
  as almost a legitimate weapon of defense. Her favorite Lester, to whom we
• 1:32:12
  have already alluded, was often called the poisoner. This propensity was probably largely
• 1:32:17
  due to the fact that most young englishmen of rank were sent to Italy to
• 1:32:23
  finish their education, and there were introduced to the Italian methods of poisoning so
• 1:32:29
  much in vogue. The Duke de Gues in his memoirs, relates in a
• 1:32:33
  most matter of fact way how he requested the captain of his guard to Poniard,
• 1:32:40
  a troublesome demagogue at Naples. The captain was shocked. He would poison
• 1:32:45
  anyone at his Grace's command with pleasure, but the dagger was a vulgar instrument.
• 1:32:51
  So the Duke bought some strong poison, the composition of which he describes
• 1:32:57
  at length, and it was duly administered. But Gennaro, the intended victim,
• 1:33:02
  had just eaten cabbage dressed in oil, which is said to have acted
• 1:33:06
  as an antidote, and so he lived after all. End of chapter five.
• 1:33:15
  Chapter six concerning Arsenic. Arsenic has perhaps been more frequently used than any
• 1:33:21
  other poison for criminal purposes. It was known to the ancient Greeks in the
• 1:33:27
  form of the yellow sulfide, commonly called orpiment. It is found in Greece
• 1:33:31
  and Hungary. Its bright yellow color caused many of the early alchemists to consider
• 1:33:36
  it the key to the philosopher's stone, and this is said to be grounded
• 1:33:42
  on some enigmatical verse in the Sybiline Oracles. The Emperor Caligula, according to
• 1:33:48
  Pliny, ordered a great quantity of orpiment to be melted and manipulated, so
• 1:33:54
  that the gold it was supposed to contain might be extracted from it. Ours
• 1:34:00
  is the agent most commonly employed for criminal purposes in India, doubtless because it
• 1:34:05
  can be both easily and cheaply obtained. The reports of the Analyst to the
• 1:34:11
  Bombay government throw considerable light on the methods pursued by Indian poisoners. The poison
• 1:34:17
  is usually given in sweetmeats, and generally by a strange woman who has been
• 1:34:24
  met in the street and who mysteriously disappears. This strange woman is found in
• 1:34:30
  every annalist report for the past twenty years, and under much the same circumstances.
• 1:34:35
  Most of the cases were typical of the people among whom they occur,
• 1:34:40
  as for instance, the following in a Shindy district, a man went into
• 1:34:45
  a shop one day and entered into friendly conversation with a stranger he met there.
• 1:34:50
  On parting, by way of thanking him, the stranger presented him with
• 1:34:55
  some sweets for distribution among his friends. The result was that five men and
• 1:35:00
  a boy were poisoned, and the obliging stranger has never been heard of since.
• 1:35:05
  The professional poisoner in India, for there are many such, is rarely
• 1:35:11
  caught or even suspected. In a large number of cases, crimes of this
• 1:35:15
  kind are taken little notice of by the community, and sometimes the poisoner apparently
• 1:35:21
  thinks nothing of poisoning a whole family in order to make sure of his victim.
• 1:35:27
  The utter absence of motive in the majority of cases would point to the
• 1:35:31
  conclusion that they were largely the result of homicidal mania. For more than a
• 1:35:38
  century after the properties of arsenic were well known, there was no certain method
• 1:35:43
  known for its detection, and very little advance was made until the early part
• 1:35:47
  of last century, when marsh discovered his test in eighteen thirty six, by
• 1:35:54
  means of which the minutest quantities of the poison may be detected. It is
• 1:35:59
  cacharacteristic of both arsenic and mercury that their presence may be proved and demonstrated even
• 1:36:05
  in the bones years after they have been taken. In proof of this,
• 1:36:11
  the following remarkable case is given. A wealthy farmer died and was buried in
• 1:36:15
  the tomb where his father had been interred thirty five years before. An examination
• 1:36:23
  of certain of the bones of the father revealed particles of a metallic looking substance,
• 1:36:29
  which was collected and tested and proved to be mercury. It had thus
• 1:36:33
  been preserved in his body for more than the third of a century, the
• 1:36:38
  probability being that he had been in the habit of taking it medicinally during the
• 1:36:43
  latter part of his life. Another strange case came under the notice of a
• 1:36:47
  Bristol chemist in which he found abundant traces of arsenic in the bodies of several
• 1:36:54
  young children after they had been buried eight years. A curious story is related
• 1:37:00
  by the late Sir Richard Quain that came under his experience, and one which
• 1:37:05
  would have proved a profound mystery to this day, but for his practical knowledge
• 1:37:11
  and acumen, he was asked to make a post mortem examination on the body
• 1:37:15
  of a man who was by trade a stonemason. To continue the story in
• 1:37:20
  his own words, one day, on coming in to his dinner, he
• 1:37:25
  went into the scullery, washed his hands, and going into the kitchen,
• 1:37:30
  he said to his wife, it is all over. I have taken poison.
• 1:37:33
  What have you taken? Arsenic? He replied, and she at once
• 1:37:39
  took him off to the Western General Dispensary. The senior surgeon was out when
• 1:37:45
  they got there, but two young pupils of his happened to be in,
• 1:37:48
  who thought it was a very important case and they would treat it pretty actively.
• 1:37:54
  So they gave him tartar emetic, pumped out the stomach and pumped oxide
• 1:37:59
  of iron in to it, and a good many other operations they performed.
• 1:38:03
  The poor man was extremely ill and died in twenty four hours. The coroner's
• 1:38:09
  beadle went to the chemist and said, how did you come to sell this
• 1:38:13
  man poison? He replied, I sold him no poison. I thought he
• 1:38:17
  was off his head when he came. What did you give him? Oh?
• 1:38:20
  I gave him some alum and cream of tartar and labeled it poison.
• 1:38:26
  He swallowed this in the belief it was arsenic, says Sir Richard. When
• 1:38:30
  I made the post mortem examination, to my amazement, I found a great
• 1:38:34
  deal of arsenic in the stomach. This was rather puzzling. I said,
• 1:38:40
  if it is in the stomach, it ought to go farther down. So
• 1:38:43
  I searched the intestines, but there was no trace of arsenic anywhere. The
• 1:38:47
  simple explanation of it was this These two young fellows, horrified to find the
• 1:38:54
  man had died without taking arsenic after all, pumped some into the stomach.
• 1:39:00
  Another instance that terminated in a less tragic manner, in which a would be
• 1:39:04
  suicide was frustrated by a watchful chemist, happened some years ago. One morning,
• 1:39:12
  a tall, decently dressed man of seafaring aspect entered a chemist's shop in
• 1:39:16
  the neighborhood of the docks of a northern seaport, and, in a solemn
• 1:39:20
  and confidential manner, asked for a shillings worth of strong laudanum. For what
• 1:39:26
  purpose do you require it, asked the chemist. Well, you see,
• 1:39:30
  sir, the man explained, I've just come off a voyage from Frisco,
• 1:39:34
  and I find my sweetheart has gone off with Jim, you see, sir,
• 1:39:39
  And now it's all up with me. Give me a strong dose please,
• 1:39:43
  And if you don't think a shillingsworth will be enough, but my good
• 1:39:46
  man, interrupted the chemist, I'll shoot myself. If not, sir,
• 1:39:50
  I will all right, then, said the chemist, and seeing argument was
• 1:39:56
  useless, he proceeded to mix an innocent but nauseous draft of aloes. Now
• 1:40:02
  put in a shillings worth of arsenic very well, replied the chemist, adding
• 1:40:08
  some harmless magnesia. And you might as well throw in a shillings worth of
• 1:40:13
  Prussic acid, said the broken hearted lover. The chemist carefully measured a little
• 1:40:18
  essence of almonds into the glass and handed it to the would be suicide.
• 1:40:24
  He paid, swallowed it at one draft, and solemnly walked out of the
• 1:40:28
  shop, Crossing the street, which was quiet at the time. He deliberately
• 1:40:33
  laid himself flat on his back on the footpath and closed his eyes. A
• 1:40:39
  group of children gathered round and stood gazing with their eyes and mouths open in
• 1:40:44
  wonderment, and an occasional passer by stopped a moment cast a glance at the
• 1:40:49
  unwonted sight, and then passed on. After lying thus quite motionless for about
• 1:40:56
  five minutes, he suddenly raised his head, took a look round, then,
• 1:41:00
  with one bound jumped to his feet and made off as hard as he
• 1:41:03
  could run. It is a curious fact that arsenic has been the favorite medium
• 1:41:11
  of female poisoners from very early times, and in two celebrated poisoning cases of
• 1:41:16
  later years, in both of which women were accused of murder by the administration
• 1:41:21
  of arsenic, the plea that the poison had been used by them for cosmetic
• 1:41:26
  purposes has been put forward to account for having it in their possession. The
• 1:41:30
  effect of arsenic on the skin is well known, and that it is frequently
• 1:41:35
  used both internally and externally to improve the skin by women. Is an undoubted
• 1:41:43
  fact that such a practice may lead to the taking of arsenic as a confirmed
• 1:41:48
  habit. There is also evidence to prove, and the writer has met with
• 1:41:53
  more than one instance in which the habit of taking solution of arsenic in large
• 1:41:58
  quantities has been contracted by women. The recent rage for the so called arsenical
• 1:42:04
  soaps, which are supposed to improve the complexion and are being extensively used by
• 1:42:11
  women goes to corroborate this statement. End of chapter six, Chapter seven.
• 1:42:18
  The strange case of Madame LeFarge. The story of Madame LeFarge, who was
• 1:42:25
  tried in France for the murder of her husband in eighteen forty, is a
• 1:42:29
  strangely romantic one. Marie foutunet Capel was the daughter of a captain in the
• 1:42:35
  Imperial Artillery. Her parents died in her childhood and she was placed in the
• 1:42:41
  care of an aunt, who, at the earliest opportunity, determined to relieve
• 1:42:45
  herself of the burden of her support by negotiating a marriage for her while still
• 1:42:50
  a girl. Through the instrumentality of a matrimonial agent in Paris, an alliance
• 1:42:57
  was arranged between Marie Capell and one Monsieur Charles Lafarge, who was a widower
• 1:43:03
  and an iron master of Glandier. The marriage, which was purely a commercial
• 1:43:09
  transaction, took place in Paris on August fifteenth, eighteen thirty nine, after
• 1:43:15
  which Lafarge and his young wife set out for his old and gloomy seigniorial mansion
• 1:43:19
  in Glandere. From statements made afterwards, Madame Lafarge became disgusted with her husband's
• 1:43:28
  brutality before the honeymoon was over. After they reached their own house, however,
• 1:43:33
  they were reconciled and there seemed to be every possibility of their spending a
• 1:43:38
  happy wedded life together. Besides the newly married pair, there lived in the
• 1:43:43
  family mansion. The mother and sister of Lafarge and his chief clerk, one
• 1:43:48
  Denis Barbieu, was a frequent visitor at the house and had liberty to walk
• 1:43:54
  through the place without restriction. In a very short time, Madame Lafarge discovered
• 1:44:00
  that both she and her relatives had been deceived as to the position of her
• 1:44:03
  husband, and that instead of being a man of considerable fortune, he was
• 1:44:09
  straitened for means. On his representations, she bestowed upon him all her fortune,
• 1:44:15
  and even wrote letters, at his dictation to some of her wealthy friends
• 1:44:19
  asking them to aid him to find money to develop a new method he claimed
• 1:44:25
  to have discovered for smelting iron. With these letters of introduction, Lafarge set
• 1:44:30
  out for Paris in December eighteen thirty nine to raise money to start his new
• 1:44:35
  project. While he was thus away, his wife had her portrait drawn by
• 1:44:41
  an artist in Glandier, and determined to send it to her absent husband.
• 1:44:46
  She therefore packed it in a box with some cakes made by his mother,
• 1:44:51
  together with an affectionate letter, and dispatched them to Paris. This box,
• 1:44:57
  which contained nothing but the five small cakes, the portrait, and the letter,
• 1:45:01
  was packed and sealed by Madame LeFarge in the presence of several witnesses.
• 1:45:06
  When it reached Paris and was opened by Lafarge, it contained only one large
• 1:45:12
  cake. After partaking of which he was suddenly taken ill and was eventually compelled
• 1:45:17
  to return home, where he arrived on January five, eighteen forty. His
• 1:45:23
  sickness continued and increased in severity, and nine days afterwards, he died.
• 1:45:30
  Shortly after his death, his mother and friends, who were well aware how
• 1:45:33
  the widow disliked them, and her husband also, who had made her life
• 1:45:39
  so unhappy, at once imputed the cause of death to poison administered by his
• 1:45:45
  wife in the cake she had sent to Paris, and Marie Cappelle Lfarge was
• 1:45:49
  arrested on suspicion. When the house of the deceased man was searched, certain
• 1:45:55
  diamonds were found which were supposed to have been stolen from the Vicomte des lef
• 1:46:00
  Das by Madame Lfarge before her marriage. The unfortunate woman was therefore charged with
• 1:46:05
  a double crime of theft and murder. Though arrested in January eighteen forty,
• 1:46:13
  the trial of Madame Lafarge did not commence till July ninth of the same year,
• 1:46:17
  and the charge of theft was first proceeded with in her absence, and
• 1:46:23
  she was found guilty. While this judgment was still under appeal, she was
• 1:46:28
  brought to trial on the graver charge. The evidence for the prosecution went to
• 1:46:33
  prove that the illness of Lafarge commenced with the eating of the cake received from
• 1:46:38
  his home, As already stated, when the box arrived in Paris, the
• 1:46:43
  seals had been broken, the five cakes had disappeared, and a single cake
• 1:46:47
  as large as a plate had been substituted for them. It was alleged by
• 1:46:54
  the prosecution that this single cake had been prepared by Madame LeFarge and secretly placed
• 1:47:00
  in the box, but no evidence could be brought to prove that she ever
• 1:47:03
  tampered with the box after it had been sealed. LaFarge's clerk, Denise Barbier,
• 1:47:11
  made a clandestine visit to Paris after the box had been dispatched, and
• 1:47:15
  he was with LeFarge when it arrived in Paris. Yet no notice seems to
• 1:47:19
  have been taken of this suspicious fact it transpired. It was he who also
• 1:47:27
  first threw out hints on his master's return that he was being poisoned by arsenic,
• 1:47:31
  and told a brother employee that his master would be dead within ten days.
• 1:47:38
  There was ample proof, however, that there was a considerable quantity of
• 1:47:42
  arsenic in the house at Glandere. It was found that Madame LeFarge had purchased
• 1:47:46
  some in December, stating she required it for destroying rats. Denise also stated
• 1:47:54
  in evidence that Madame had requested him to procure her some arsenic. He bought
• 1:47:59
  some, but did not give it to her. It was further stated that
• 1:48:02
  Madame LeFarge was seen to stir a white powder into some chicken broth which had
• 1:48:09
  been prepared for her husband, the remains of which found in a bowl were
• 1:48:13
  said by the analyst to contain arsenic. The medical men who conducted the post
• 1:48:18
  mortem examination gave it as their deliberate opinion that the deceased man had been poisoned
• 1:48:26
  by arsenic, of which metal they professed to have found considerable quantities. The
• 1:48:31
  friends of the accused then submitted the matter to Ophila, the famous toxicologist,
• 1:48:38
  who, in giving his opinion of the methods and manner in which the analysis
• 1:48:42
  had been carried out, said that, owing to the antiquated and doubtful methods
• 1:48:45
  of detection employed by the medical men, it was probable they fancied they had
• 1:48:50
  found arsenic where there was none. Thereupon, the prosecution asked Orphela to undertake
• 1:48:57
  a fresh analysis himself, which he consented to do, and, on making
• 1:49:01
  a careful examination of the remains, stated he discovered just a minute trace of
• 1:49:09
  arsenic. This apparently sealed the doom of the accused woman and served to strengthen
• 1:49:15
  the bias of the jury. But now another actor appeared in the drama,
• 1:49:19
  in the person of Raspaill, another famous French chemist, who had watched the
• 1:49:25
  case from the beginning with interest. On hearing the result of Orfila's examination,
• 1:49:30
  he had taken the trouble to trace the zinc wire with which Opela had experimented
• 1:49:35
  to the shop where the great toxicologist had procured the article, and he found
• 1:49:42
  on analysis that the zinc itself contained more arsenic than Ophela had detected by his
• 1:49:48
  examination. Orphela had used Marsha's test, which is infallible so long as the
• 1:49:56
  reagents used are free from arsenic themselves. Raspai, having placed the result of
• 1:50:02
  his discovery of arsenic in or Feeli's reagent at the service of the defense,
• 1:50:08
  was on his way to Tull, where the assizes were being held, when
• 1:50:12
  an unfortunate accident delayed his progress, and the unhappy Marie capel LeFarge, after
• 1:50:18
  a trial which lasted sixteen days, was found guilty meanwhile and condemned to imprisonment
• 1:50:25
  for life with hard labor and exposure in the pillory. Raspaia, however,
• 1:50:31
  would not let the matter rest, and at once set to work to save
• 1:50:35
  the condemned woman. He at length Garaphila to fairly admit his error and join
• 1:50:41
  him in a professional report to the authorities to that effect. After being imprisoned
• 1:50:47
  for twelve years, in the end, the sentence on this unhappy woman was
• 1:50:51
  reduced to five years in the Montpellier House of detention, after which the government
• 1:50:58
  sent her to the convent of Sena Remi, from whence she was liberated in
• 1:51:02
  eighteen fifty two, but only to end her wretched life. A few months
• 1:51:06
  afterwards. There appeared in the Edinburgh Review for eighteen forty two a careful examination
• 1:51:14
  of this interesting case from a legal point of view, in which the writer
• 1:51:17
  states the strongest evidence indicated Denise and not Madame Lafarge, as the perpetrator of
• 1:51:25
  the crime. It was proved this man lived by forgery and assisted LeFarge in
• 1:51:30
  some very shady transactions to cover the latter's insolvency. He was further known to
• 1:51:36
  harbor a deadly hatred for Madame Lfarge. He was with his master in Paris
• 1:51:43
  when he was seized with the sudden illness, and it transpired that out of
• 1:51:48
  the twenty five thousand francs the iron Master had succeeded in borrowing from his wife's
• 1:51:54
  relatives, only three thousand, nine hundred could be found when he returned to
• 1:51:58
  Glandere. On his own statement, he was in the possession of a quantity
• 1:52:02
  of arsenic and he was the first to direct suspicion against his master's wife.
• 1:52:09
  Yet all these facts appear to have been overlooked in the efforts of the prosecution
• 1:52:14
  to fasten the guilt on the unfortunate woman. That LeFarge died from the effects
• 1:52:19
  of arsenical poisoning, there seems little doubt, but by whom it was administered
• 1:52:25
  has never been conclusively proved, and the tragedy still remains among the unsolved poisoning
• 1:52:30
  mysteries. End of chapter seven, Chapter eight. The Case of Madeline Smith.
• 1:52:40
  The case of Madeline Smith, who was charged with causing the death of
• 1:52:44
  Longuelier by the Administration of arsenic at Glasgow in eighteen fifty seven, excited universal
• 1:52:50
  interest owing to the social position of the lady. The trial was a cold
• 1:52:56
  celebre of the time, and the circumstances of the case were of an extraordinary
• 1:53:01
  character. Miss Smith, who was a young and accomplished woman at that time,
• 1:53:06
  and who resided in a fashionable quarter of Glasgow, got entangled with a
• 1:53:12
  French clerk named Pierre Emil Languedere. Langliars died very suddenly in an unaccountable manner,
• 1:53:19
  and suspicion falling on Madeline Smith, who was frequently in his company,
• 1:53:25
  she was arrested and charged with the crime. The crown case was that she
• 1:53:30
  poisoned her lover that she might be betrothed to a personage of high social standing.
• 1:53:35
  That Loguelier died on March from the effects of arsenic was amply proved.
• 1:53:41
  But while suspicious acts were alleged against the accused woman, no direct evidence was
• 1:53:46
  adduced to show that she administered the drug. The worst point against her was
• 1:53:51
  the fact of her having possession of the poison, and irrespective of two previous
• 1:53:57
  purchases of colored arsenic for which she had given false reasons, it was proved
• 1:54:02
  that the accused had purchased one ounce as she said to kill rats on March
• 1:54:08
  eighteenth, only five days before the death of Loanguellier. The arsenic sold was
• 1:54:14
  colored with indigo according to the Act of Parliament. When charged with the crime
• 1:54:19
  and required to account for the poison, she replied she had used the whole
• 1:54:24
  of it to apply to her face, arms and neck, diluted with water,
• 1:54:29
  and that a school companion had told her that arsenic was good for the
• 1:54:32
  complexion. From the post mortem examination and subsequent analysis, eighty eight grains of
• 1:54:40
  arsenic were found in the stomach and its contents. Doctor Chrysisten, the greatest
• 1:54:45
  toxicological expert of the time, was called and stated he knew of no case
• 1:54:51
  in which so much as eighty eight grains of arsenic had been found in the
• 1:54:56
  stomach after death. This was made a turning point of the defense, and
• 1:55:00
  it was contended that so large a dose of arsenic could not have been swallowed
• 1:55:05
  unknowingly, and therefore suicide was indicated. The jury, accepting this view of
• 1:55:12
  the case, returned a verdict of not proven, and Madeline Smith was liberated,
• 1:55:16
  the trial having lasted ten days. Some interesting particulars concerning the subsequent life
• 1:55:24
  of this lady were published some time ago. After the trial, she decided
• 1:55:28
  to go abroad, but before starting she is said to have married a certain
• 1:55:32
  mysterious individual named doctor Tudor Horra. With him, she lived for many years
• 1:55:39
  in Perth, but few people ever saw her, and the doctor always declined
• 1:55:44
  to divulge his wife's maiden name. He kept a small surgery and is said
• 1:55:48
  to have been in receipt of about four hundred pounds a year from an unnamed
• 1:55:54
  source. Some years after, believing that his wife had been recognized, he
• 1:55:59
  bought a practice, this at Hotham, near Melbourne, and they sailed for
• 1:56:01
  Australia. Shortly after their arrival, missus Urra left her husband and remained absent
• 1:56:08
  from Melbourne until his death. Soon afterwards, she married again, but it
• 1:56:14
  is said her second union was not by any means a happy one. She
• 1:56:17
  remained unknown and sought no society. She was an excellent musician and spent most
• 1:56:24
  of her time in reading and playing. She had no children and died at
• 1:56:29
  the age of fifty five. Six years after the trial of Madeline Smith,
• 1:56:34
  a case was tried at the Chester Assizes in which a woman named Hewet or
• 1:56:39
  Holt was charged with poisoning her mother. Although the symptoms of irritant poisoning were
• 1:56:45
  very clearly marked, the county practitioner who attended the woman at the time certified
• 1:56:50
  that the cause of her death was gastro enteritis. Eleven weeks after she had
• 1:56:56
  been buried, the body was exhumed and examined. An analysis revealed the presence
• 1:57:01
  of one hundred fifty four grains of arsenic in the stomach alone. The possession
• 1:57:06
  of a considerable quantity of arsenic was brought home to the accused and also direct
• 1:57:13
  evidence of its administration, and she was found guilty. This case is interesting
• 1:57:18
  from the fact of proof being obtained of the administration of so large a quantity
• 1:57:24
  of arsenic, and if it had occurred before the trial of Madeline Smith,
• 1:57:29
  it might have demolished her council's main line of defense. End of Chapter eight,
• 1:57:35
  Chapter nine. The Maybrick Case. On July thirty one, eighteen eighty
• 1:57:42
  nine, one of the most remarkable poisoning cases of modern times, was brought
• 1:57:46
  before Mister Justice Stephen at the Liverpool Assizes. The trial, which lasted eight
• 1:57:53
  days, excited the keenest interest throughout the country, especially as the principal actors
• 1:57:59
  in the tragedy were people of good social position. The accused, Florence Maybrick,
• 1:58:03
  wife of a Liverpool merchant, was charged with causing the death of her
• 1:58:09
  husband by administering arsenic to him. About the end of April eighteen eighty nine,
• 1:58:15
  mister James Maybrick was seized with a peculiar illness, of which the main
• 1:58:19
  symptoms consisted of a rigidity of the limbs and a general feeling of sickness,
• 1:58:26
  which quite prostrated him and eventually confined him to bed. The medical man who
• 1:58:30
  was called in to attend him attributed the cause to extreme irritability of the stomach
• 1:58:36
  and treated him accordingly, but becoming puzzled by the persistent sickness and the rapidly
• 1:58:44
  increasing weakness of his patient, A second practitioner was called in consultation. From
• 1:58:50
  this time he grew considerably worse. Severer symptoms and diarrhea set in, which
• 1:58:57
  caused the doctors to suspect the cause was to to some irritant poison. This
• 1:59:01
  was confirmed by the discovery that arsenic had been placed in a bottle of meat
• 1:59:06
  juice that was being administered to the sick man. Trained nurses were placed in
• 1:59:12
  charge and a close watch kept on the patient, but without avail, and
• 1:59:15
  he died on May eleventh. Suspicions having been aroused, and from statements made
• 1:59:21
  to the police, Missus Maybrick was arrested and eventually charged with the wilful murder
• 1:59:28
  of her husband. From evidence given at the trial, it transpired that the
• 1:59:32
  relations between husband and wife had not been of the most cordial character for some
• 1:59:38
  time. There were frequent disagreements, and just before mister Maybrick was taken ill,
• 1:59:44
  there had been a serious quarrel resulting from the wife's relations with another man.
• 1:59:48
  The lady resented the accusation and a separation was talked of. The fatal
• 1:59:55
  illness then intervened during the first portion of which Missus mays Eybrick nursed her husband,
• 2:00:01
  but through a letter addressed to her lover, which she had given to
• 2:00:04
  her nurse maid, to post having been opened by the latter and handed to
• 2:00:09
  mister Maybrick's brother, trained nurses were called in and the sick man was placed
• 2:00:15
  in their charge entirely. This letter, which formed one of the strongest pieces
• 2:00:19
  of evidence against the accused, revealed the connection between Missus Maybrick and her lover
• 2:00:25
  and contained the intelligence to him that her husband was sick unto death. Evidence
• 2:00:31
  was also given by the servants of fly papers having been seen in process of
• 2:00:36
  maceration in water in Missus Maybrick's bedroom. The trained nurses also gave evidence concerning
• 2:00:44
  the suspicious conduct of Missus Maybrick, with reference to tampering with the medicines and
• 2:00:48
  meat juice which were to be administered to the patient. These suspicions culminated in
• 2:00:55
  the discovery of arsenic in a bottle of the meat juice by one of the
• 2:00:59
  medical attendants. Considerable quantities of arsenic were found by the police in the house,
• 2:01:04
  including a packet containing seventy one grains mixed with charcoal and labeled poison for
• 2:01:12
  cats. The analytical examination was made by doctor Stephenson and a local analytical chemist,
• 2:01:18
  who discovered traces of arsenic in the intestines and point zero four nine of
• 2:01:24
  a grain of arsenic in the liver, traces of the poison being also found
• 2:01:29
  in the spleen. Arsenic was also found in various medicine bottles, handkerchiefs,
• 2:01:34
  bottles of glycerine, and in the pocket of a dressing gown belonging to the
• 2:01:39
  accused. Doctor Stephenson further stated he believed the body of the deceased at the
• 2:01:45
  time of death probably contained a fatal dose of arsenic. The scientific evidence adduced
• 2:01:50
  was of a very conflicting character. On one hand, the medical men who
• 2:01:56
  attended the deceased and the government analyst swore they believed that death was caused from
• 2:02:00
  the effects of arsenic, while on the other, doctor Tidy, who was
• 2:02:05
  called for the defense as an expert, stated that the quantity of arsenic discovered
• 2:02:11
  in the body did not point to the fact that an overdose had been administered.
• 2:02:15
  He believed that death had been due to gastroenteritis. Of some kind or
• 2:02:19
  other, but that the symptoms and post mortem appearance distinctly pointed away from arsenic
• 2:02:26
  as the cause of death. Doctor Macnamara, ex President of the Royal College
• 2:02:30
  of Surgeons Ireland, also stated that in his opinion, mister Maybrick's death had
• 2:02:38
  not been caused by arsenical poisoning, and that he agreed with doctor Tidy that
• 2:02:43
  the cause was gastro enteritis unconnected with arsenical poisoning. For the defense, it
• 2:02:49
  was also urged that the deceased man had been in the habit of taking arsenic
• 2:02:55
  in considerable quantities for some years. In support of this, witnesses were called
• 2:03:00
  to prove that he had been in the habit of taking a mysterious white powder,
• 2:03:04
  and that while living in America, he frequently purchased arsenic from chemists who
• 2:03:10
  knew he was in the habit of taking it. A black man who had
• 2:03:14
  been in the service of the deceased in America also deposed to seeing him take
• 2:03:19
  this white powder in beef tea. At the close of the evidence for the
• 2:03:24
  defense, the accused woman, by permission of the Judge, made the following
• 2:03:29
  statement. Amid the breathless silence of those in the court. My Lord,
• 2:03:33
  I wish to make a statement as well as I can, about a few
• 2:03:38
  facts in connection with the dreadful and crushing charge that has been made against me,
• 2:03:44
  the charge of poisoning my husband and father of my dear children. I
• 2:03:48
  wish principally to refer to the fly paper solution. The fly papers I bought
• 2:03:55
  with the intention of using the solution as a cosmetic before my marriage, and
• 2:04:00
  since for many years I have been in the habit of using this wash for
• 2:04:03
  the face, prescribed for me by doctor Graves of Brooklyn. It consisted I
• 2:04:10
  believe, principally of arsenic of tincture of Benzwen and elderflower water, and some
• 2:04:15
  other ingredients. This prescription I lost or mislaid last April, and as at
• 2:04:23
  the time I was suffering from an eruption on the face, I thought I
• 2:04:26
  should like to try and make a substitute myself. I was anxious to get
• 2:04:30
  rid of this eruption before I went to a ball on the thirtieth of that
• 2:04:34
  month, when I had been in Germany among my young friends. There I
• 2:04:39
  had seen used a solution derived from fly papers soaked in elderflower water, and
• 2:04:45
  then applied to the face with a handkerchief well soaked in the solution. I
• 2:04:49
  procured the fly papers and used them in the same manner, And to avoid
• 2:04:55
  evaporation, I put the solution into a bottle, so as to avoid as
• 2:04:59
  much as possible the admission of the air. For this purpose I put a
• 2:05:03
  plate over the fly papers, then a folded towel over that, and then
• 2:05:09
  another towel over that. My mother has been aware for a great many years
• 2:05:14
  that I have used arsenic in solution. I now wished to speak of his
• 2:05:18
  illness. On Thursday night, May nine, after the nurse had given my
• 2:05:23
  husband to medicine, I went and sat on the bed beside him. He
• 2:05:28
  complained to me of feeling very sick, very weak, and very restless.
• 2:05:32
  He implored me then again to give him the powder, which he had referred
• 2:05:38
  to earlier in the evening, and which I declined to give him. I
• 2:05:43
  was overwrought, terribly anxious, miserably unhappy, and his evident distress utterly unnerved
• 2:05:50
  me. As he told me the powder would not harm him, and that
• 2:05:55
  I could put it in his food. I then consented, my Lord,
• 2:06:00
  I had not one true or honest friend in the house. I had no
• 2:06:04
  one to consult, no one to advise me. I was deposed from my
• 2:06:10
  own position as mistress of my own house, and from the position of attending
• 2:06:14
  on my husband. And notwithstanding that he was so ill, and notwithstanding the
• 2:06:18
  evidence of the nurses and the servants, I may say that he missed me.
• 2:06:23
  Whenever I was not with him, whenever I was out of the room,
• 2:06:27
  he asked for me. And four days before he died, I was
• 2:06:30
  not allowed to give him a piece of ice without its being taken out of
• 2:06:34
  my hand. I took the meat juice into the inner room. On going
• 2:06:40
  through the door, I spilled some of the liquid from the bottle, and
• 2:06:43
  in order to make up the quantity spilled, I put in a considerable quantity
• 2:06:47
  of water. On returning into the room, I found my husband asleep.
• 2:06:53
  I placed the bottle on the table near the window. As he did not
• 2:06:57
  ask for anything then, and as I was not anxious to give him anything,
• 2:07:00
  I removed it from the small table where it attracted his attention, and
• 2:07:04
  put it on the washstand, where he could not see it. There I
• 2:07:09
  left it until Tuesday May fourteenth, the tuesday after my husband's death, till
• 2:07:15
  a few moments before the terrible charge was made against me. No one in
• 2:07:18
  that house had informed me of the fact that a death certificate had been refused,
• 2:07:25
  but of course the post mortem examination had taken place, or that there
• 2:07:29
  was any reason to suppose that my husband had died from other than natural causes.
• 2:07:35
  It was only when a witness alluded to the presence of arsenic in the
• 2:07:40
  meat juice that I was made aware of the nature of the powder my husband
• 2:07:44
  had been taking. In conclusion, I only wished to say that, for
• 2:07:47
  the love of our children, and for the sake of their future, a
• 2:07:51
  perfect reconciliation had taken place between us, and on the day before his death,
• 2:07:58
  I made a full and freak confession to him. Missus Maybrick's council,
• 2:08:03
  Sir Charles Russell, made a most brilliant and eloquent appeal in her defense.
• 2:08:09
  He pointed out that at the time the black shadow, which could never be
• 2:08:13
  dispelled, passed over the life of the accused woman. Her husband was in
• 2:08:18
  the habit of drugging himself. She was deposed from her position as mistress of
• 2:08:22
  her own home and pointed out as an object of suspicion. If it had
• 2:08:28
  not been for the act of infidelity on her part, there would be no
• 2:08:31
  motive assigned in the case. And surely there was a wide chasm between the
• 2:08:37
  grave moral guilt of unfaithfulness and the criminal guilt involved in the deliberate plotting by
• 2:08:43
  such wicked means of the felonious death of her husband. There were two questions
• 2:08:48
  to be answered. Was there clear, safe and satisfactory equivocal proof either that
• 2:08:56
  death was in fact caused by arsenical poisoning, or that the accused woman administered
• 2:09:01
  that poison If to the poison the death of her husband was due. The
• 2:09:07
  jury, however, returned a verdict of guilty, and Florence Maybrick was sentenced
• 2:09:11
  to death. The agitation and excitement throughout the country which followed, ending in
• 2:09:18
  a respite being granted and the sentence being committed to one of penal servitude for
• 2:09:22
  life, will be well remembered. Whether Florence Maybrick did actually administer arsenic to
• 2:09:30
  her husband with intent to kill him, she alone can tell. On her
• 2:09:35
  own confession, she admitted having given him a certain white powder for which he
• 2:09:39
  craved, of the nature of which she said she was ignorant. There can
• 2:09:43
  be no doubt this powder was arsenic. If she did not know the powder
• 2:09:48
  was arsenic and did not give it with intent to take his life, which
• 2:09:54
  many still believe, then surely such a web of circumstantial evidence has never before
• 2:09:58
  been woven round one accused of having committed a terrible crime. End of Chapter
• 2:10:07
  nine, Chapter ten about aconite and hemlock. Aconite or monkshood, whose purple
• 2:10:15
  flower shaped like a helmet, or monkshood is a familiar feature in our country
• 2:10:20
  gardens, ranks as one of the most ancient of vegetable poisons. The name
• 2:10:24
  aconite was derived from Acon, a city of Heraclia, and the plant,
• 2:10:30
  owing to its deadly nature, was supposed by the early Greeks, to have
• 2:10:33
  originated from the foam of the dog Cerberus. Aconite was largely used as an
• 2:10:39
  arrow poison by the ancients, and also employed for that purpose by the Chinese
• 2:10:45
  and the wild hill tribes of India. It was used by the ancient Greeks
• 2:10:50
  and Romans to destroy life, and they believed they could cause death to take
• 2:10:54
  place at a certain time by regulating the dose of poison. Thus, Theoprost
• 2:11:00
  writes the ordering of this poison was different according as it was designed to kill
• 2:11:05
  in two or three months or a year. The poison cup of the ancients
• 2:11:11
  was probably a compound of which hemlock and aconite were the chief ingredients. This
• 2:11:16
  was used for carrying out the criminal death penalty, and also for purposes of
• 2:11:22
  suicide when so desired. A curious relic of this ancient custom was practiced at
• 2:11:28
  Marseilles, where a poison was kept by the public authorities, of which hemlock
• 2:11:33
  was an ingredient. A dose of this was allowed by the magistrates to any
• 2:11:37
  one who could show a sufficient reason why he should deserve death. Valarius Maximus
• 2:11:43
  observed this custom came from Greece, particularly from the island of Chaos, where
• 2:11:48
  I saw an example of it in a woman of great quality, who,
• 2:11:54
  having lived very happy ninety years, obtained leave to die this way, lest
• 2:11:58
  by living longer she should happen to see a change of her good fortune.
• 2:12:03
  Theophrastus states Thrasius, a great physician, invented a composition which would cause death
• 2:12:11
  without any pain, and it was prepared with the juice of hemlock and poppy
• 2:12:16
  together, and did the business in a small dose. When vice and dissipation
• 2:12:22
  were at their height. In Rome, suicide was most common, and it
• 2:12:26
  was often met with among the Greeks after they had been contaminated by Roman manners
• 2:12:31
  and customs. When the Greeks and Romans recognized the impossibility of suppressing suicide,
• 2:12:37
  they decided to establish tribunals whose duty it should be to hear the applications of
• 2:12:43
  those persons who wished to die. If the applicants succeeded in showing what the
• 2:12:48
  tribunal considered good cause for quitting life, his prayer was granted, and he
• 2:12:54
  destroyed himself under the authority of the court. In some instances, the court
• 2:12:58
  not only sanctioned the suicide but supplied the means of self destruction in the shape
• 2:13:05
  of a decoction of aconite and hemlock. If any one applied for permission to
• 2:13:09
  end his life and was refused, and in defiance of the decision committed suicide,
• 2:13:16
  his act was illegal. The Romans in such cases confiscated the property of
• 2:13:22
  the deceased. The Greeks held his memory as dishonored and treated his body with
• 2:13:26
  indignity. The aconite, now used in medicine, is derived from the aconitum
• 2:13:33
  napolis, chiefly grown in Britain. It is also found in the mountainous districts
• 2:13:39
  of the temperate parts of the Northern Hemisphere. It grows on the Alps,
• 2:13:43
  the Pyrenees, the mountains of Germany and Austria, and also in Denmark and
• 2:13:48
  Sweden on the Himalias. It is found at ten thousand to sixteen thousand feet
• 2:13:54
  above the sea level. Both the root and the leaves are used medicinally.
• 2:13:58
  The tap fruit of the aconite has been frequently eaten in mistake for horse reddish,
• 2:14:03
  with fatal results. Aconite contains several active principles, all of which are
• 2:14:09
  powerful poisons. The chief of these is aconitine, probably the most deadly poison
• 2:14:15
  known, the fiftieth part of a grain of which has nearly caused death.
• 2:14:20
  Indian aconite, known as bish, is chiefly derived from aconitum ferox, a
• 2:14:26
  native of high altitude in the Hamalia regions, and is mentioned by the Persian
• 2:14:31
  physician ALEROI in the tenth century, also by many early Arabian writers on medicine.
• 2:14:39
  Isa ben Ali pronounced it to be the most rapid of deadly poisons and
• 2:14:43
  describes the symptoms with tolerable correctness. The chief symptoms of poisoning by aconite are
• 2:14:50
  heat, numbness and tingling in the mouth and throat, giddiness and loss of
• 2:14:56
  muscular power. The pupils become dilated, the skin cold, and pulse feeble,
• 2:15:03
  with oppressed breathing and dread of approaching death. Finally, numbness and paralysis
• 2:15:09
  come on rapidly, followed by death in a few sudden gasps. The poison
• 2:15:15
  being extremely rapid in effect, immediate action is absolutely necessary in order to save
• 2:15:20
  life. Several species of aconite grow plentifully in India, where it has been
• 2:15:26
  used for centuries. It is found growing at an elevation of ten thousand feet
• 2:15:31
  above the level of the sea, and among other places, in the Singalilas,
• 2:15:35
  a mountain range which forms the watershed boundary between Nepal and British territory northwest
• 2:15:43
  of Darjeeling. Aconitrium palmatum is collected in abundance at Tunglu, the southern termination
• 2:15:50
  of the Singalilas, but a Nepalis, which is more poisonous, requires a
• 2:15:56
  higher elevation in which to thrive. The natives, especially the hill tribes,
• 2:16:01
  take aconite in the crude state as a remedy for various ailments, and every
• 2:16:07
  bottaya has a few dried roots put away in some secure corner of his hut.
• 2:16:13
  The method of collecting is thus described. Early in October, when the
• 2:16:16
  aconite route has matured, one of the leading men of the village organizes a
• 2:16:22
  party composed of both sexes. He for the time becomes their leader, settles
• 2:16:28
  all disputes and quarrels while out in camp, and while keeping an account of
• 2:16:33
  the general expenses, supplies to each all necessaries in the way of food.
• 2:16:39
  Before starting, he has to obtain a permit from the forest department, the
• 2:16:43
  charge for which is fifteen rupees. Carefully wrapping the pass up in a rag
• 2:16:48
  and placing it in his network bag of valuables, he collects his band together
• 2:16:54
  and they set out for the higher ranges. As soon as they arrive at
• 2:16:58
  the slopes, where aka night is growing plentifully, they at once set to
• 2:17:01
  work to build bamboo huts about five feet high, roofing them with leaves.
• 2:17:07
  After the morning meal, they all set off for the lower slopes, each
• 2:17:11
  with basket and spade over his shoulder. But before the actual work is commenced,
• 2:17:18
  a ceremony has to be performed. The Bottaias, like the Nepalese,
• 2:17:22
  have a belief that the presiding demon of the hills imprisons evil spirits in the
• 2:17:26
  aconite plant, which fly out as soon as it is dug up and inflict
• 2:17:31
  dire calamity on the digger. In order therefore, to counteract this, every
• 2:17:37
  morning, before the digging commences, the lama or head man, standing on
• 2:17:41
  a convenient hill with his followers around him, makes a fire and burns some
• 2:17:48
  duna, a native rosin. Then, inserting two fingers in his mouth,
• 2:17:52
  blows several shrill whistles, all weight in breathless silence, till an answering whistle
• 2:17:58
  is heard, which may be an echo or the cry of some bird.
• 2:18:03
  Whatever it may be, it is taken as the dying dirge of the evil
• 2:18:07
  spirits, and digging begins at once. The roots, after being shaken from
• 2:18:13
  the soil, are placed in the baskets, which, on return to the
• 2:18:16
  encampment, are emptied and formed into heaps and covered with bamboo leaves to protect
• 2:18:22
  them from the frost. During the day, they are spread out in the
• 2:18:26
  sun to dry. When a sufficient quantity has been collected and dried, thus
• 2:18:31
  bamboo frames are fixed up with a fire below on which the aconite is placed.
• 2:18:37
  When the flame has died out, the one who looks after this drying
• 2:18:41
  process has a cloth tied round his head, covering the nose, as the
• 2:18:46
  constant inhalation of the fumes causes a feeling of heaviness and dizziness in the head.
• 2:18:52
  This process is carried on three or four days until the roots are dried.
• 2:18:58
  When sufficient have collected and dried, they are packed in baskets. These
• 2:19:03
  are shouldered, and with their cooking utensils and blankets on the top, the
• 2:19:07
  whole band set their faces homeward on arrival at the commercial center at the termination
• 2:19:13
  of their march, The results of the expedition are soon sold, and each
• 2:19:18
  man is handed his share of the prophets according to the amount of aconite he
• 2:19:22
  has collected. End of Chapter ten, Chapter eleven. The case of Doctor
• 2:19:31
  Lambson. The only case on record in which the active principle of aconite has
• 2:19:37
  been used for the purpose of criminal poisoning is that of doctor Lamson, who
• 2:19:41
  suffered the extreme penalty of the law for administering the drug to Percy Malcolm John
• 2:19:48
  and thereby causing his death. The story is remarkable for the cold blooded way
• 2:19:54
  in which the murder was carried out. George Henry Lamson, a surgeon in
• 2:20:00
  and impecunious circumstances, had a reversionary interest through his wife in a sum of
• 2:20:07
  fifteen hundred pounds which would come to him on the death of his brother in
• 2:20:11
  law, Percy Malcolm John. The latter, a sickly youth of eighteen years
• 2:20:16
  of age, was paralyzed in his lower limbs from old standing spinal disease.
• 2:20:24
  On November twenty seventh, eighteen eighty one. Lanson purchased two grains of acontine,
• 2:20:30
  and shortly afterwards went down to the school where the lad had been placed
• 2:20:33
  as a boarder, and had an interview with him in the presence of the
• 2:20:39
  headmaster, professing at the same time a kindly interest in the lad and his
• 2:20:43
  health. During the interview, he produced some gelatine capsules, one of which
• 2:20:50
  he filled with a white powder presumed to be sugar, and directly after seeing
• 2:20:54
  his brother in law swallow it, he took his departure. Within a quarter
• 2:20:58
  of an hour, John became unwell, saying he felt the same as when
• 2:21:03
  Lampson had given him a quinine pill on a former occasion. Violent vomiting soon
• 2:21:09
  set in and he became unable to swallow. This was rapidly followed by delirium,
• 2:21:16
  and in three hours and three quarters death ensued. Suspicion fell on Lampson,
• 2:21:22
  and he was arrested shortly afterwards and charged with the murder of John.
• 2:21:28
  According to evidence at the trial, it is probable that Lampson had made several
• 2:21:33
  previous attempts on the lad's life with acontine in the form of pills and powders,
• 2:21:39
  which he had given him under the pretense of prescribing for his ailments.
• 2:21:45
  The money to which he was entitled on the death of John doubtless supplied the
• 2:21:48
  motive for the crime. The proof of the purchase of aconotine by the prisoner
• 2:21:54
  and the evidence of the post mortem examination pointed to the cause of death,
• 2:22:00
  and the presence of aconitine was amply proved by the clinical and other tests patiently
• 2:22:07
  and carefully applied by the analyst. The difficulty of proving the presence of a
• 2:22:13
  rare vegetable alkaloid in the body after death was no doubt duly considered by Lanson
• 2:22:20
  when he fixed on acontine as the medium for his evil design. But science
• 2:22:26
  proved the master of the criminal, and the evidence of the instrument by which
• 2:22:31
  the crime was committed was indisputably proved. End of Chapter eleven, Chapter twelve
• 2:22:39
  The Bravo mystery. Antimony, like arsenic, to which in many ways it
• 2:22:45
  is closely allied, claims also to be ranked among the historic poisons. It
• 2:22:50
  was known and used by the ancient Greek and Roman physicians as a medicinal agent
• 2:22:56
  and for certain purposes. It is perhaps unequalled at the das present time.
• 2:23:01
  The metal is a brittle, silvery and very brilliant substance in the form of
• 2:23:05
  plates and crystals, and is largely used in the arts as an alloy,
• 2:23:11
  the most common form being Brittannia metal, which is a compound of antimony,
• 2:23:16
  lead and tin. The old Poculo emerica, or everlasting emetic cups, were
• 2:23:22
  made of antimony. It is found abundantly in nature as a sulfide, also
• 2:23:28
  combined with various metals, and with quartz and limestone. From these it is
• 2:23:33
  separated by fusion, the heavy metallic portion sinking by the law of gravity and
• 2:23:39
  abandoning the impurities which remain on the surface of the molten mass arsenic is a
• 2:23:46
  frequent contamination of commercial antimony, and it is very important that it should be
• 2:23:50
  eliminated before antimony is prepared for use in medicine. Poisoning by tartarated antimony causes
• 2:23:58
  a pecure uliar metallic taste in the mouth, which is speedily followed by vomiting,
• 2:24:05
  burning heat, pains in the stomach and purging, difficulty in swallowing,
• 2:24:09
  thirst cramp, cold perspirations, and great debility. In smaller doses, it
• 2:24:16
  produces these effects in a mitigated form, which causes symptoms somewhat similar to natural
• 2:24:22
  disease, such as distaste for food, nausea, and loss of muscular power.
• 2:24:28
  For this reason, doubtless, it has been a favorite medium with many
• 2:24:33
  criminal poisoners, including Dove, Smethurst, Richard, and others. But there
• 2:24:39
  is no trial in which antimony has figured that caused more interest than the Bravo
• 2:24:43
  mystery of eighteen seventy six. The story of this case begins with the marriage
• 2:24:50
  of mister Bravo, a young barrister of about thirty years of age, to
• 2:24:54
  missus Ricardo, who was then a wealthy widow and a lady of considerable personal
• 2:25:00
  attractions. After the marriage, which followed a very short acquaintance, the couple
• 2:25:05
  went to reside in Balum. According to a statement made by Missus Bravo,
• 2:25:11
  she informed her husband before the marriage of a former lover, and there is
• 2:25:15
  little doubt that it rankled in mister Bravo's mind, and he frequently taunted his
• 2:25:20
  wife with the fact he was a strong, healthy and temperate man, but
• 2:25:24
  appears to have been both weak and vain in character. On Tuesday, April
• 2:25:28
  eighteenth, eighteen seventy six, after breakfast at his own house at Balum,
• 2:25:35
  he drove with his wife into town. On their way, a very unpleasant
• 2:25:39
  discussion took place. Arriving in town, he had a Turkish bath, lunched
• 2:25:43
  with a relative of his wife at Saint James's restaurant, and walked on his
• 2:25:48
  way home to Victoria Station with a friend and fellow barrister, whom he asked
• 2:25:54
  out for the following day. He arrived back home about half past four.
• 2:26:00
  Shortly after his return, mister Bravo went out for a ride, in the
• 2:26:05
  course of which his horse bolted and carried him a long distance, and he
• 2:26:09
  got back to his home very tired and exhausted. At half past six,
• 2:26:15
  he was noticed leaning forward on his chair, looking ill and with his head
• 2:26:20
  hanging down. He ordered a hot bath, and when getting into it,
• 2:26:24
  he cried out aloud with pain, putting his hand to his side. The
• 2:26:28
  bath did not appear to relieve him much, and he seemed to be suffering
• 2:26:33
  pain all through dinner, but appeared to avoid attracting the attention of his wife
• 2:26:37
  and Missus Cox, her companion, who dined with him. The food provided
• 2:26:43
  during the dinner was partaken of more or less in common by all three,
• 2:26:48
  but this was not the case as regards the wine. Mister Bravo drank Burgundy
• 2:26:54
  only, while Missus Bravo and Missus Cox drank sherry and marsala. The wine
• 2:27:00
  drunk by mister Bravo had been decanted by the butler some time before dinner.
• 2:27:05
  How long he could not say, but he noticed nothing unusual about it.
• 2:27:11
  The wine was of good quality, and mister Bravo, who was something of
• 2:27:15
  a connoisseur of wine, remarked nothing peculiar in its taste, but drank it
• 2:27:20
  as usual. If he had burgundy for luncheon, he finished the bottle at
• 2:27:26
  dinner, but if not as on the day in question. The remains of
• 2:27:30
  the bottle were put away in an unlocked celorette in the dining room. The
• 2:27:35
  butler could not remember whether any burgundy was left on this day or not,
• 2:27:39
  but however none was discovered. This celorette was opened at least twice subsequently to
• 2:27:48
  this and prior to mister Bravo's illness, once by Missus Cox and once by
• 2:27:52
  the maid. Mister Bravo seems to have eaten a good dinner, although he
• 2:27:58
  was evidently not himself from some cause or other. It was said he was
• 2:28:03
  suffering from toothache or neuralgia, and had just received a letter that had given
• 2:28:07
  him some annoyance. The dinner lasted till past eight o'clock, after which the
• 2:28:13
  party adjourned to the morning room, where conversation continued up to about nine o'clock.
• 2:28:20
  Missus Bravo and Missus Cox then retired upstairs, leaving mister Bravo alone,
• 2:28:26
  and Missus Cox went to fetch Missus Bravo some wine and water from the dining
• 2:28:31
  room. Missus Bravo remained in her room and prepared for bed and drank the
• 2:28:35
  wine and water brought to her by Missus Cox, who remained with her.
• 2:28:41
  The housemaid, on taking some hot water to the lady's room, as was
• 2:28:45
  her usual custom, at half past nine, was asked by Missus Bravo to
• 2:28:50
  bring her some more marsala in the glass that had contained the wine and water.
• 2:28:56
  On her way downstairs to the dining room, the girl met her master
• 2:29:00
  at the foot of the stairs. He looked queer and very strange in the
• 2:29:05
  face, but did not appear to be in pain. According to her statement,
• 2:29:09
  he looked twice at her, yet did not speak, though it was
• 2:29:13
  his custom, but passed on. Mister Bravo was alone after the departure of
• 2:29:18
  his wife and Missus Cox, until the time when he passed the housemaid at
• 2:29:24
  the foot of the stairs. He entered his wife's dressing room and the maid
• 2:29:28
  Missus Bravo's bedroom. In the dressing room, according to Missus Coxe's statement,
• 2:29:35
  mister Bravo spoke to his wife in French with reference to the wine. This
• 2:29:39
  had frequently been the subject of unpleasant remarks before, but Missus Bravo had no
• 2:29:45
  recollection of the conversation on this occasion. After leaving his wife in her room,
• 2:29:50
  mister Bravo went to his own bedroom and closed the door. The maid
• 2:29:54
  left missus Bravo's bedroom and met her mistress in the passage, partially undressed and
• 2:30:01
  on her way to bed. Missus Bravo and missus Cox entered their bedrooms,
• 2:30:05
  and the former drank her Marsala and went to bed. In about a quarter
• 2:30:11
  of an hour, mister Bravo's bedroom door was heard to open and he shouted
• 2:30:16
  out, Florence, Florence, hot water. The maid ran into missus Bravo's
• 2:30:22
  room, calling out that mister Bravo was ill. Missus Cox, who had
• 2:30:28
  not yet undressed, rose hastily and ran to his room. She found him
• 2:30:33
  standing in his night gown at the open window, apparently vomiting, and this
• 2:30:37
  the maid also saw. Missus Cox further stated that mister Bravo said to her,
• 2:30:43
  I have taken poison. Don't tell Florence, alluding to his wife and
• 2:30:50
  to this confession of having taken poison on the part of mister Bravo, Missus
• 2:30:54
  Cox adhered. After this, mister Bravo was again very sick, and some
• 2:31:01
  hot water was brought by the maid. After the vomiting, he sank on
• 2:31:05
  the floor and became insensible and remained so for some hours. Missus Cox tried
• 2:31:11
  to raise him and got some mustard and water, but he could not swallow
• 2:31:16
  it. She then applied mustard to his feet and coffee was procured, but
• 2:31:20
  he was also unable to swallow that. Meanwhile, a doctor who had attended
• 2:31:26
  Missus Bravo and who lived at some distance was sent for. Missus Bravo,
• 2:31:31
  who was aroused from sleep by the maid and who seemed to have been greatly
• 2:31:37
  excited, insisted on a nearer practitioner being sent for, and in a short
• 2:31:41
  time a medical man living close by arrived on the scene. The doctor found
• 2:31:48
  mister Bravo sitting or lying on a chair, completely unconscious and the heart's action
• 2:31:54
  almost suspended. He had him laid on the bed and then administered some brandy
• 2:32:00
  and water, but was unable to get him to swallow it. In about
• 2:32:03
  half an hour, another medical man arrived and was met by Missus Cox,
• 2:32:09
  who said she was sure mister Bravo had taken chloroform. Both doctors came to
• 2:32:13
  the conclusion that the patient was in a dangerous state and endeavored to administer restoratives.
• 2:32:20
  Realizing the critical nature of the case, doctor George Johnson of King's College
• 2:32:26
  Hospital was sent for Meanwhile, mister Bravo was again seized with vomiting mostly blood,
• 2:32:33
  and the doctors came to the conclusion he was suffering from some irritant poison.
• 2:32:39
  About three o'clock he became conscious and able to be questioned. He was
• 2:32:43
  at once asked what have you taken? But from first to last he persisted
• 2:32:48
  in declaring, in the most solemn manner that he had taken nothing except some
• 2:32:54
  laudanum for toothache. In reply to other questions asking him if there were any
• 2:33:00
  poisons about the house, he replied there was only the laudanum and chloroform for
• 2:33:05
  toothache, some Condi's fluid and rat poison at the stable. Mister Bravo did
• 2:33:11
  not lose consciousness again until the time of his death, which occurred fifty five
• 2:33:16
  and a half hours after he was first taken ill. At an early period,
• 2:33:22
  his bedroom was searched, but nothing was found but the laudanum bottle and
• 2:33:26
  a little chloroform and camphor liniment which had been brought from another room. There
• 2:33:33
  were no remains of any solid poison in paper glass or tumbler, and nothing
• 2:33:37
  to indicate any poison had been taken. The post mortem examination showed evidence of
• 2:33:43
  great gastric irritation extending downwards, but there was no appearance of any disease in
• 2:33:50
  the body, or inflammation, congestion or ulceration. It was left therefore to
• 2:33:56
  the chemical examination to show what was the irritating substance which had been introduced into
• 2:34:03
  the body, and supply a key to part of the mystery. The matters
• 2:34:07
  which had been vomited in the early stage of mister Bravo's illness had been thrown
• 2:34:13
  away, but singular to relate. On examination of the leads of the house
• 2:34:18
  beneath the bedroom window, some portion of the matter was found undisturbed, although
• 2:34:24
  much rain had fallen and the greater part must have been washed away. This
• 2:34:30
  was carefully collected and handed to Professor Redwood for analysis. From this matter,
• 2:34:35
  he extracted a large amount of antimony. Antimony was also discovered in the liver
• 2:34:41
  and other parts of the body, and it was concluded that altogether nearly forty
• 2:34:46
  grains of this poison must have been swallowed by the unfortunate man. How he
• 2:34:52
  came to swallow this enormous dose, Whether the design was homicidal or suicidal.
• 2:34:58
  There was not the slightest evidence to show, or where the antimony was obtained.
• 2:35:03
  The whole affair was shrouded in mystery, and a mystery it remains end
• 2:35:11
  of Chapter twelve, Chapter thirteen. The Case of Doctor Pritchard. The remarkable
• 2:35:18
  case of doctor E. W. Pritchard of Glasgow, who was arrested and
• 2:35:24
  charged with murdering his wife and mother in law in that city in the year
• 2:35:28
  eighteen sixty five, excited great interest at the time. The respectable position occupied
• 2:35:35
  by the accused man in society in Glasgow, and the practice as a physician
• 2:35:41
  which he had been enabled to attain in the course of his six years residence
• 2:35:45
  there, awakened an unusual degree of attention in the public mind. When the
• 2:35:50
  fact of his apprehension became known, the excitement was strengthened by the mystery invariably
• 2:35:56
  attached to the prosecution of all criminal inquiries in Scotland. It appears that for
• 2:36:03
  some time previous to her decease, Missus Prichard had been in a delicate state
• 2:36:07
  of health, and her mother, Missus Taylor, wife of mister Taylor,
• 2:36:13
  a silk weaver of Edinburgh, had gone to Glasgow to nurse her during her
• 2:36:18
  illness. Missus Taylor took up her abode in the house of doctor Prichard and
• 2:36:22
  ministered to her daughter's comfort, but while so engaged, she became ill and
• 2:36:28
  died suddenly, about three weeks previous to the day on which the accused man
• 2:36:33
  was apprehended. The cause of death was assigned to apoplexy, and as Missus
• 2:36:39
  Taylor was about seventy years of age, no public attention was awakened, and
• 2:36:45
  the body was conveyed to Edinburgh and buried in the Grange Cemetery. Circumstances closely
• 2:36:52
  following on this, however, awakened grave suspicions. Missus Prichard died shortly after
• 2:36:58
  her life, and a report was circulated that she had succumbed to gastric fever.
• 2:37:05
  The family grave at the Grange was fixed on as the place of interment,
• 2:37:09
  and arrangements were made for the funeral without delay. The body was taken
• 2:37:15
  to Edinburgh by rail, and doctor Prichard accompanied it to the house of his
• 2:37:18
  father in law, where it was to await interment. The deaths of the
• 2:37:24
  two ladies occurring within so short an interval of each other, coupled with certain
• 2:37:28
  hints which they had received, set the police on the alert, and while
• 2:37:33
  doctor Prichard was absent in Edinburgh, they instituted inquiries which led to a warrant
• 2:37:39
  being issued for his apprehension. On his return to Glasgow previous to the day
• 2:37:46
  fixed for the funeral, he was arrested at the railway station in Queen Street
• 2:37:50
  and conveyed to the police offices. Meanwhile, the authorities had transmitted to Edinburgh
• 2:37:58
  information of what had been done, and at the same time had issued a
• 2:38:01
  warrant for a post mortem examination of the body of Missus Pritchard. This was
• 2:38:07
  entrusted to Professor Douglas McLaughlin, assisted by doctors Arthur Gamgi and Little John.
• 2:38:15
  The result of the post mortem proved that death had not resulted from natural causes,
• 2:38:20
  and a subsequent examination disclosed the presence of minute particles of antimony in the
• 2:38:26
  liver. The case now assumed a grave and mysterious aspect, and the authorities
• 2:38:31
  resolved to carry the investigations further. The next step was to order the exhumation
• 2:38:37
  of the body of Missus Taylor. This having been effected, the internal organs
• 2:38:43
  were submitted to analysis by Professor McLachlin, Doctor Littlejohn, and Professor Pinney of
• 2:38:48
  Glasgow, who after a protracted examination, reported that the death of Missus Taylor,
• 2:38:56
  like that of her daughter, was due to poisoning. By antimony.
• 2:39:00
  On these facts being elicited, Doctor Prichard was fully committed on the charge of
• 2:39:05
  murdering Jane Taylor, his mother in law, and Mary Jane Pritchard, his
• 2:39:09
  wife. The trial was opened on July three, eighteen sixty five, at
• 2:39:16
  the High Court of Justiciary, Edinburgh, before the Lord Justice Clerk, Lord
• 2:39:22
  Ardmillan and Lord Jervis Wood, the Solicitor General prosecuting for the Crown, while
• 2:39:28
  the prisoner was defended by measures A. R. Clark, Watson and Brand.
• 2:39:35
  Evidence was given that Missus Prichard was first taken ill in the October of
• 2:39:39
  eighteen sixty four, with constant vomiting, often accompanied by severe cramp. After
• 2:39:46
  being treated by her husband for some time and getting no better at her own
• 2:39:52
  request, a doctor Gerdner was called in and her mother, Missus Taylor,
• 2:39:56
  came from Edinburgh to nurse her. While on this visit to her daughter,
• 2:40:01
  Missus Taylor, on February twenty fourth, complained of feeling unwell. The next
• 2:40:07
  day she was found insensible sitting on her chair in her daughter's room and died
• 2:40:13
  the same night. From this time, Missus Pritchard got gradually worse and died
• 2:40:18
  within three weeks afterwards. Mary mc cloud, a girl who had been in
• 2:40:24
  the service of the prisoner, admitted that he had familiar relations with her,
• 2:40:28
  and that this fact was known to Missus Prichard. The doctor had also made
• 2:40:33
  her presence and told her he would marry her if his wife died. Doctor
• 2:40:37
  Patterson, a medical practitioner of Glasgow, who was called in to see Missus
• 2:40:43
  Taylor, stated Pritchard told him the old lady was in the habit of taking
• 2:40:48
  batlely solution of opium, and a few days before her death she had purchased
• 2:40:52
  a half pound bottle. When he saw her, he was convinced her symptoms
• 2:40:58
  betokened that she was under the depressing influence of antimony and not opium. He
• 2:41:03
  therefore refused to give a certificate of her death. Prichard eventually signed the certificate
• 2:41:11
  himself, stating the primary cause of death had been paralysis and the secondary cause
• 2:41:16
  apoplexy. He further certified Missus Prichard's death as due to gastric fever. It
• 2:41:24
  was proved on the evidence of two chemists that Prichard was in the habit of
• 2:41:28
  purchasing tartarated antimony in large quantities and also Fleming's tincture of aconite. Doctor MacLaughlin,
• 2:41:37
  professor of medical jurisprudence in the University of Edinburgh, was then called to
• 2:41:41
  give the result of the chemical examination of the various organs of the body of
• 2:41:46
  Missus Prichard which had been retained for analysis. Antimony corresponding to one fourth of
• 2:41:52
  a grain of tartar emetic was found in the urine, in small quantities in
• 2:41:58
  the bile and blood, and as much as four grains in the whole liver.
• 2:42:03
  Evidence of the presence of antimony was also found in the spleen, kidney,
• 2:42:09
  muscular substance of the heart, coats of the stomach and rectum, the
• 2:42:13
  brain and uterus. Antimony was also detected in various stains on linen and articles
• 2:42:20
  of clothing which had been worn by Missus Pritchard during her illness. From these
• 2:42:26
  results, doctor MacLachlan concluded that Missus Pritchard had taken a large quantity of antimony
• 2:42:33
  in the form of tartar emetic which caused her death, and that from the
• 2:42:37
  extent to which the whole organs and fluids of the body were impregnated with the
• 2:42:41
  drug, it must have been given in repeated doses up to within a few
• 2:42:46
  hours of her decease. The result of the chemical examination of the various organs
• 2:42:52
  of the body of Missus Taylor, which was exhumed for this purpose, revealed
• 2:42:56
  the presence of point two seven nine, or a little more than a quarter
• 2:43:01
  of a grain of antimony in the contents of the stomach. Antimony was also
• 2:43:07
  found in the blood, and one point one five one grain was recovered from
• 2:43:13
  one thousand grains of the liver. Doctor Penny, who made an independent analysis,
• 2:43:20
  found distinct evidence of antimony in the liver, spleen, kidney, brain,
• 2:43:24
  heart, blood and rectum, but no trace of morphine or aconite.
• 2:43:31
  He also came to the conclusion that Missus Pritchard's death had resulted from the effects
• 2:43:35
  of antimony. Antimony was found mixed with tapioca contained in a packet discovered in
• 2:43:43
  the house, also in a bottle containing batley solution of opium found in the
• 2:43:48
  prisoner's surgery. Doctor Lyttleton surgeon to the Edinburgh Police, who was present at
• 2:43:54
  the post mortem examination of both women, gave his opinion that Missus Pritchard's death
• 2:44:00
  had been due to the administration of antimony in small quantities, and that continuously
• 2:44:07
  in Missus Taylor's case, he believed some strong narcotic poison had been administered with
• 2:44:11
  the antimony. This opinion was further endorsed by doctor Patterson. Evidence was offered
• 2:44:20
  that Pritchard had been in the habit of purchasing large quantities of Batley solution of
• 2:44:24
  opium, which the manufacturers swore contained no antimony. For the defense, it
• 2:44:31
  was urged that there was no proof whatever that poison had been administered by the
• 2:44:37
  prisoner, who had always lived on affectionate terms with his wife, and that
• 2:44:41
  the motive suggested was of the most trifling nature. That the stronger suspicion pointed
• 2:44:48
  to the maid servant Mary MacLeod, on whose uncooborated statements the chief evidence against
• 2:44:54
  the prisoner lay. The Senior Council for the prisoner, Mister Clarke, included
• 2:45:00
  his address by stating that the Crown had admitted there were but two persons who
• 2:45:05
  could have committed the crime the prisoner and Mary MacLeod. Mary MacLeod's hand had
• 2:45:11
  been found in connection with every one of the acts in which poison was said
• 2:45:16
  to have been administered in the food. The case against the prisoner seemed to
• 2:45:22
  depend on a series of suspicions and probabilities, and not upon legal proof,
• 2:45:26
  And upon these grounds he asked a verdict of acquittal. The summing up of
• 2:45:33
  the Lord Justice Clerk occupied three hours and twenty minutes, on the conclusion of
• 2:45:37
  which the jury retired to consider their verdict. After an absence of fifty five
• 2:45:43
  minutes, they returned with the following verdict. The jury unanimously find the prisoner
• 2:45:50
  guilty of both charges as libeled. Doctor Prichard was thereupon sentenced to death and
• 2:45:56
  was executed at Glasgow on July twenty eighth, eighteen sixty five. There can
• 2:46:03
  be no doubt that he fully deserved his terrible doom. End of Chapter thirteen,
• 2:46:11
  Chapter fourteen. The Pimlico mystery chloroform belongs to the class of neurotic poisons
• 2:46:18
  which act on the brain and produce loss of sensation. It is a colorless,
• 2:46:24
  heavy and volatile liquid having a peculiar ethereal odor which cannot be easily mistaken,
• 2:46:31
  and a sweet, pungent taste when diluted. For producing insensibility, it
• 2:46:37
  requires very careful and experienced administration, and more lives have been lost by carelessness
• 2:46:45
  in using than from the noxious character of the drug. Many stories are related
• 2:46:50
  of the peculiar hallucinations and remarks made by patience while under or partially under the
• 2:46:58
  influence of chloroform. The following has the merit of being true. Doctor who
• 2:47:05
  has just administered chloroform to a lady nurse some one in a thousand, If
• 2:47:09
  you please, patient under the anesthetic. Ah, that's my jack, He's
• 2:47:16
  one in a thousand, dear Jack. The stories that crop up from time
• 2:47:20
  to time of persons who have been rendered unconscious by simply waving a chloroformed handkerchief
• 2:47:28
  before the face usually emanate from the fertile brain of some imaginative journalist. As
• 2:47:33
  an internal poison, chloroform has rarely been used, although there are many cases
• 2:47:39
  on record where persons have accustomed themselves to drinking chloroform until they have been able
• 2:47:45
  to swallow it in very large quantities. The one recorded instance in which it
• 2:47:50
  was alleged to have been used for the criminal destruction of life was in the
• 2:47:54
  remarkable case known as the Pimlico mystery. The trial of Adelaide Bartlett for the
• 2:48:01
  wilful murder of her husband by administering chloroform to him, was held before Mister
• 2:48:07
  Justice Wills at the Central Criminal Court on April twelve, eighteen eighty six,
• 2:48:13
  and lasted for six days. The case attracted considerable attention and interest throughout,
• 2:48:20
  which culminated in a dramatic scene at the close and the acquittal of the accused
• 2:48:24
  woman. The strange relations which existed between Missus Bartlett and her husband with whose
• 2:48:31
  murder she was charged, the yet more strange relations between her and the man
• 2:48:37
  who, in the first instance was included in the accusation, together with the
• 2:48:41
  exceptional circumstances of his acquittal and his immediate appearance in the witness box, formed
• 2:48:48
  a case of peculiar dramatic interest. Thomas Edwin Bartlett was a grocer, having
• 2:48:54
  several shops in the suburbs of London, and at the time of his death
• 2:48:58
  was forty years of age. In eighteen seventy five, he married a frenchwoman,
• 2:49:03
  Adelaide Blanche de la Tremois, who was a native of Orleans and whom
• 2:49:09
  he met at the house of his brother, she being at that time about
• 2:49:13
  twenty years of age. After the marriage, she went to a boarding school
• 2:49:16
  at Stoke, Newington, and lived with her husband only during the vacation.
• 2:49:22
  At a later period, she went to a convent school in Belgium, where
• 2:49:26
  she remained for some eighteen months, after which she rejoined her husband and settled
• 2:49:31
  down to live in London. During Christmas of eighteen eighty one, she gave
• 2:49:37
  birth to a stillborn child, which so affected her that she came to the
• 2:49:41
  resolution that she would have no more children. Some four years later, Bartlett
• 2:49:46
  and his wife made the acquaintance of George Dyson, a young Wesleyan minister,
• 2:49:52
  who soon became on terms of great social intimacy with them, visiting and dining
• 2:49:58
  with them frequent. The admiration for their friend seems to have been common to
• 2:50:03
  both husband and wife. In eighteen eighty five, Edwin Bartlett made a will,
• 2:50:09
  leaving all he possessed to his wife and making mister Dyson and his solicitors
• 2:50:16
  his executors. Shortly afterwards, the couple removed to furnished apartments in Claverton Street,
• 2:50:22
  Pimlico, where they apparently lived on good terms and were still frequently visited
• 2:50:28
  by their friend mister Dyson. On December ten in the same year, mister
• 2:50:33
  Bartlett became seriously ill. Peculiar symptoms developed, which excited the curiosity and surprise
• 2:50:41
  of the medical man called in to attend him. The state of his gums
• 2:50:46
  suggested to the doctor that the illness was due to mercury, which in some
• 2:50:50
  way was being taken or administered to him, and he complained of nervous depression
• 2:50:54
  and sleeplessness. He appeared to be gradually recovering from this, but on December
• 2:51:01
  nineteenth, mister Bartlett himself suggested that a second doctor should be called in lest,
• 2:51:07
  as he put it, his friends should suspect, if anything happened to
• 2:51:11
  him that his wife was poisoning him. The cause for this was put down
• 2:51:16
  to some ill feeling which had formerly existed between Missus Bartlett and her husband's father.
• 2:51:22
  A second practitioner therefore was called in, and the patient, on December
• 2:51:28
  twenty sixth was practically well and went out for a drive, though still weak.
• 2:51:35
  The next day, Missus Bartlett asked mister Dyson, who was constantly calling
• 2:51:39
  at the house to procure for her a considerable quantity of chloroform, which she
• 2:51:46
  told him she had used before with good effect on her husband for some internal
• 2:51:50
  ailment of long standing, and that this internal affliction had, upon previous occasions,
• 2:51:56
  given him paroxysms. She further expressed apparently some belief that he might die
• 2:52:01
  suddenly in one of these attacks. Dyson seems meekly to have yielded to her
• 2:52:07
  request and obtained three different lots of chloroform in all six ounces, from various
• 2:52:13
  chemists, giving the reason that he required it for taking out grease spots,
• 2:52:20
  and placed it all together in one bottle. Two days after, he met
• 2:52:24
  Missus Bartlett on the embankment and handed her the chloroform. During his illness,
• 2:52:31
  mister Bartlett had slept on a camp bedstead in the front drawing room, his
• 2:52:35
  wife occupying a sofa in the same room. On December thirty one, he
• 2:52:41
  was apparently quite well again, and about half past ten o'clock in the evening,
• 2:52:46
  Missus Bartlett told the servant she required nothing else and retired with her husband
• 2:52:50
  for the night. At four o'clock in the morning, the house was aroused
• 2:52:56
  by Missus Bartlett, and it was discovered her husband was dead in bed.
• 2:53:01
  The statement made by the lady was that when her husband had settled for the
• 2:53:07
  night, she sat down on the foot of the bed, that her hand
• 2:53:11
  was resting upon his feet, that she dozed off in her chair. She
• 2:53:15
  awoke with a sensation of cramp and was horrified to find her husband's feet were
• 2:53:20
  deathly cold. She tried to pour some brandy down his throat, and she
• 2:53:24
  found he was dead. She then aroused the household. The first person who
• 2:53:30
  entered the room was the landlord, who noticed a peculiar smell that reminded him
• 2:53:35
  of chloric ether. The doctor was promptly sent for, but from external examination
• 2:53:41
  could find nothing to account for death. The only bottle found was one that
• 2:53:46
  contained a drop or two of chlorodyne. A post mortem examination was held and
• 2:53:52
  the stomach showed evidence of having contained a considerable quantity of chloroform. There was
• 2:53:58
  no internal disease or growth, the organs being quite healthy, and nothing to
• 2:54:03
  account for death beyond the chloroform, which the medical men concluded must have been
• 2:54:07
  the cause of death. The coroner's inquiry resulted in a verdict of wilful murder.
• 2:54:13
  Against Adelaide Bartlett and George Dyson, and they were both arrested. At
• 2:54:20
  the trial, the Crown decided to offer no evidence against Dyson, and after
• 2:54:24
  being indicted and pleading not guilty, he was discharged by the judge to be
• 2:54:28
  called as a witness. A brilliant array of counsel were engaged on the case,
• 2:54:35
  the late Lord Chief Justice, then Sir Charles Russell having charge of the
• 2:54:39
  prosecution, while the defense of Missus Bartlett was entrusted to Sir Edward Clark,
• 2:54:45
  and that of mister Dyson to Mister Lockwood. Dyson's examination occupied nearly the whole
• 2:54:52
  of the second day, during which he detailed the form of the intimacy between
• 2:54:56
  Missus Bartlett and himself, how he procured the chloroform and disposed of the bottles
• 2:55:01
  after hearing the result of the post mortem, by throwing them away on Wandsworth
• 2:55:07
  Common. While on his way to preach at Tooting, he was in the
• 2:55:11
  habit of kissing Missus Bartlett and usually called her Adelaide. He had had conversations
• 2:55:16
  with mister Bartlett on the subject of marriage, and had heard him express the
• 2:55:20
  opinion that a man should have two wives, one to look after the household
• 2:55:26
  duties, and the other to be a companion and confidant. He had told
• 2:55:30
  mister Bartlett he was becoming attached to his wife, but the latter seemed to
• 2:55:35
  encourage it and asked him to continue the intimacy. He did not mention the
• 2:55:39
  matter of having procured the chloroform for Missus Bartlett until he had heard the result
• 2:55:45
  of the post mortem. The medical man called in to attend mister Bartlett during
• 2:55:50
  his illness, described the condition in which he found him and his recovery from
• 2:55:54
  the illness. He also gave an account of a very extraordinary state which was
• 2:56:01
  made to him by Missus Bartlett after the death of her husband. It was
• 2:56:05
  as follows. At the age of sixteen years, she was selected by mister
• 2:56:09
  Bartlett as a wife for companionship only, and for whom no carnal feeling should
• 2:56:15
  be entertained. The marriage compact was that they should live together simply as loving
• 2:56:20
  friends. This rule was faithfully observed for about six years of their married life,
• 2:56:26
  and then only broken at her earnest and repeated entreaty that she should be
• 2:56:31
  permitted to be really a wife and a mother. The child was still born
• 2:56:37
  and From that time the two lived together, but their relations were not those
• 2:56:41
  of matrimony. Her husband showed great affection for her of an ultra platonic kind,
• 2:56:48
  and encouraged her to pursue studies of various kinds, which she did to
• 2:56:54
  please him. He affected to admire her and liked to surround her with malie
• 2:57:00
  acquaintances and enjoy their attentions to her. Then they became acquainted with Dyson.
• 2:57:05
  Her husband conceived a great liking for him, and threw them together. He
• 2:57:11
  requested them to kiss in his presence, and seemed to enjoy it, and
• 2:57:16
  gave her to understand that he had given her to mister Dyson. As her
• 2:57:22
  husband gradually recovered from his illness, he expressed a wish that they should resume
• 2:57:26
  the ordinary relations of man and wife, but she resented it. She therefore
• 2:57:31
  sought for some means to prevent his desire, and for this purpose she asked
• 2:57:37
  Dyson to procure the chloroform. On the night of the death, some conversation
• 2:57:43
  of this kind had taken place between them, and when he was in bed,
• 2:57:46
  she brought the bottle of chloroform and gave it to him, informing him
• 2:57:50
  of her intention. To sprinkle some upon a handkerchief and wave it in his
• 2:57:54
  face, thinking that thereby he would go peacefully to sleep. He looked at
• 2:58:00
  the bottle and placed it by the side of the low bed, then,
• 2:58:03
  turning over on his side, apparently went to sleep. She fell asleep,
• 2:58:07
  also, sitting at the foot of the bed with her arm around his foot.
• 2:58:13
  She heard him snoring, then woke again and found he was dead.
• 2:58:18
  Doctor Stevenson, who made the analysis, gave evidence as to finding eleven and
• 2:58:22
  a quarter grains of pure chloroform in the stomach of the deceased, but judging
• 2:58:28
  from the time that had elapsed and the very volatile nature of the liquid,
• 2:58:33
  a large quantity must have been swallowed. No other poisons were found. The
• 2:58:39
  jury, after deliberating nearly two hours, returned a verdict of not guilty,
• 2:58:45
  thus making another addition to the list of unsolved poisoning mysteries. End of chapter
• 2:58:52
  fourteen. Chapter fifteen the Rougelie mystery. Strychnine may very justly be termed a
• 2:59:01
  deadly poison. It is one of the active principles extracted from nuxvomica, the
• 2:59:07
  singular disc like seed of the strychnos nuxvomica, a tree indigenous to most parts
• 2:59:13
  of India, Burma, North Australia and other countries. Nuxwomika was unknown to
• 2:59:20
  the ancients and is said to have been introduced into medicine by the Arabians,
• 2:59:24
  but there is very little reliable record of it until the seventeenth century, when
• 2:59:30
  the seeds were used for poisoning animals and birds. Strychnine was discovered in eighteen
• 2:59:35
  eighteen by Pelletier and Clarenton, and was first extracted from Saint Ignatius, being
• 2:59:41
  in which it is present to the extent of about one point five percent.
• 2:59:46
  Very soon afterwards it was extracted from nuxvomika, which, being very plentiful,
• 2:59:52
  is now the chief source of the drug. It is extremely bitter in taste
• 2:59:58
  and may be distinctly detected in a solution containing no more than one six hundred
• 3:00:03
  thousandth part. For a considerable time after its discovery, the detection of strychnine
• 3:00:11
  in the body after death was a matter of great uncertainty, especially when only
• 3:00:16
  a small quantity had been administered. But now it is possible to detect the
• 3:00:20
  presence of one five thousandth part of a grain and that even after some period
• 3:00:26
  has elapsed, it has been used for criminal purposes by several notorious poisoners,
• 3:00:33
  notably by Dove, Palmer and Cream. But the symptoms produced are so marked
• 3:00:39
  and its presence clearly indicated, that detection now is almost certain. Among the
• 3:00:46
  most celebrated trials of this century was that of doctor Palmer, who was charged
• 3:00:52
  with the wilful murder of John Parsons Cook at Rougelie in eighteen fifty five.
• 3:00:58
  A special Act of Parliament was passed in order to have this case tried in
• 3:01:01
  London, where it was brought before Lord Chief Justice Campbell, Mister Baron Alderson
• 3:01:07
  and Mister Justice Creswell at the Central Criminal Court on May fourteen, eighteen fifty
• 3:01:15
  six. The Attorney General, Mister E. James q C, with several
• 3:01:20
  other council conducted the prosecution and Palmer was defended by Mister Sergeant she Measures Grove
• 3:01:28
  q C. Gray and Kenneley. The accused man was a country doctor and
• 3:01:33
  had carried on a medical practice in Rougeie, a small town in Staffordshire,
• 3:01:37
  for some years. Then he went on the turf and made his business over
• 3:01:43
  to a man named Thurlby, a former assistant. Shortly afterwards, he made
• 3:01:48
  the acquaintance of John P. Cook over some betting transactions. Cook was a
• 3:01:54
  young man of good family, about twenty eight years of age, and was
• 3:01:58
  intended for the legal profession. He was articled to a solicitor, but after
• 3:02:03
  a time inheriting some property worth between twelve and fifteen thousand pounds, he abandoned
• 3:02:09
  law and commenced to keep race horses. Meeting Palmer at various race meetings,
• 3:02:16
  they soon became very intimate. In a very short time, Palmer got into
• 3:02:20
  difficulties and was compelled to raise money on bills. Things went from bad to
• 3:02:24
  worse, until he at last forged an acceptance to a bill in his mother's
• 3:02:30
  name, who was possessed of considerable property. In eighteen fifty four, he
• 3:02:35
  owed a large sum of money, and in the same year his wife died,
• 3:02:39
  whose life it transpired, he had insured for thirteen thousand pounds. With
• 3:02:45
  this money, he bought two race horses, but in his betting transactions he
• 3:02:50
  lost heavily, and then commenced to borrow money from Cook, whose name he
• 3:02:54
  also forged. On one occasion, on the back of a check he insure
• 3:03:00
  his brother's life for thirteen thousand pounds, and very shortly after he died the
• 3:03:05
  amount being also paid to Palmer. This money soon went and at length he
• 3:03:11
  had two writs out against him for four thousand pounds. In the Meanwhile,
• 3:03:16
  Cook had been more successful than his friend in his racing ventures and had won
• 3:03:22
  a considerable amount with a race horse he owned called Polestar. Polestar was entered
• 3:03:28
  for the Shrewsbury races on November fourteenth, eighteen fifty five, and Cook and
• 3:03:33
  Palmer went there and stayed with some friends at the same hotel in that town.
• 3:03:39
  On the evening of the races, they were drinking brandy and water together.
• 3:03:43
  Cook asked Palmer to have some more, and the latter replied, not
• 3:03:48
  unless you finish your glass. Cook, noticing he had some still left in
• 3:03:52
  his tumbler, said I'll soon do that and finished it at a draft.
• 3:03:58
  On swallowing it, he imediately exclaimed, there's something in it, burns my
• 3:04:03
  throat. Palmer took up the glass and said, oh, nonsense, there
• 3:04:07
  is nothing in it, and called the attention of the others standing by.
• 3:04:11
  Cook then suddenly left the room and was seized with violent vomiting. This became
• 3:04:18
  so bad that he soon had to be taken to bed and appeared to be
• 3:04:20
  very seriously ill. Two hours later a medical man was sent for who at
• 3:04:26
  once prescribed an emetic and then a pill. He obtained relief from these,
• 3:04:31
  and by the morning the vomiting had ceased and he was much better, though
• 3:04:35
  he still felt very unwell. They returned to Rougelie together, Cook taking rooms
• 3:04:41
  at a hotel directly opposite Palmer's house. Cook was still confined to his room
• 3:04:48
  and during the next few days was constantly visited by Palmer, and after each
• 3:04:52
  visit it was noticed the sickness commenced again. On one occasion, Palmer had
• 3:04:58
  some broth which he specially wished Cook to take. The latter tried to swallow
• 3:05:05
  it, but was immediately sick. It was then taken downstairs, and a
• 3:05:09
  woman at the hotel, thinking it looked nice, took a couple of tablespoons
• 3:05:13
  of it, but within half an hour she was taken seriously ill and obliged
• 3:05:18
  to go to bed, her symptoms being exactly like those of Cook's when first
• 3:05:24
  taken ill at Shrewsbury. Three days after this, a neighboring doctor was called
• 3:05:28
  in Palmer, telling him that Cook was suffering from a bilious attack. Palmer
• 3:05:35
  then suddenly went off to London, his business being to try and arrange about
• 3:05:39
  this settlement of some debts that were pressing. From the time he left,
• 3:05:43
  it was noticed by the doctor that Cook's condition rapidly improved, and in a
• 3:05:48
  day or two he was able to leave his bed and be up and dressed.
• 3:05:54
  On Palmer's return to Rougeie, he at once went to see Cook,
• 3:05:58
  and during the rest of his illness, was constantly with him. On the
• 3:06:01
  evening of his return, he also called on a surgeon's assistant with whom he
• 3:06:07
  was acquainted, and purchased from him three grains a strychnine. Cook was taking
• 3:06:13
  some pills which had been prescribed by the doctor and which had done him good.
• 3:06:18
  They were ordered to be taken at bedtime, and the box containing them
• 3:06:22
  was in his room. He was visited by Palmer about eleven o'clock the same
• 3:06:26
  night, and up to that time he was apparently well. Palmer left shortly
• 3:06:31
  after. At twelve o'clock, the whole house was aroused by violent screams proceeding
• 3:06:37
  from Cook's room. The servants rushed in and found him writhing in great agony,
• 3:06:43
  shouting murder. He was evidently suffering intense pain and soon was seized with
• 3:06:50
  convulsions. Palmer was at once sent for and on his arrival Cook was gasping
• 3:06:56
  for breath and hardly able to speak. He ran back to procure some medicine,
• 3:07:01
  which on his return he gave him, but the sick man at once
• 3:07:05
  threw it back. The attack gradually passed off, and by morning he was
• 3:07:11
  somewhat better, but very weak. The same day, Palmer visited a chemist
• 3:07:16
  he knew in the town and purchased six grains of strychnine. During the afternoon,
• 3:07:20
  a relative of Palmer's who was also a medical man, arrived on a
• 3:07:26
  visit to Rougelye, and he was taken to see Cook, and in the
• 3:07:28
  evening a consultation was held by the three medical men. They agreed to prescribe
• 3:07:35
  some medicine for the patient in the form of pills, which were prepared and
• 3:07:39
  in the course of the evening were handed to Palmer, who was to administer
• 3:07:43
  a dose the last thing at night, about half past ten, Palmer gave
• 3:07:50
  Cook two of the pills, settled him comfortably for the night, and went
• 3:07:54
  home. At ten minutes to eleven, Cook roused the house with a frightful
• 3:07:58
  screen, calling out, I'm going to be ill as I was last night.
• 3:08:03
  Palmer was sent for and brought with him two more pills, which he
• 3:08:07
  said contained ammonia, and gave them to Cook. Very shortly afterwards, convulsion
• 3:08:13
  set in, which were followed by tetanus, and the unfortunate man died in
• 3:08:18
  a few minutes in great agony. The deceased man's relatives were communicated with,
• 3:08:24
  and his father in law soon arrived in Rougeie. On Palmer being questioned about
• 3:08:28
  Cook's affairs, he said that he held a paper drawn up by a lawyer
• 3:08:33
  and signed by Cook, stating that in respect of four thousand pounds worth of
• 3:08:39
  bills he Cook was alone liable, and Palmer had a claim for that amount
• 3:08:43
  against the estate. This, with the other matters aroused suspicion, and it
• 3:08:50
  was decided to hold a post mortem examination on the body to ascertain the cause
• 3:08:54
  of death. Palmer was present at the examination, and by his most deliberate
• 3:09:00
  act, the fluid contents of the stomach were lost. What portions of the
• 3:09:05
  body were reserved for analysis. He did all he could to prevent from reaching
• 3:09:09
  the analysts. When the jars et cetera were being sent to London for examination
• 3:09:16
  by the government analyst, he intercepted them and offered the postboy ten pounds to
• 3:09:20
  upset the conveyance and break them. The evidence offered at the trial was almost
• 3:09:28
  entirely circumstantial, and the medical testimony was very conflicting. It was supposed in
• 3:09:35
  the first instance Palmer had administered tartar emetic to his victim, but that for
• 3:09:39
  the fatal dose strychnine was used. It was proved Palmer had purchased strychnine under
• 3:09:46
  suspicious circumstances on the morning of the day on which Cook died, and could
• 3:09:52
  not account for the purchase of it or state what he had done with it.
• 3:09:56
  The symptoms appeared at a time which would correspond to the interval that precedes
• 3:10:01
  the action of strychnan being developed over the entire body and limbs in a few
• 3:10:05
  minutes. Suddenly, and with violence. None of the pills could be obtained
• 3:10:11
  for analysis, and doctor Taylor, who made the analytical examination, was unable
• 3:10:18
  to find any trace of strychnin in the portion submitted to him, but he
• 3:10:22
  found half a grain of antimony in the blood. He believed Cook died from
• 3:10:26
  the effects of strychnin. The great point in the case was did the tetanic
• 3:10:33
  symptoms under which the deceased man died depend on disease or poison? Doctors Brodie,
• 3:10:39
  Christison and Todd, and other imminent authorities of the time agreed that when
• 3:10:46
  taken as a whole, they were not in accordance with any form of disease,
• 3:10:50
  but were in perfect accordance with the effects of strychnan. On the other
• 3:10:54
  hand, medical men called for the defense testified that tetanus might be caused by
• 3:11:01
  natural disease, and the deceased might have died from angina pectoris or epilepsy,
• 3:11:07
  in spite of the absence of confirmatory chemical evidence. After one hour and seventeen
• 3:11:13
  minutes deliberation, the jury returned a verdict of guilty and Palmer was sentenced to
• 3:11:18
  death, the trial having lasted twelve days. The rigid and fixed condition of
• 3:11:24
  the limbs is a marked feature after poisoning by strychnine. In the recent Horsford
• 3:11:31
  case, in which a farmer named Walter Horsford was convicted of the murder of
• 3:11:35
  his cousin Anne Holmes at Saint Niat's in eighteen ninety seven, three point sixty
• 3:11:41
  nine grains of strychnin were recovered from the internal organs after the body was exhumed
• 3:11:48
  nineteen days after death. Even then, rigidity was very marked, especially in
• 3:11:54
  the lower limbs and fingers. The same rigidity was remarked by doctors Stephenson in
• 3:12:00
  the case of Matilda Clover, who was poisoned by meal cream with strychnan a
• 3:12:05
  few years ago. In this case, the body had been buried from October
• 3:12:09
  until May, and the rigidity in the limbs and fingers was still maintained.
• 3:12:16
  Doctor Stephenson states that usually when persons are suffering from strychnin poisoning, they are
• 3:12:20
  very apprehensive of death. He has known a woman say I am going to
• 3:12:26
  die before any intimation of symptoms had occurred. The first apprehension is that some
• 3:12:33
  terrible calamity is about to take place. End of chapter fifteen, Chapter sixteen
• 3:12:41
  Opium eating and smoking mescal buttons. The narcotic properties of the poppy have been
• 3:12:48
  known from times of great antiquity. The first mention we have of its use
• 3:12:54
  is by Theophrastus, who lived about three hundred years b c. It is
• 3:13:00
  opposed that the potient known under the name of Nepenthe, prepared by Helen of
• 3:13:03
  Troy and given to the guests of Menelaus to drive away their care, was
• 3:13:09
  none other than a wine of opium. This conjecture receives support from Homer,
• 3:13:15
  who states that Nepenthe was obtained from Thebes, the ancient capital of Egypt.
• 3:13:20
  According to Prosper Alpinus, the Egyptians were practiced opium eaters, and were often
• 3:13:26
  faint in languid through the want of it. They prepared and drank it in
• 3:13:31
  the form of cretic wine, which they flavored and made hotter by the addition
• 3:13:35
  of pepper and other aromatics. The Turks and Persians employed opium as a medicine
• 3:13:43
  and also for eating from a very early period. Discorides, the ancient Greek
• 3:13:48
  pharmacist, describes how the capsules from which the drug is collected should be cut,
• 3:13:54
  and Celsus, a Roman physician of the first century, frequently alludes to
• 3:13:58
  opium in his works under the quaint name of Poppi tears. The introduction of
• 3:14:05
  opium into India seems to have been connected with the spread of Mohammedanism, the
• 3:14:11
  earliest record we have of its use in that country being made by Barbosa in
• 3:14:16
  fifteen eleven, although it is more than probable it was used in India long
• 3:14:22
  before that time. Pies, the first ambassador from Europe to China in fifteen
• 3:14:26
  sixteen, speaks of the opium of Egypt, Cambai and the Kingdom of kus
• 3:14:33
  In Bengal And states it was eaten by the kings and lords and even the
• 3:14:37
  common people, though not so much because it costs deer. The Mogul government
• 3:14:43
  uniformly sold the opium monopoly, and the East India Company did likewise. The
• 3:14:50
  properties of opium have also been known from early times to the Persians, who
• 3:14:56
  flavored the drug with aromatics and held it in great esteem. By them,
• 3:15:01
  it was commonly called theriaka. It is supposed to have been first introduced to
• 3:15:07
  China by the Arabs, who traded with the Chinese as early as the ninth
• 3:15:11
  century. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, a trade sprang up with
• 3:15:16
  India, which rapidly increased till it led to political difficulties, culminating in the
• 3:15:22
  War of eighteen forty two. And the signing of the Treaty of Nanking,
• 3:15:26
  after which five ports of China were opened to foreign trade, opium being admitted
• 3:15:31
  as a legalized import in eighteen fifty eight. Opium smoking in China was practiced
• 3:15:37
  in the seventeenth century and gradually extended over the entire Empire, and at the
• 3:15:43
  present time is almost a recognized habit among the people. With regard to the
• 3:15:50
  introduction of opium into India, the Mohammedans, once having established its use,
• 3:15:56
  began to make it a source of income. The Great Mogul monopolized the opium
• 3:16:01
  production and trade and derived an immense income from the sale of the monopoly.
• 3:16:07
  With respect to its use in India, it is not easy to state with
• 3:16:11
  certainty whether or not and in what periods it has increased over the various parts
• 3:16:16
  of the country. From the most recent reports, it appears that the largest
• 3:16:22
  amount of opium is produced in the central tract of the Ganges, extending from
• 3:16:26
  Dinapur in the east to Agra in the west, and from Gurkapur in the
• 3:16:33
  north to Azaribah in the south, and comprising an area of about six hundred
• 3:16:39
  miles long and two hundred miles broad. In the district of Bengal. The
• 3:16:45
  government has the monopoly of the opium industry and the districts are divided into two
• 3:16:50
  agencies, Bihar and Banaras, which are under the control of officers residing at
• 3:16:56
  Patna and Ghazipur. In eighteen eighty three, the amount of acres under poppy
• 3:17:03
  cultivation was in Bihar four hundred sixty three thousand, eight hundred twenty nine and
• 3:17:09
  in Banaris Agency four hundred twelve thousand, six hundred twenty five, but the
• 3:17:15
  export of opium has somewhat diminished since then. Any One may undertake the industry,
• 3:17:22
  but cultivators are obliged to sell the opium exclusively to the government agencies at
• 3:17:28
  a price which is fixed beforehand by the officials. The government sells the ready
• 3:17:33
  goods to merchants at a much higher price, which difference is paid by the
• 3:17:37
  country to which the opium is exported. In India itself, the sale of
• 3:17:43
  opium is restricted to licensed shop keepers, a practice which has proved to be
• 3:17:48
  useful because in some places, when the licensed shops have been closed, a
• 3:17:52
  greater number of unlicensed and secret shops have sprung up and have made the contract
• 3:17:58
  in sufficient The opium question is so complex in its nature, and is so
• 3:18:05
  largely influenced by the habit and constitution of those nations who are addicted to its
• 3:18:11
  use, that it is obvious that only those with skilled medical knowledge, who
• 3:18:16
  are on the spot and have lived and had a daily experience of the people,
• 3:18:20
  are in a proper position to deal with the question at all. So
• 3:18:24
  much has been written by religious enthusiasts and other persons totally ignorant of the nature
• 3:18:31
  and properties of the drug that one almost hesitates to touch upon the question at
• 3:18:35
  all. Our only excuse for so doing is that the following facts have been
• 3:18:41
  furnished by reliable medical authorities who are really in a position to judge on the
• 3:18:48
  subject. The cause which led to the use of this narcotic drug by the
• 3:18:52
  races of the East may have been primarily due to the prohibition of wine by
• 3:18:56
  the Moslems, but more likely on account of its valuable remedial or protective properties
• 3:19:03
  needed by erase subject to malaria and kindred diseases, and to counteract the effect
• 3:19:09
  of the hot climate to which they are exposed. It is a remedy at
• 3:19:15
  hand, and would seem to be one to which they at once fly.
• 3:19:18
  The evil lies more in the smoking than the eating of the drug. The
• 3:19:24
  former habit is more prevalent in China and has the most demoralizing effect. The
• 3:19:30
  extent of its use in the East varies according to the geographical and social differences
• 3:19:33
  of the people, and it is used in various degrees of moderation and excess.
• 3:19:41
  The drug is employed in various forms according to the class of people who
• 3:19:45
  consume it. In India, it is largely used in the crude state and
• 3:19:50
  is sold at about to annas a drachma in small square pieces. The opium
• 3:19:54
  eater will take two or three grains and roll them into the form of a
• 3:19:58
  pea ill between his fingers, and then chew or swallow it, often twenty
• 3:20:03
  times in the day. It is also used in a liquid form called kasumba,
• 3:20:09
  made by macerating opium in rose water. Others boil it with milk,
• 3:20:15
  then collect the cream and eat it. The varieties for smoking are known as
• 3:20:20
  jundo and mudat, the former being a very impure extract of a fairly stiff
• 3:20:26
  consistence, and the latter made from the refuse of chundo, of which it
• 3:20:31
  largely consists, but being much cheaper is chiefly used by the low class Hindus
• 3:20:37
  and Mohammedans. From two to four grains a day may be called a moderate
• 3:20:43
  use of the crude drug. The poorer people regularly give it to children up
• 3:20:48
  to two years of age to keep them quiet, also as a preventive against
• 3:20:52
  such complaints as enteritis so common in the East, and so before youth is
• 3:20:58
  reached they become inured to its action. Licenses to sell the drug are sold
• 3:21:03
  to the highest bidder at the opium auctions, the licensee having the privilege of
• 3:21:09
  supplying a certain number of small dealers. The Chinese smoker usually lays himself down
• 3:21:16
  on his side, with his head supported by a pillow on the straw mat.
• 3:21:22
  Beside him. Between his doubled up knees and his nose, a small
• 3:21:26
  glass oil lamp covered with a glass shade is burning. Close to this is
• 3:21:31
  a tray containing a small round box holding the drug, a straight piece of
• 3:21:37
  wire used for manipulating it, a knife to scrape up fragments, and the
• 3:21:41
  pipe used for smoking. The latter is about two feet long with a bore
• 3:21:46
  of about half an inch in diameter, and is not unlike the stem of
• 3:21:52
  a flute before it is fitted. About two inches from the bottom of the
• 3:21:56
  tube is a closed cup or bowl of earthenware or stone having a central perforation.
• 3:22:03
  To charge the pipe, A small portion of the drug, weighing a
• 3:22:07
  few grains, is picked up with the wire, kneaded and rolled in the
• 3:22:11
  closed surface of the cup, then heated in the flame of the lamp till
• 3:22:16
  it swells. This is rolled up and again manipulated, then finally placed in
• 3:22:22
  the aperture in the surface of the bowl. It is then lighted from the
• 3:22:26
  lamp and the smoke drawn into the lungs through the tube till the first charge
• 3:22:33
  is exhausted. In a report made by the British Medical Journal concerning the use
• 3:22:37
  of opium in India, from the evidence of medical men long resident in that
• 3:22:43
  country, there seems a general consensus of opinion that opium eating, in the
• 3:22:48
  majority of cases exercises no unfavorable influence on the people who indulge in the habit,
• 3:22:54
  and that it is a prophylactic against fever and prevents the name ees from
• 3:23:00
  malaria and excessive fatigue. There is no comparison between the effects of the opium
• 3:23:07
  habit and the habitual use of alcohol. English people cannot judge from their own
• 3:23:11
  standard the manners and customs of people living under conditions with which they are unacquainted.
• 3:23:18
  While we look on opium as a narcotic, the Hindu uses it as
• 3:23:22
  a stimulant to enable him to go through hard work on the smallest quantity possible
• 3:23:28
  of food. In Persia at the present time, according to Wills, nine
• 3:23:33
  out of ten of the aged take from one to five grains of the drug
• 3:23:37
  daily. It is largely used by the native physicians. It does not appear
• 3:23:43
  that the moderate use of Persian opium in the country itself is deletrious. Opium
• 3:23:50
  smoking is almost unknown, and when it is smoked, it is as a
• 3:23:54
  rule by a doctor's orders. The opium pill box, a chiny box of
• 3:24:00
  silver, is as common in Persia as the snuff box was once among us.
• 3:24:07
  Most men of forty in the middle and upper classes use it. They
• 3:24:09
  take from a grain to a grain and a half, divided into two pills,
• 3:24:15
  one in the afternoon and one at night. The majority of authorities agree
• 3:24:20
  that opium smoking as a habit is much more harmful and attended with more demoralizing
• 3:24:26
  influences than opium eating, but either habit is undoubtedly harmful to Europeans, and
• 3:24:33
  when once formed, is extremely difficult to break. Paracelsus is generally credited with
• 3:24:39
  being the originator of the word laudanum, which is now employed as the popular
• 3:24:45
  name for tincture of opium, Yet there seems little doubt the word was first
• 3:24:50
  applied to the gum of the cistus. Clusius in his Rariorum Plantarum Historiae,
• 3:24:56
  states the gum of the cistus is called in Greek and Latin laudanum, and
• 3:25:01
  in shops laudanum. It is therefore very likely that the secret preparation originated by
• 3:25:09
  Paracelsus, which he called laudanum, was composed of the gum of the cistus
• 3:25:13
  as well as opium, and that he adopted the title from the former ingredient.
• 3:25:20
  The Kiowa and other Mexican Indians use the fruit of the Anhelonium luini,
• 3:25:26
  which they called mescal buttons, to produce a species of intoxication and stimulation during
• 3:25:33
  certain of their religious ceremonies. The effects of this fruit, which like Indian
• 3:25:37
  hemp, varies considerably in different individuals, are very peculiar and have been described
• 3:25:43
  by Lewin Prentiss and Morgan. The eating of the fruit first results in a
• 3:25:48
  state of strange excitement and great exuberance of spirits, accompanied by great volubility in
• 3:25:56
  speech. This is shortly followed by a stage of intoxication, in which the
• 3:26:01
  sight is affected in a very extraordinary manner, consisting of a kaleidoscopic play of
• 3:26:07
  colors, ever in motion, of every possible shade and tent, and these
• 3:26:13
  constantly changing. The pupils of the eyes are widely dilated, Cutaneous sensation is
• 3:26:20
  blunted, and thoughts seem to flash through the brain with extraordinary rapidity. The
• 3:26:26
  color visions are generally only seen with closed eyes, but the coloring of all
• 3:26:31
  external objects is exaggerated. Sometimes there is also an indescribable sensation of dual existence.
• 3:26:41
  Recent investigation into the pharmacology of the mescal plant proved it to be a
• 3:26:46
  poison of a very powerful nature. Lethal doses produce a complete paralysis and death
• 3:26:52
  is caused by respiratory failure. End of Chapter sixteen, Chapter seventeen. Hashise
• 3:27:01
  and Hashish eaters. Hashish or bang is the native term applied to the dried
• 3:27:09
  flowering tops of the Indian hemp from which the rosin has not been removed.
• 3:27:15
  This plant, cultivated largely in India, is now considered to be the same
• 3:27:20
  botanically as the cannabis sativa of European cultivation, but there is great difference in
• 3:27:26
  their medicinal activity, that growing in India being much more powerful. Ganja is
• 3:27:33
  the native name for part of the plant, and seedi for another part,
• 3:27:37
  which is much poorer in rosin. The rosinous principle is called churis or charis,
• 3:27:45
  and the entire plant, cut during inflorescence, dried in the sun and
• 3:27:50
  pressed into bundles is called bang. The method of using it in India is
• 3:27:56
  chiefly for smoking in combination with tobacco. For this purpose, a plug of
• 3:28:01
  tobacco is first placed in the bottom of the bowl of the pipe, on
• 3:28:05
  the top a small piece of hashish, and over this a piece of glowing
• 3:28:11
  charcoal. Another way is tonad the drug with the tobacco by the thumb of
• 3:28:16
  one hand working in the palm of the other till they are thoroughly incorporated.
• 3:28:22
  Simple infusions of the leaves and flowering tops are also much used for drinking purposes
• 3:28:26
  by old and young in India, the alcoholic form being a most active and
• 3:28:33
  dangerous intoxicant. The antiquity of the drug is great, and it is said
• 3:28:37
  to have been used in China as early as the year to twenty to produce
• 3:28:43
  insensibility when performing operations. The Persians employed it in the Middle Ages for the
• 3:28:48
  purpose of exciting the pugnacity and fanaticism of the soldiers during the wars of the
• 3:28:56
  Crusades. In eighteen o three, Vaisi, a French scientist, published a
• 3:29:01
  memoir on hashish and attempted to prove that it was the napenthe of Homer.
• 3:29:07
  There is little doubt, however, that the use of the drug was known
• 3:29:11
  to Galen Sylvestin de le See contends that the word assassin is derived from hashashin,
• 3:29:18
  a name given to a wild sect of Mohammedans who committed murder under its
• 3:29:24
  influence. The Chinese herbal Rayah, which dates from about the fifth century b
• 3:29:30
  c. Notices the fact that the hemp plant is of two kinds, the
• 3:29:35
  one producing seeds and the other flowers only. Herodotus states that hemp grows in
• 3:29:41
  Scythia, both wild and cultivated, and that the Thracians made garments from it,
• 3:29:46
  which can hardly be distinguished from linen. He also describes how the Scythians
• 3:29:52
  exposed themselves, as in Abbath, to the vapor of the seeds thrown on
• 3:29:56
  hot coals. The hemp occurs in two principal forms, viz. One bang
• 3:30:03
  consisting of the dried leaves and small stalks of a dark green color, mixed
• 3:30:09
  with a few fruits. It has a peculiar odor but little taste. Mixed
• 3:30:15
  with flour or incorporated with sweetmeat, it is called hashish. It is also
• 3:30:20
  smoked or taken infused in cold water. Two Ganja consists of the flowering shoots
• 3:30:26
  of the female plant, having a compound or glutenous appearance, and is brownish
• 3:30:33
  green in color. Of the many curious experiences that have been written describing the
• 3:30:39
  effects of hashish, perhaps the most accurate is that given by Gautier, in
• 3:30:43
  which he relates his own experience of the drug. The Orientalists, he states,
• 3:30:50
  have, in consequence of the interdiction of wine, sought that species of
• 3:30:54
  excitement which the Western nations derive from alcoholic drinks. He then proceeds to state
• 3:31:01
  how, a few minutes after swallowing some of the preparation, a sudden,
• 3:31:05
  overwhelming sensation took possession of him. It appeared to him that his body was
• 3:31:11
  dissolved, and that he had become transparent. He clearly saw in his stomach
• 3:31:16
  the hashish he had swallowed, under the form of an emerald, from which
• 3:31:20
  a thousand little sparks issued. His eye lashes were lengthened out indefinitely and rolled
• 3:31:28
  like threads of gold around ivory balls, which turned with inconceivable rapidity. Around
• 3:31:37
  him were sparklings of precious stones of all colors, changes eternally produced like the
• 3:31:43
  play of a kaleidoscope. He every now and then saw his friends, who
• 3:31:48
  were around him disfigured as half men, half plants, some having the wings
• 3:31:54
  of the ostrich, which they were constantly shaking. So strange were these that
• 3:32:00
  he burst into fits of laughter, and to join in the apparent ridiculousness of
• 3:32:05
  the affair, he began by throwing the cushions in the air, catching and
• 3:32:09
  turning them with the rapidity of an Indian juggler. One gentleman spoke to him
• 3:32:16
  in Italian, which the hashish transposed into Spanish. After a few minutes,
• 3:32:22
  he recovered his habitual calmness, without any bad effect, and only with feelings
• 3:32:26
  of astonishment at what had passed. Half an hour had scarcely elapsed before he
• 3:32:33
  again fell under the influence of the drug. On this occasion, the vision
• 3:32:37
  was more complicated and extraordinary. In the air, there were millions of butterflies,
• 3:32:43
  confusedly luminous, shaking their wings like fans. Gigantic flowers with galaxies of
• 3:32:52
  crystal. Large paeonies upon beds of gold and silver rose and surrounded him with
• 3:32:58
  a crackling sound that a companies the explosion in the air of fireworks. His
• 3:33:03
  hearing acquired new power. It was enormously developed. He heard the noise of
• 3:33:09
  colors green, red, blue, yellow. Sounds reached him in waves.
• 3:33:15
  A glass thrown down, the creaking of a sofa, A word pronounced low
• 3:33:20
  vibrated and rolled within him like peals of thunder. His own voice sounded so
• 3:33:26
  loud that he feared to speak, lest he should knock down the walls or
• 3:33:31
  explode like a rocket. More than five hundred clocks struck the hour with fleeting,
• 3:33:37
  silvery voice, and every object touched gave a note like the harmonica or
• 3:33:43
  the Aeolian harp. He swam in an ocean of sound, where floated like
• 3:33:48
  aisles of light. Some of the airs of Luccia di Lammimoor and the Barber
• 3:33:54
  of Seville never did the similar bliss overwhelm him with its waves. He was
• 3:34:00
  lost in a wilderness of sweets. He was not himself. He was relieved
• 3:34:05
  from consciousness, that feeling which always pervades the mind, and for the first
• 3:34:11
  time he comprehended what might be the state of elementary beings, of angels,
• 3:34:16
  of souls, separated from the body. All his system seemed infected with the
• 3:34:22
  fantastic coloring in which he was plunged. Sounds, perfume, light reached him
• 3:34:30
  only by minute rays, in the midst of which he heard mystic currents whistling
• 3:34:35
  along. According to his calculation, this state lasted about three hundred years,
• 3:34:41
  for the sensations were so numerous and so hurried one upon the other that a
• 3:34:46
  real appreciation of time was impossible. The paroxysm over, he was aware that
• 3:34:52
  it had only lasted a quarter of an hour. Another interesting account of the
• 3:34:58
  strange hallucination produced by the drug is related by doctor Moreau, who with two
• 3:35:05
  friends experimented with hashish. At first, he states I thought my companions were
• 3:35:11
  less influenced by the drug than myself. Then, as the effect increased,
• 3:35:18
  I fancied that the person who had brought me the dose had given me some
• 3:35:22
  of more active quality. This, I thought to myself, was an imprudence,
• 3:35:28
  and the involuntary idea presented itself that I might be poisoned. The idea
• 3:35:35
  became fixed. I called out loudly to doctor Roche, you are an assassin.
• 3:35:39
  You have poisoned me. This was received with shouts of laughter and my
• 3:35:46
  lamentations excited mirth. I struggled for some time against the thought, but the
• 3:35:52
  greater the effort, the more completely did it overcome me, till at last
• 3:35:56
  it took full possession of my mind. The extravagant conviction now came uppermost that
• 3:36:03
  I was dead, and upon the point of being buried, my soul had
• 3:36:07
  left my body. In a few minutes, I had gone through all the
• 3:36:11
  stages of delirium. These fixed ideas and erroneous convictions are apt to be produced,
• 3:36:20
  but they only last a few seconds unless there is any actual physical disorder.
• 3:36:26
  The Orientalist, when he indulges in hashish, retires into the depth of
• 3:36:31
  his harim no one is then admitted who cannot contribute to his enjoyment. He
• 3:36:37
  surrounds himself with his dancing girls, who perform their graceful evolutions before him to
• 3:36:43
  the sound of music. Gradually, a new condition of the brain allows a
• 3:36:48
  series of illusions arising from the external senses to present themselves. The mind becomes
• 3:36:56
  overpowered by the brilliancy of gorgeous visions. Discrimination comparison reason yield up their throne
• 3:37:03
  to dreams and phantoms, which exhilarate and delight. The mind tries to understand
• 3:37:11
  what is the cause of the new delight, but it is in vain.
• 3:37:16
  It seems to know there is no reality. Hardly two people experience the same
• 3:37:22
  effects from hashish. Upon some it has little action, while upon others,
• 3:37:28
  especially women, it exerts extraordinary power. While one person says he imagined his
• 3:37:33
  body endowed with such elasticity that he fancied he could enter into a bottle and
• 3:37:39
  remain there at his ease, another fancied he had become the piston of a
• 3:37:43
  steam engine. Under the influence of the drug, the ear lends itself more
• 3:37:50
  to the illusion than any other sense. Its first effect is one of intense
• 3:37:56
  exhilaration, almost amounting to delirium. The power of thought is soon lost,
• 3:38:01
  and the victim laughs, cries, and sings or dances, all the time
• 3:38:07
  imagining he is acting rationally. The second stage is one of dreamy enjoyment,
• 3:38:13
  followed by a dead stupor. Of the ordinary physical effects of hashish, the
• 3:38:20
  first is a feeling of slight compression of the temporal bones and upper parts of
• 3:38:24
  the head. The respiration is gentle, the pulse is increased, and a
• 3:38:31
  gentle heat is felt all over the surface of the body. There is a
• 3:38:35
  sense of weight about the forepart of the arms, and an occasional slight involuntary
• 3:38:41
  motion, as if to seek relief from it. There is a feeling of
• 3:38:45
  discomfort about the extremities, creating a feeling of uneasiness, and if the dose
• 3:38:50
  has been too large, the usual symptoms of poisoning by Indian hemp show themselves.
• 3:38:56
  Flushes of heat seemed to ascend the head even to the brain, which
• 3:39:01
  create considerable alarm. Singing in the ears is complained of. Then comes on
• 3:39:09
  a state of anxiety, almost of anguish, with a sense of constriction about
• 3:39:13
  the chest. The individual fancies he hears the beating of his heart with unaccustomed
• 3:39:20
  loudness. But throughout the whole period it is the nervous system that is affected,
• 3:39:26
  and in this way the drug differs materially from opium, whose action on
• 3:39:30
  the muscular and digestive systems is most marked. It is somewhat remarkable that Indian
• 3:39:37
  hemp fails to produce the same intoxicating effects in this country that it does in
• 3:39:43
  warmer climates, and whether this is due to the loss of some volatile principle
• 3:39:48
  or difference in temperature, it is not yet determined, but would be experimentalists
• 3:39:54
  in the effects of hashish would do well to remember that it may may not
• 3:40:00
  be indulged in with impunity, and most authorities agree that the brain becomes eventually
• 3:40:07
  disordered with frequent indulgence in the drug. Even in India, it further becomes
• 3:40:13
  weakened and incapable of separating the true from the faults. Frequent intoxication leads to
• 3:40:20
  a condition of delirium and usually of a dangerous nature. The moral nature becomes
• 3:40:26
  numbed, and the victim at last becomes unfit to pursue his ordinary avocation.
• 3:40:31
  It is stated by those who have considerable experience in its use, that even
• 3:40:37
  during the dream of joy, there is a consciousness that all is illusion.
• 3:40:43
  There is at no period a belief that anything that dances before the senses or
• 3:40:48
  plays upon the imagination is real, and that when the mind recovers its equilibrium,
• 3:40:54
  it knows that all is but a phantasm. End of Chapter seventeen,
• 3:41:03
  Chapter eighteen, Tobacco lore. Few perchants of the millions who gather comfort from
• 3:41:09
  the herb of Fragrance are aware that it is to Don Honandez de Tiledo we
• 3:41:15
  are indebted for the introduction of tobacco into Western Europe, which he first brought
• 3:41:20
  to Spain and Portugal in fifteen fifty nine. Jean NiCoT was at this time
• 3:41:26
  ambassador at the Court of Lisbon from Francis the Second, and it was he
• 3:41:30
  who transmitted or carried either the seed or the plant to Catherine de Medici,
• 3:41:35
  and who gave it the name Nicochiana. Like other great personages of the time,
• 3:41:41
  Catherine encouraged the homage of travelers and artists. It was considered to be
• 3:41:46
  one of the wonders of the New World, and reported to possess most extraordinary
• 3:41:52
  medicinal properties and virtues. Thirty years later, the Cardinal Santa Croce, returning
• 3:42:00
  from his nunciature in Spain and Portugal to Italy, took with him some tobacco
• 3:42:05
  leaves, and we may form some idea of the enthusiasm with which its production
• 3:42:09
  was hailed from a perusal of the poetry which the subject inspired, such as
• 3:42:16
  the following herb of immortal fame, which hither first with Santa Croce, came
• 3:42:22
  when he his time of nunziatier expired, back from the court of Portugal,
• 3:42:28
  retired even as his predecessor Great and Good brought home the cross. The poet
• 3:42:35
  compares the exploit of the cardinal with that of his progenitor, who brought home
• 3:42:41
  the wood of the true Cross. The first exact description of the plant is
• 3:42:46
  that given by Gonzolo Fnandesdovieto E Valdes, governor of Santa Domingo, in his
• 3:42:54
  Historiaenera de las Indis, printed at Sabella in fifteen thirty five. In this
• 3:43:01
  work, the leaf is said to be smoked through a branched tube of the
• 3:43:05
  shape of the letter y, which the natives called tobacco. After the introduction
• 3:43:11
  of tobacco into England, by Sir Walter Rawleigh on his return from America.
• 3:43:16
  The custom of smoking the leaf became very general, and it truly seems to
• 3:43:20
  have supplied a common want. It was mostly sold by the apothecaries in their
• 3:43:26
  dark little shops, and here the gallants would congregate to smoke their pipes and
• 3:43:31
  gossip, while the real timidado nicotine, cane and pudding was cut off with
• 3:43:37
  a silver knife on a maple block and retailed to the customers. The pipes
• 3:43:43
  used in the time of Queen Elizabeth were chiefly made of silver. The commoner
• 3:43:48
  kinds consisted of a walnut shell in which a straw was inserted, and the
• 3:43:52
  tobacco was sold in the shops for its weight in silver. The celebrated counter
• 3:43:58
  black ast to tobacco by King James the First describes smoking as accustom, loathe
• 3:44:05
  them to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain,
• 3:44:11
  dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling
• 3:44:16
  the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless. In sixteen o four,
• 3:44:24
  this monarch endeavored by means of heavy imposts to abolish its use in this
• 3:44:28
  country, and in sixteen nineteen he commanded that no planter in Virginia should cultivate
• 3:44:35
  more than one hundred pounds. It is said some spent as much as five
• 3:44:41
  hundred pounds a year in the purchase of tobacco in those days. In sixteen
• 3:44:46
  twenty four, Pope Urban the eighth published a decree of excommunication against all who
• 3:44:52
  took snuff in the church. Ten years after this, smoking was forbidden in
• 3:44:58
  Russia under pain of having the no rose cut off, and in sixteen fifty
• 3:45:01
  three the Council of the Canton of Appenzell cited smokers before them, whom they
• 3:45:07
  punished, ordering all innkeepers to inform against such as were found smoking in their
• 3:45:15
  houses. The police regulations made in Bern in sixteen sixty one were divided according
• 3:45:20
  to the Tin Commandments, in which the prohibition of smoking stands after the command
• 3:45:26
  against adultery. This prohibition was renewed in sixteen seventy five, and the tribunal
• 3:45:33
  instituted to put it into execution viz. Chambro Tobach continued to the middle of
• 3:45:39
  the eighteenth century. Pope Innocent the twelfth in sixteen ninety excommunicated all those who
• 3:45:46
  were found taking snuff or tobacco in the Church of Saint Peter at Rome,
• 3:45:52
  and even so late as seventeen nineteen, the Senate of Strasbourg prohibited the cultivation
• 3:45:58
  of tobacco from an apprehension that it would diminish the growth of corn. Amurath
• 3:46:03
  the fourth published an edict which made smoking tobacco a capital offense, but notwithstanding
• 3:46:11
  all opposition, its fascinating power has held its own. It is believed that
• 3:46:16
  the tobacco plant Nicotsiana tobaccum is a native of Tropical America, and it was
• 3:46:22
  found by the Spaniards when they landed in Cuba in fourteen ninety two. There
• 3:46:28
  seems little doubt that the practice of smoking the leaf has been common among the
• 3:46:33
  natives of South America from time immemorial. It is now cultivated all over the
• 3:46:37
  world, but nowhere more abundantly or with better results than in the United States.
• 3:46:43
  Virginia is perhaps most celebrated for its culture. The young shoots, produced
• 3:46:50
  from seeds thickly sown in beds, are transplanted into the fields during the month
• 3:46:54
  of May and set in rows with an interval of three or four feet between
• 3:47:00
  the plants. Through the whole period of its growth. The crop requires constant
• 3:47:05
  attention till the harvest time in the month of August. The ripe plants,
• 3:47:09
  having been cut off above their roots, are dried under cover and then stripped
• 3:47:15
  of their leaves, which are tied in bundles and packed in hogsheads. While
• 3:47:20
  hung up in the drying houses, they undergo a curing process consisting of exposure
• 3:47:26
  to a considerable degree of heat, through which they become moist, after which
• 3:47:31
  they are dried for packing. In Persia and Turkey, a form of tobacco
• 3:47:35
  is sold under the name of tumbeki for use in the water pipes or nahili,
• 3:47:41
  which is said to be the product of the Nicotziana persica. The active
• 3:47:46
  principle of nicotine was first isolated in eighteen twenty eight by Pusselt and Riemen and
• 3:47:54
  is an almost colorless, oily liquid of a highly poisonous nature. It soon
• 3:48:00
  becomes brown on exposure to air or light. The amount present in tobacco leaves
• 3:48:05
  varies considerably, but it is usually about six per cent. It has not
• 3:48:11
  been met with in tobacco smoke according to vol but the tobacco oils contain minute
• 3:48:16
  proportion of nicotine. One drop of pure nicotine is sufficient to kill a dog,
• 3:48:22
  while a very little more will destroy life in a human being. It
• 3:48:26
  is said to possess the property of resisting decomposition amid the decaying tissues of the
• 3:48:33
  body, and was detected by orphila two or three months after death. Foll
• 3:48:39
  and Eulenberg have made an interesting investigation of tobacco smoke. The smoke analyzed was
• 3:48:45
  from a tobacco containing four per cent of nicotine, but none of the alkaloid
• 3:48:50
  was found in the smoke. In the smoke of cigars, certain gases were
• 3:48:54
  given off and an oily body collected, which, on distillation yielded aromatic acids.
• 3:49:01
  Distilled at a temperature above boiling water, tobacco gives an impi rheumatic oil
• 3:49:07
  of a poisonous nature. It exactly resembles that which collects in the stems of
• 3:49:13
  tobacco pipes and contains a small percentage of nicotine. The actual amount of nicotine
• 3:49:20
  absorbed into the blood while smoking a pipe is very minute, at least fifty
• 3:49:26
  percent of the entire alkaloid being destroyed by decomposition and escaping from the bowl of
• 3:49:31
  the pipe. The habitual inhalation of tobacco smoke is undoubtedly harmful, but unless
• 3:49:37
  the smoke be intentionally inhaled, very little makes its way into the lungs.
• 3:49:43
  A great deal of misconception exists in the mind of the average individual as to
• 3:49:48
  the power of the alkaloid of tobacco. The amount of nicotine actually absorbed from
• 3:49:54
  a fair sized pipe is about one fortieth of a grain in a cigar.
• 3:50:00
  Rather less death has resulted after smoking eighteen pipes and from twenty cigars smoked continuously.
• 3:50:09
  Tobacco is a powerful sedative poison used in large quantities. It causes vertigo,
• 3:50:15
  stupor, faintness, and general depression of the nervous system. It will
• 3:50:20
  sometimes cause excessive nausea and wretching, with feebleness of pulse, coolness of the
• 3:50:26
  skin, and occasionally convulsions, but there seems very little known as to how
• 3:50:31
  these symptoms are produced. Employed to excess it enfeebles digestion, produces emaciation and
• 3:50:39
  general debility, and is often the beginning of serious nervous disorders. Be this
• 3:50:45
  as it may, the moderate smoking of tobacco has in most cases even beneficial
• 3:50:50
  results, and there appears little doubt that It acts as a solace and comfort
• 3:50:56
  to the poor as well as the rich, woth the restless, calms mental
• 3:51:01
  and corporeal in quietude, and produces a condition of repose without a corresponding reaction
• 3:51:09
  or after effect. In adults, especially those liable to mental worry, and
• 3:51:15
  all brain workers, its action is often a boon, the only danger being
• 3:51:18
  in overstepping the boundary of moderation to excess. It is not suitable to every
• 3:51:26
  constitution, and those who can trace to it evil effects should not continue its
• 3:51:31
  use. End of Chapter eighteen, Chapter nineteen. Poison habits. There is
• 3:51:41
  a very peculiar property attached to poisons, especially those possessing anodyne properties. That
• 3:51:48
  is, they are capable of forming the most enslaving habits known to mankind.
• 3:51:52
  Thousands of people today are enchained in the slavery of the poison habit in one
• 3:51:58
  form or another, and very few are ever successful in resting themselves free.
• 3:52:05
  When once it has been contracted, the habit is formed in the most insidious
• 3:52:09
  manner. Often in the first instance, some narcotic drug is recommended to relieve
• 3:52:15
  pain or induce sleep in a short time, the original dose fails to produce
• 3:52:20
  the desired effect. It has to be increased, and afterwards still further increased,
• 3:52:26
  until the victim finds he cannot do without it, and a terrible craving
• 3:52:31
  for the drug is created by and by the stupefying action affects the brain,
• 3:52:37
  The moral character suffers, and the unfortunate being is at last ready to do
• 3:52:41
  anything to obtain a supply of the drug that is now his master. This
• 3:52:48
  is not an overdrawn picture, but one of which instances are constantly to be
• 3:52:52
  met. With. The enslaving habit of alcohol, when once contracted, is
• 3:52:58
  too well known to need description. Opium comes next in the point of influence
• 3:53:03
  it exerts over its victims, and a very small percentage ever free themselves from
• 3:53:09
  the habit when it is once contracted. In most instances it is taken in
• 3:53:15
  the first place to relieve some severe pain, as in de Quincey's case.
• 3:53:20
  He says in his Confessions of an Opium Eater, it was not for the
• 3:53:24
  purpose of creating pleasure, but of mitigating pain. In the severest degree that
• 3:53:30
  I first began to use opium as an article of daily diet. Like others,
• 3:53:35
  he was compelled to increase the dose gradually until at last he consumed the
• 3:53:41
  enormous quantity of three hundred and twenty grains of the drug a day. He
• 3:53:46
  graphically describes the struggle. He first had to reduce the daily dose and found
• 3:53:52
  that to a certain point it could be reduced with ease, but after that
• 3:53:56
  point further reduction caused intense suffering. However, a crisis arrived, and he
• 3:54:01
  writes, I saw that I must die if I continued the opium. I
• 3:54:07
  determined, therefore, if that should be required to die in throwing it off,
• 3:54:13
  I apprehend at this time I was taking from fifty or sixty grains to
• 3:54:18
  one hundred and fifty grains a day. My first task was to reduce it
• 3:54:22
  to forty to thirty, and as fast as I could to twelve grains.
• 3:54:28
  I triumphed, But think not my sufferings were ended. Think of me as
• 3:54:33
  one, even when four months had passed, still agitated, writhing, throbbing,
• 3:54:39
  palpitating, shattered, and much perhaps in the situation of him who has
• 3:54:46
  been racked. Other cases are commonly met with in this country, where opium
• 3:54:52
  eaters take on an average from sixty to eighty grains of the drug a day.
• 3:54:58
  The smallest quantity which has proved fatal in the adult is for and a
• 3:55:01
  half grains. In other cases, enormous quantities have been taken with impunity,
• 3:55:07
  and Guie states recovery once took place after no less than eight ounces of solid
• 3:55:13
  opium had been swallowed. Morphine, the chief alkaloid of opium, is also
• 3:55:20
  abused by many and is swallowed as well as used by injection under the skin.
• 3:55:26
  Its action is very similar to that of opium. It has been recently
• 3:55:30
  given on good authority that in Chicago, that city of hurrying men and restless
• 3:55:35
  women, over thirty five thousand persons habitually take subcutaneous injections of morphine to save
• 3:55:43
  themselves from the pains and terrors of neuralgia, insomnia, and nervousness, et
• 3:55:48
  cetera. To a delicate woman, one grain of this drug has proved fatal,
• 3:55:54
  yet under the influence of habit, a young lady has been known to
• 3:55:58
  take from fifteen to twenty grains a day. A man in a good position
• 3:56:03
  and head of a large commercial house, contracted the habit of taking morphine from
• 3:56:09
  a prescription he had had given to him containing four grains of the drug as
• 3:56:15
  the habit grew, He would have the medicine prepared by four different chemists daily
• 3:56:20
  and swallow the contents of each bottle for a dose, until he took on
• 3:56:24
  an average over twenty four grains a day. This being put a stop to
• 3:56:31
  by his friends, he commenced to take chloroform, which he would purchase in
• 3:56:35
  small quantities until he had collected a bottleful, and then he would drink it,
• 3:56:41
  usually mixed with whiskey. He eventually had to be placed under restraint.
• 3:56:46
  Chloroform is not often taken habitually, but several instances have been met with where
• 3:56:52
  as much as two ounces have been swallowed by a man. The effects,
• 3:56:56
  when taken by the mouth are similar to those which follow its inhalation. Chlorodyne,
• 3:57:03
  which generally contains both morphine and prussic acid in its composition, is also
• 3:57:09
  much abused, especially by women. Some women have been known to consume two
• 3:57:15
  ounces a week of this preparation. Cocaine, an active principle of the erythroxylum
• 3:57:20
  Coca, is capable of exciting a powerful craving which apparently holds its victims in
• 3:57:28
  a grip of iron until they are willing to spend any amount of money in
• 3:57:31
  obtaining the drug. Arsenic eating is a habit fortunately rare in this country,
• 3:57:39
  although cases have been met with in which women have gradually become addicted to taking
• 3:57:43
  large quantities for improving their complexions. The peasants in some parts of Styria and
• 3:57:50
  Hungary have long been known to eat arsenic, taking it is said from two
• 3:57:54
  to five grains daily, the men doing so in order that they may gain
• 3:57:58
  st strength and be able to endure fatigue, and the women that they may
• 3:58:03
  improve their complexions. Doctor McLaughlin of Edinburgh dates he saw Astyrian eat a piece
• 3:58:11
  of arcinious acid weighing over four grains. Sleeplessness is a frequent cause of the
• 3:58:18
  formation of a poison habit, and for this purpose chlorohydrate perhaps is capable of
• 3:58:24
  producing more serious results than any other drug of its class. The fact that
• 3:58:31
  it accumulates in the system, and that the dose needs constantly to be increased,
• 3:58:35
  always renders its use dangerous in unskilled hands. Many gifted men have fallen
• 3:58:41
  victims to the habit, Among others Dante Rosetti, who seldom was without a
• 3:58:48
  bottle of the narcotic near him. Latterly sulfonol, a drug derived from coal
• 3:58:54
  tar possessing hypnotic properties, has been largely taken, and antipiet irene, now
• 3:59:01
  a popular remedy for headache, is capable of forming a pernicious and dangerous habit.
• 3:59:07
  The practice of self dosing with drugs of this description cannot be too strongly
• 3:59:11
  deprecated. Some people form a curious habit of taking one drug till at last
• 3:59:18
  they become imbued with the idea that that only and nothing else, will have
• 3:59:22
  any effect on them. The only remedy Carlyle would ever take, according to
• 3:59:28
  the late Sir Richard Quaine, who was his medical adviser, was gray powder.
• 3:59:33
  Gray Powder was his favorite remedy when he had that wretched dyspepsia from which
• 3:59:39
  he suffered, and which was fully accounted for by the fact that he was
• 3:59:43
  particularly fond of very nasty gingerbread. Many times I have seen him sitting in
• 3:59:50
  the chimney corner, smoking a clay pipe and eating this gingerbread. Oliver Goldsmith
• 3:59:56
  also labored under the confirmed belief that the only edison that would have any effect
• 4:00:01
  on him was James powder. He doctored himself with this favorite nostrum whenever he
• 4:00:09
  felt unwell and believed it to be a cure for all ills. According to
• 4:00:15
  a West End physician, quite a new and most reprehensible vice has recently become
• 4:00:20
  fashionable, viz. A crage that has arisen among women for smoking green tea
• 4:00:26
  in the form of cigarettes. Though adopted by some fair ladies merely as a
• 4:00:31
  past time, not a few of its votaries are women of high education and
• 4:00:35
  mental attainments. Among my patients, he states, suffering from extreme nervousness and
• 4:00:41
  insomnia, is a young lady highly distinguished at Girton. Another is a lady
• 4:00:48
  novelist, whose books are widely read, and who habitually smoked twenty or thirty
• 4:00:54
  of these cigarettes nightly when writing for their stimulating effect. Though tea does not
• 4:01:01
  contain a trace of any poisonous principle, it can, when thus misused,
• 4:01:07
  exert a most harmful influence. Doubtless, the high pressure at which most of
• 4:01:11
  the dwellers in our great cities now live, and the worry of too much
• 4:01:16
  brain work on one hand, or the lack of occupation on the other,
• 4:01:20
  is one of the chief causes of taking up habits of this kind, one
• 4:01:24
  of the best remedies, and one which it is to be hoped will eventually
• 4:01:28
  come to pass, is that the legislature should render poisons less easy of purchase
• 4:01:35
  by restricting the sale of every drug or compound in the nature of a poison
• 4:01:41
  to the properly qualified chemist, who, by his training and special knowledge,
• 4:01:46
  is alone competent to sell these substances. Incalculable harm is done by habits such
• 4:01:52
  as we have alluded to, and it is better often to endure pain and
• 4:01:56
  torment than to fly constantly to what, in the end will only inflict worse
• 4:02:03
  punishment. End of Chapter nineteen, Chapter twenty. Poisons in fiction from a
• 4:02:13
  very early period, poisoning mysteries have been woven into romance and story, and
• 4:02:18
  in later times have been a favorite theme for both novelist and dramatist. But
• 4:02:24
  unfortunately, the scientific knowledge of writers of fiction as a rule is of a
• 4:02:30
  very limited description, and the effects attributed by them to certain drugs are usually
• 4:02:35
  as fabulous as the romances of the olden times. They tell us of mysterious
• 4:02:41
  poisons of untold power and infinitesimal quantity, of which will cause instantaneous death without
• 4:02:48
  leaving a trace behind. They describe anesthetic so powerful that a whiff from a
• 4:02:54
  bottle is sufficient to produce immediate insensibility for any period design. In fact,
• 4:03:01
  the novelist has a pharmacopeia of his own. After all, why should we
• 4:03:05
  question our cavil and wish to analyze it in the prosaic test tube of modern
• 4:03:11
  science. For take away the marvels and mysteries, and you kill the romance.
• 4:03:16
  The novel performs its mission if it succeeds in interesting and amusing us.
• 4:03:22
  And the story teller has accomplished the object of his art when he is successful
• 4:03:26
  in weaving the possible with the impossible, so that we can scarce perceive it.
• 4:03:33
  That master of fiction Dumas gives us an instance of this in his wonderfully
• 4:03:39
  fascinating Adventures of the Count of Monte Cristo. Nothing seems impossible to this extraordinary
• 4:03:46
  individual. An incident after incident of the most romantic and exciting nature crowd one
• 4:03:52
  upon another throughout the story, yet so beautifully blended by the wonderful imagination of
• 4:03:58
  the author that it enthralls us to the end. The Count, who is
• 4:04:03
  supposed to have studied the art of medicine in the East, has always a
• 4:04:07
  remedy at hand for every emergency from Hashish, in which he is a profound
• 4:04:13
  believer, to his mysterious stimulating elixir, described as of the color of blood,
• 4:04:20
  preserved in a file of Bohemian glass. A single drop of this marvelous
• 4:04:26
  fluid, if allowed to fall on the lips, will almost before it reaches
• 4:04:31
  them, restore the marble and inanimate form to life. His pill boxes were
• 4:04:37
  composed of emeralds and precious stones of huge size, and their contents consisted of
• 4:04:43
  drugs whose effects were beyond conception. His knowledge of chemistry and toxicology is equally
• 4:04:50
  astonishing, as instanced in the conversation he holds with Madame de Villefort, who,
• 4:04:58
  for nefarious par purposes, desires to improve her knowledge of poisons. Monte
• 4:05:03
  Cristo discourses on the poisonous properties of brussine, a drug rarely used in England
• 4:05:09
  but largely used in France. Suppose, says the count, you were to
• 4:05:15
  take a milligram of this poison the first day, two milligrams the second day,
• 4:05:20
  and so on. Well, at the end of ten days, you
• 4:05:24
  would have taken a centigram. At the end of twenty days, increasing another
• 4:05:28
  miligram, you would have taken three hundred centigrams, that is to say,
• 4:05:33
  a dose you would support without inconvenience, and which would be very dangerous for
• 4:05:39
  any other person who had not taken the same precautions as yourself. Well,
• 4:05:45
  then, at the end of a month, when drinking water from the same
• 4:05:48
  carafe, you would kill the person who had drunk this water without your perceiving
• 4:05:54
  otherwise than from slight inconvenience, that there was any poison a substance mingled with
• 4:06:01
  the water. The count thus explains the doctrine of immunity from a poison by
• 4:06:07
  accustoming the system to its effect in small doses for a length of time,
• 4:06:13
  a process which is actually possible with some drugs, but not withal. His
• 4:06:18
  satirical description of the bungling of the common poisoner as compared to the fine,
• 4:06:24
  subtlety, and cunning he advocates, is also worth quoting. Amongst us,
• 4:06:30
  a simpleton possessed by the demon of hate or cupidity, who has an enemy
• 4:06:35
  to destroy or some near relation to dispose of, goes straight to the grocers
• 4:06:41
  or druggists, gives a false name which leads more easily to his detection than
• 4:06:46
  is real one, and purchases under a pretext that the rats prevent him from
• 4:06:50
  sleeping five or six pennyworth of arsenic. If he is really a cunning fellow,
• 4:06:56
  he goes to five or six different druggist orgs grocers, and thereby becomes
• 4:07:01
  only five or six times more easily traced. Then, when he has acquired
• 4:07:07
  his specific he administers duly to his enemy or near kinsman a dose of arsenic
• 4:07:13
  which would make a mammoth or mastodon burst, and which without rhyme or reason,
• 4:07:20
  makes his victim utter groans which alarm the whole neighborhood. Then arrive a
• 4:07:26
  crowd of policemen and constables. They fetch a doctor who opens the dead body
• 4:07:31
  and collects from the entrails and stomach a quantity of arsenic in a spoon.
• 4:07:37
  Next day a hundred newspapers relate the fact with the names of the victim and
• 4:07:41
  the murderer. The same evening, the grocer or grocers, druggists or druggists
• 4:07:48
  come and say, it is I who sold the arsenic to the gentleman accused,
• 4:07:52
  And rather than not recognize the guilty purchaser, they will recognize twenty.
• 4:08:00
  Then the foolish criminal is taken, imprisoned, interrogated, confronted, confounded,
• 4:08:05
  condemned, and cut off by hemp or steel, or if she be a
• 4:08:11
  woman of any consideration, they lock her up for life. This is the
• 4:08:16
  way in which you Northerners understand chemistry. And so he endeavors to incite a
• 4:08:22
  woman who is already anxiously contemplating a series of terrible crimes. The recital of
• 4:08:31
  the ingenious experiments of the Abbe Adelmonte is a piece of clever construction. As
• 4:08:37
  the quotation will show, the Abbe said Monte Cristo had a remarkably fine garden,
• 4:08:43
  full of vegetables, flowers and fruit. From amongst these vegetables, he
• 4:08:48
  selected the most simple, a cabbage, for instance. For three days he
• 4:08:54
  watered this cabbage with a distillation of arsenic. On the third the cabbage began
• 4:08:58
  to roup and turn yellow. At that moment he cut it. In the
• 4:09:03
  eyes of everybody, it seemed fit for table and preserved its wholesome appearance.
• 4:09:09
  It was only poisoned to the Abbe Adlumont. He then took the cabbage to
• 4:09:13
  the room where he had rabbits. For the Abbe Ademont had a collection of
• 4:09:18
  rabbits, cats, and guinea pigs equally fine as his collection of vegetables,
• 4:09:24
  flowers and fruit. Well, the abbe Adeumont took a rabbit and made it
• 4:09:28
  eat a leaf of the cabbage. The rabbit died. What magistrate would find
• 4:09:33
  or even venture to insinuate anything against this? What procureur du Roi has ever
• 4:09:41
  ventured to draw up an accusation against Monsieur Margendi or Monsieur Floriennes in consequence of
• 4:09:48
  the rabbits, cats and guinea pigs they have killed not one? So then
• 4:09:54
  the rabbit dies, and justice takes no notice. This rabbit dead, the
• 4:10:00
  abbe Adlumont has its entrails taken out by his cook and thrown on the dunghill.
• 4:10:05
  On this dunghill was a hen who pecking these intestines, was in her
• 4:10:11
  turn taken ill and dies. Next day. At the moment when she was
• 4:10:16
  struggling in the convulsions of death, a vulture was flying by. There are
• 4:10:20
  a good many vultures in Adelmont's country. This bird darts on the dead bird
• 4:10:26
  and carries it away to a rock, where it dines off its prey.
• 4:10:31
  Three days afterwards, this poor vulture who has been very much indisposed since that
• 4:10:35
  dinner, feels very giddy suddenly whilst flying aloft in the clouds, and falls
• 4:10:41
  heavily into a fish pond. The pike, eels and carp eat greedily always,
• 4:10:48
  as everybody knows, while they feast on the vulture. Well, suppose
• 4:10:54
  the next day one of these eels, or pike or carp is served at
• 4:10:58
  your table poison, and as they are to the third generation, well,
• 4:11:03
  then your guest will be poisoned in the fifth generation and die at the end
• 4:11:09
  of eight or ten days of pains in the intestines, sickness, or abscess
• 4:11:13
  of the pelorus. The doctors open the body and say, with an air
• 4:11:18
  of profound learning, the subject has died of a tumor on the liver or
• 4:11:22
  typhoid fever. After attempting to kill half the household with brucine, Madame de
• 4:11:30
  Villefort changes her particular poison for a simple narcotic, recognized by Monte Cristo,
• 4:11:37
  who, in this instance frustrates the murderer as being dissolved in alcohol. The
• 4:11:41
  name of the latter poison is not told us by the novelist, but on
• 4:11:46
  the doctor's examination of the suspected liquid. We read he took from its silver
• 4:11:52
  case a small bottle of nitric acid, dropped a little of it into the
• 4:11:56
  liquor, which immediately changed to a blood red color. Perhaps the most curious
• 4:12:03
  method of poisoning ever used in fiction is that introduced by the late mister James
• 4:12:07
  Paine in his novel Halves. The poisoner uses finely chopped horsehair as a medium
• 4:12:15
  for getting rid of her niece. In this way, she brings on a
• 4:12:18
  disease which puzzles the doctor until one day he comes across the would be murderess
• 4:12:24
  pulling the horsehair out of the drawing room sofa, which causes him to suspect
• 4:12:28
  her. At once. This ingenious lady introduced the chopped horsehair into the pepper
• 4:12:35
  pot used by her victim. The inimitable Count Fosco, whom Wilkie Collins introduces
• 4:12:41
  into The Woman in White, was supposed to possess a remarkable knowledge of chemistry,
• 4:12:48
  although he says only twice did I call science to my aid. In
• 4:12:52
  working out his plot to abduct Lady Glyde, his media were simple, a
• 4:12:58
  medicated glass of water and a medicated bottle of smelling salts relieved her of all
• 4:13:03
  further embarrassment and alarm. This genial villain waxes eloquent on the science of chemistry.
• 4:13:11
  In his confession. Chemistry, he exclaims, has always had irresistible attractions
• 4:13:18
  for me from the enormous, the illimitable power which the knowledge of it confers.
• 4:13:24
  Chemists, I asserted emphatically, might sway if they pleased, the destinies
• 4:13:30
  of humanity. Mind, they say rules the world, But what rules the
• 4:13:35
  mind? The body? Now follow me closely. Here lies at the mercy
• 4:13:41
  of the most omnipotent of all potentates, the chemist. Give me foscal chemistry.
• 4:13:48
  And when Shakespeare has conceived Hamlet and sits down to execute the conception,
• 4:13:54
  with a few grains of powder dropped into his daily food, I will reduce
• 4:13:58
  his mind by the action of his body, till his pen pours out the
• 4:14:03
  most abject drivel that has ever degraded paper. Under similar circumstances, revive me
• 4:14:09
  the illustrious Newton. I guarantee that when he sees the apple fall, he
• 4:14:15
  shall eat it. Instead of discovering the principle of gravitation, Nero's dinner shall
• 4:14:20
  transform Nero into the mildest of men before he has done digesting it, And
• 4:14:26
  the morning draft of Alexander the Great shall make Alexander run for his life at
• 4:14:31
  the first sight of the enemy the same afternoon, on my sacred word of
• 4:14:37
  honor. It is lucky for society that modern chemists are, by incomprehensible good
• 4:14:43
  fortune, the most harmless of mankind. The mass are worthy fathers of families
• 4:14:50
  who keep shops. The few are philosophers besotted with admiration for the sound of
• 4:14:56
  their own lecturing voices, visionaries who waste their lives on fantastic impossibilities, or
• 4:15:03
  quacks whose ambition soars no higher than our corns. In Armadale, the same
• 4:15:11
  novelist introduces us to a poisoner of the deepest dye in the persons of Miss
• 4:15:16
  Gwilt. This fair damsel, whose auburn locks seemed to have possessed an irresistible
• 4:15:22
  attraction for the opposite sex, was addicted to taking laudanum to soothe her troubled
• 4:15:28
  nerves, and first tried to mix a dose with some lemonade she had prepared
• 4:15:33
  for her husband's namesake and friend, whom she wished out of the way this
• 4:15:39
  attempt failing, and a second one to scuttle a yacht in which he was
• 4:15:43
  sailing, proving futile also. He was finally lured to a sanatorium in London,
• 4:15:50
  where she had arranged for him to be placed to sleep in a room
• 4:15:54
  into which a poisonous gas, presumably carbonic acid, was to be passed.
• 4:16:00
  At the last moment, she discovers her husband has taken the place of her
• 4:16:03
  victim, and in a revulsion of feeling, she rescues him and ends her
• 4:16:10
  own life instead in the poisoned chamber. According to the story, the medical
• 4:16:15
  investigation which followed this tragedy ended in discovering that she had died of apoplexy,
• 4:16:22
  a fact which had it occurred in real life, would not have redounded to
• 4:16:26
  the credit of the medical men who conducted it. The heroine of mister Benson's
• 4:16:32
  novel The Rubicon poisons herself with prussic acid of unheard of strength, which she
• 4:16:38
  discovers among some photographic chemicals on the stage. Poisoning has gone somewhat out of
• 4:16:45
  fashion with modern dramatists, although it was a common thing in years gone by
• 4:16:51
  for the villain of the play to swallow a cup of cold poison in the
• 4:16:56
  last act, and after several dying speeches to false, suddenly flat on his
• 4:17:00
  back and die to slow music. The death of Cleopatra, described by Shakespeare
• 4:17:07
  as resulting from the bite of a venomous snake, is like no clinical description
• 4:17:12
  of the final effects of death from the bite of any known snake. Beverly,
• 4:17:18
  in The Gamester takes a dose a strong poison in the fifth act,
• 4:17:22
  and afterwards makes several fairly long speeches before he apparently feels the effects and finally
• 4:17:29
  succumbs. The description of the death of Juliet, which Shakespeare, in all
• 4:17:34
  probability conceived from reading the effects that follow the drinking of morion or mandragora wine,
• 4:17:41
  is an accurate description of death from that drug. The use of this
• 4:17:45
  anodyne preparation to deadened pain dates from ancient times, and it is stated it
• 4:17:52
  was a common practice for women to administer it to those about to suffer the
• 4:17:56
  penalty of the law by being ducified. We have another instance of the fabulous
• 4:18:03
  effects ascribed to poisons by the early playwrights. In Messenger's play The Duke of
• 4:18:08
  Milan Francisco dusts over a plant some poisonous powder and hands it to Eugenia.
• 4:18:17
  Ludovico approaches and kisses the lady's hand but twice, and then dies from the
• 4:18:22
  effects of the poison. Miss Helen Mathers, in one of her recent works
• 4:18:27
  viz. The Sin of Hagar, a story warranted to thrill the soul of
• 4:18:33
  Sweet seventeen, makes some extraordinary discoveries which will be new to chemists. For
• 4:18:40
  instance, she tells us of strychnine that actually discolors a glass of whiskin water.
• 4:18:45
  One of the characters of Frisky Old Dowager professes to be an amateur chemist,
• 4:18:51
  and this lady, we are gravely informed by the novelist, detects the
• 4:18:56
  presence of the strychnine in the glass of whisky and water at a sad glance.
• 4:19:00
  But Miss Mathers has still other poison whose properties will doubtless be a revelation
• 4:19:07
  to scientists. And it is with this marvelous body the double dyed villainous of
• 4:19:12
  the story puts an end to her woes. For convenience, she carries it
• 4:19:18
  about with her, concealed in a ring, and when at last she decides
• 4:19:22
  on committing suicide, we are told she simply placed the ring to her lips.
• 4:19:27
  A strange odor spread through the room, and she instantly lay dead.
• 4:19:33
  Sufficient eccentricities of this kind in fiction might be enumerated to fill a volume,
• 4:19:40
  but we must forbear it is perhaps hardly necessary to state that the lady novelist
• 4:19:45
  is the greatest sinner in this respect, and stranger poisons are evolved from her
• 4:19:52
  fertile brain than were ever known to man. End of Chapter twenty, Chapter
• 4:19:59
  twenty q one the Lambeth poison Mysteries. Towards the close of the year eighteen
• 4:20:06
  ninety one and the early part of eighteen ninety two, public interest was excited
• 4:20:11
  by the mysterious deaths of several young women of the unfortunate class residing in the
• 4:20:18
  neighborhood of Lambeth. The first case was that of a girl named Matilda Clover,
• 4:20:25
  who lived in Lambeth Road. On the night of October twenty, eighteen
• 4:20:29
  ninety one, she spent the evening at a music hall in company with a
• 4:20:33
  man, who returned with her to her lodgings about nine o'clock. Shortly afterwards,
• 4:20:38
  she was seen to go out alone, and she purchased some bottled beer,
• 4:20:44
  which she carried to her rooms. After a little time, the man
• 4:20:48
  left the house. At three o'clock in the morning, the inmates of the
• 4:20:52
  house were aroused by the screams of a woman and on the landlady entering Matilda
• 4:20:59
  Clover's room, whom she found the unfortunate girl lying across the bed in the
• 4:21:03
  greatest agony. Medical aid was sent for, and the assistant of a neighboring
• 4:21:10
  doctor saw the girl and judged she was suffering from the effects of drink.
• 4:21:15
  He prescribed a sedative mixture, but the girl got worse and after a further
• 4:21:21
  convulsion, died on the following morning. The medical man, whose assistant had
• 4:21:26
  seen her the previous night, gave a certificate that death was due to delirium,
• 4:21:33
  tremens and syncope, and Matilda Clover was buried at Tooting. A few
• 4:21:40
  weeks afterwards, a woman called Ellen Donworth, who resided in Duke Street,
• 4:21:45
  Westminster Bridge Road, is stated to have received a letter in consequence of which
• 4:21:51
  she went out between six and seven in the evening. About eight o'clock,
• 4:21:56
  she was found in Waterloo Road in great agony and died while she was being
• 4:22:00
  conveyed to Saint Thomas Hospital. Before her death, she made a statement that
• 4:22:07
  a man with a dark beard and wearing a high hat had given her two
• 4:22:11
  drops of white stuff to drink. In this case, a post mortem examination
• 4:22:18
  was made and on analysis both strychnine and morphine were found in the stomach,
• 4:22:23
  proving that the woman had been poisoned. These cases had almost been forgotten when
• 4:22:30
  some six months afterwards, attention was again aroused by the mysterious deaths of two
• 4:22:37
  girls named Alice Marsh and Emma Shrival, who lodged in Stamford Street. On
• 4:22:42
  the evening of April eleventh, eighteen ninety two, A man who one of
• 4:22:48
  the girls in her dying testimony called Fred and who she described as a doctor,
• 4:22:53
  called to see them and together they partook of tea. The man stayed
• 4:22:59
  till two a m. And during the evening gave them both three long pills.
• 4:23:06
  Half an hour after the man left the house, both girls were found
• 4:23:10
  in a dying condition while they were being removed to the hospital. Alice Marsh
• 4:23:17
  died in the cab and Emma Shrival lived for only six hours. Afterwards,
• 4:23:22
  the result of an analysis of the stomach and organs revealed the fact that death
• 4:23:27
  in each case had been caused by strychnine. There was absolutely no evidence beyond
• 4:23:33
  the vague description of the man for the police to work upon, and this
• 4:23:38
  case, like the others, with which at first it was not connected,
• 4:23:42
  seemed likely to remain among the unsolved mysteries, when by the following curious chain
• 4:23:49
  of circumstances, the perpetrator of these cold blooded crimes was at last brought to
• 4:23:56
  justice. Some time after the deaths of the two girls, Marsh and Trival,
• 4:24:02
  a doctor Harper of Barnstable received a letter in which the writer stated that
• 4:24:07
  he had indisputable evidence that the doctor's son, who had recently qualified as a
• 4:24:14
  medical practitioner in London, had poisoned two girls, Marsh and Trival, and
• 4:24:19
  that he the writer, required fifteen hundred pounds to suppress it. Doctor Harper
• 4:24:26
  placed the letter in the hands of the police, with the result that on
• 4:24:32
  June three, eighteen ninety two, a man named Thomas Neill or Neil Cream
• 4:24:38
  was arrested on the charge of sending a threatening letter. He was brought up
• 4:24:44
  at Bow Street on this charge for several days, when it transpired that in
• 4:24:48
  the preceding November, a well known London physician had also received a letter in
• 4:24:55
  which the writer declared that he had evidence to show that the physician had pois
• 4:25:00
  a Miss Clover with strychnine, which evidence he could purchase for twenty five hundred
• 4:25:06
  pounds and so save himself from ruin. Neil Cream was remanded and in the
• 4:25:12
  meantime, the body of Matilda Clover was exhumed and the contents of the stomach
• 4:25:18
  sent to doctor Stephenson, one of the government analysts, for examination. He
• 4:25:25
  discovered the presence of strychnine and came to the conclusion that someone had administered a
• 4:25:32
  fatal dose to her. An inquest was then held on the body of Matilda
• 4:25:37
  Clover, with the result that James Neil or Neil Cream was committed on the
• 4:25:42
  charge of wilful murder. This man's lodgings were searched after his arrest, and
• 4:25:48
  a curious piece of paper was discovered on which written in pencil in his handwriting
• 4:25:56
  were the initials M C and opposite to them two dates and then a third
• 4:26:02
  date, viz. October twenty, which was the date of Matilda Clover's death.
• 4:26:08
  On the same paper, in connection with the initials E S, was
• 4:26:12
  also found two dates, one being April eleven, which was the date of
• 4:26:18
  Emma Shribel's death. There was also found in his possession a paper bearing the
• 4:26:25
  address of Martian Shrival, and it was afterwards proved that he had said on
• 4:26:30
  more than one occasion that he knew them well. In his room, a
• 4:26:34
  quantity of small pills were discovered, each containing from one sixteenth to one twenty
• 4:26:41
  second of a grain of strychnine. Also fifty four other bottles of pills,
• 4:26:48
  seven of which contained strychnine, and a bottle containing one hundred and sixty eight
• 4:26:52
  pills, each containing one twenty second of a grain of strychnine. These,
• 4:26:59
  it is supposed he obtained as an agent for the Harvey Drug Company of America.
• 4:27:06
  It was found he had purchased a quantity of empty gelatine capsules from a
• 4:27:11
  chemist in Parliament Street, which there is little doubt he had used to administer
• 4:27:17
  a number of the small pills in a poisonous dose. Thomas Neil or Neil
• 4:27:22
  Cream, was tried for the wilful murder of Matilda Clover at the Central Criminal
• 4:27:27
  Court before Mister Justice Hawkins on October eighteenth, eighteen ninety two. The trial,
• 4:27:36
  lasting five days. It transpired that Cream, who had received some medical
• 4:27:41
  education and styled himself a doctor, came to this country from America on October
• 4:27:48
  one, eighteen ninety one, and on arriving in London, first stayed at
• 4:27:53
  Anderton's Hotel in Fleet Street. Shortly afterwards he took apartments in Lambeth and became
• 4:28:00
  engaged to a lady living at Berkhamsted. He was identified as having been seen
• 4:28:07
  in the company of Matilda Clover, and also by a policeman as the man
• 4:28:11
  who left the house in Stamford Street on the night that Marsh and Shrival were
• 4:28:18
  murdered. Doctor Stephenson, who made the analysis of the body of Matilda Clover
• 4:28:23
  on May sixth, eighteen ninety two, stated in his evidence that he found
• 4:28:30
  strychnine in the stomach, liver and brain, and that quantitatively he obtained one
• 4:28:36
  sixteenth of a grain of strychnine from two pounds of animal matter. He also
• 4:28:41
  examined the organs from the bodies of Alice Marsh and Emma Shrival. He found
• 4:28:48
  six point thirty nine grains of strychnine in the stomach and its contents of Alice
• 4:28:55
  Marsh and one point six grain of strychnine in the stomach and its contents,
• 4:29:00
  also one point four six grain in the vomit, and point two grain in
• 4:29:07
  the small portion of the liver of Emma shrival. The jury, after deliberating
• 4:29:12
  for ten minutes, returned a verdict of guilty and Thomas Neil or Neil Cream,
• 4:29:18
  as he was otherwise known, was sentenced to death. He was executed
• 4:29:23
  on November fifteenth, eighteen ninety two. End of Chapter twenty one Chapter twenty
• 4:29:33
  two The Horsford Case. Towards the close of the year eighteen ninety seven,
• 4:29:38
  a Missus Holmes, a widow, was living with her three children at Stoneleigh,
• 4:29:44
  near Kimbolton. She had a cousin named Walter Horsford, a well to
• 4:29:48
  do young farmer who occupied a farm at Spaldwick, about twelve miles away,
• 4:29:55
  and who frequently came to Stoneleigh to visit her. A romantic attachment of the
• 4:30:00
  venturely sprang up between them, which resulted in a too intimate acquaintance. After
• 4:30:07
  a while, Horsford's affection began to wane, and in the end he married
• 4:30:11
  another lady. Shortly afterwards, Missus Holmes left Stoneleigh and took up her residence
• 4:30:18
  at Saint Neat's. About December of the same year, she wrote a letter
• 4:30:22
  to Horsford informing him of her condition, a piece of news which appears to
• 4:30:27
  have greatly upset him, as he was in fear the information might reach his
• 4:30:33
  wife. On December twenty eighth, he called at a chemist shop in Thrapston,
• 4:30:38
  a neighboring town, and asked for a shillings worth of strychnine, some
• 4:30:42
  prussic acid, arsenic and carbolic acid, which he stated he required for poisoning
• 4:30:49
  rats. The chemist, to whom he was a stranger, requested him to
• 4:30:55
  bring a witness, which he did, and the chemist's poison register was due
• 4:31:00
  duly signed by Horsford and a man who introduced him. He took the poisons,
• 4:31:04
  which consisted of ninety grains of strychnine, one pound of arsenic and some
• 4:31:10
  prussic acid and carbolic acid, away with him. About a week afterwards,
• 4:31:15
  missus Holmes received a letter from Horsford. It was taken in by her daughter,
• 4:31:21
  who recognized his handwriting, and the envelope is also supposed to have contained
• 4:31:26
  two packets of strychnine. On the evening of January seventh, eighteen ninety eight,
• 4:31:33
  Missus Holmes retired to bed, apparently in her usual health, about half
• 4:31:37
  past nine. The only other persons in the house were her daughter Annie,
• 4:31:42
  her son Percy, and her infant. The daughter noticed that her mother took
• 4:31:48
  a glass of water upstairs with her, which was an unusual circumstance. On
• 4:31:53
  going to her mother's bedroom shortly afterwards, she found her suffering great pain,
• 4:31:59
  and she saw the glass, now almost empty, standing on a chest of
• 4:32:03
  drawers. Percy Holmes ran out and called in the assistance of some neighbors,
• 4:32:08
  and then went for a doctor. When medical aid arrived, the unfortunate woman
• 4:32:14
  was in convulsions and died shortly afterwards. The day after her death, the
• 4:32:19
  police searched the house but failed to find any trace of poison, and an
• 4:32:25
  inquest was held on January eighth, which Horsford was summoned to attend. In
• 4:32:30
  his evidence before the coroner, he swore that he had neither written to nor
• 4:32:36
  seen the deceased woman. The medical evidence proved that death was caused by strychnine.
• 4:32:41
  The inquest was adjourned for a week, and in the meantime Missus Holmes
• 4:32:47
  was buried from information received by the police, a further search was made in
• 4:32:52
  the house, with the result that two packets were discovered under the feather bed
• 4:32:56
  in Missus Holmes's bedroom. One packet of buff colored paper was found to contain
• 4:33:03
  about thirty three grains of strychnine in powder, on which was written the words
• 4:33:08
  one dosed take as told in Horsford's handwriting. On the second packet, the
• 4:33:15
  contents of which had been used, was written, take in a little water,
• 4:33:19
  it is quite harmless. This was also in Horsford's handwriting. On January
• 4:33:26
  ten, Walter Horsford was arrested on the charge of perjury committed at the inquest,
• 4:33:33
  and it was resolved to have another examination made of the body of the
• 4:33:37
  deceased woman. On examination of further documents and letters discovered by the police,
• 4:33:44
  the charge of wilful murder was added to corrupt perjury against Horsford and he was
• 4:33:49
  committed for trial. The trial took place on June two, eighteen ninety eight,
• 4:33:56
  in Huntingdon before Mister Justice Hawkins. Doctor Stevenson stated in his evidence he
• 4:34:03
  first made an analysis of a portion of the body of missus Holmes on January
• 4:34:07
  nineteenth and extracted one point thirty one grain of strychnine, but no other poison.
• 4:34:15
  Subsequently, he examined the two packets discovered under the bed and found one
• 4:34:21
  containing thirty three and three quarter grains of powdered strychnine, and the other which
• 4:34:26
  presented the appearance of having had the powder shaken out a few minute crystals of
• 4:34:33
  strychnine. In each case it was the pure alkaloid. The body was exhumed
• 4:34:38
  nineteen days after death, and he then made an analysis of all the chief
• 4:34:42
  organs and obtained therefrom a total quantity of three point six nine grains of strychnine.
• 4:34:51
  Death usually occurred about half an hour after the commencement of the symptoms.
• 4:34:56
  He judged there could not have been less than ten grains of strychnine in the
• 4:35:00
  body at the time of death. The jury found Walter Horsford guilty and he
• 4:35:07
  was sentenced to death. End of chapter twenty two. Chapter twenty three.
• 4:35:15
  The Great American Poison Mystery, one of the most carefully planned murders by means
• 4:35:21
  of poison in modern times, was investigated at the trial of Roland B.
• 4:35:26
  Molineux, who was charged with causing the death of Missus Catherine J. Adams
• 4:35:32
  in New York in eighteen ninety nine. On November tenth, eighteen ninety eight,
• 4:35:37
  a mister Henry C. Barnett, a produce booker who was a member
• 4:35:41
  of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club, one of the most prominent social organizations in New
• 4:35:48
  York, received by post at the club a sample box of kut nose powder.
• 4:35:53
  He was in the habit of taking this and similar preparations for simple ailments,
• 4:36:00
  and soon after receiving the box he took a dose of its contents.
• 4:36:03
  He became ill immediately afterwards and was thought to be suffering from diphtheria. That
• 4:36:10
  he had a slight attack of this disease. There as little doubt, as
• 4:36:14
  the fact was proved from a bacteriological examination made by his medical attendant. He
• 4:36:21
  left his bed earlier than the doctor advised and died, presumably of heart failure.
• 4:36:27
  The contents of the box, however, were examined, which led to
• 4:36:32
  the discovery that the powder had been tampered with and mixed with cyanide of mercury,
• 4:36:37
  and although mister Barnett had died from natural causes, it seemed clear an
• 4:36:41
  attempt had been made to poison him by some one who knew he was in
• 4:36:47
  the habit of taking this powder. The investigation, however, does not appear
• 4:36:52
  to have been carried farther. The next chapter in the story occurred in connection
• 4:36:57
  with a mister Harry Cornish, who who occupied the position a physical director to
• 4:37:03
  the Knickerbocker Athletic Club. A day or two before Christmas in the same year,
• 4:37:08
  a packet directed to him was delivered by post at his address. It
• 4:37:14
  contained a box in which, on opening he found at one end a silver
• 4:37:18
  article for holding matches or toothpicks. At the other end was a bottle labeled
• 4:37:25
  Emerson's Bromo Seltzer, and between the two was packed some soft tissue paper.
• 4:37:32
  Mister Cornish was at first under the impression that someone had sent him the packet
• 4:37:37
  as a present. After removing the articles from the box, he threw it
• 4:37:41
  and the wrapper into his waste paper basket, but on second thoughts he cut
• 4:37:47
  the address from the wrapper and kept it. The bottle, labeled Bromo Seltzer,
• 4:37:52
  which is a saline preparation well known in America, was sealed over the
• 4:37:57
  top and bore the usual reds. The new stamp. After tearing off the
• 4:38:02
  outside wrapper, mister Cornish placed the bottle and the silver holder on his desk.
• 4:38:08
  On the following Sunday, he remarked to his aunt, a Missus Catherine
• 4:38:12
  Adams, that he had received a present. Missus Adams and her daughter,
• 4:38:18
  Missus Rogers, joked him about it, saying he must have some admirer,
• 4:38:22
  and was afraid to bring his present home as the cinder's name was probably upon
• 4:38:27
  it. So on Tuesday night, mister Cornish took the bottle and the silver
• 4:38:32
  holder home with him and presented them to Missus Rogers, saying they were no
• 4:38:37
  use to him and she might have them. The next morning, Missus Adams
• 4:38:41
  complained of a headache, and her daughter suggested a dose of the Bromo seltzer.
• 4:38:47
  Mister Cornish was present and mixed a teaspoonful of the preparation from the bottle
• 4:38:52
  with a glass of water and gave it to his aunt. After drinking it,
• 4:38:56
  she at once exclaimed, my how bitter. That is why that's all
• 4:39:02
  right, said mister Cornish, as he took a drink from the glass.
• 4:39:06
  A few moments afterwards, Missus Adams collapsed and died within a short time,
• 4:39:11
  mister Cornish was seized with violent vomiting, which doubtless saved his life and he
• 4:39:18
  recovered. A post mortem examination revealed the fact that Missus Adams had died from
• 4:39:23
  cyanide poisoning, and on the bottle of Bromo seltzer being analyzed, the contents
• 4:39:30
  were found to have been mixed with cyanide of mercury. For a long time,
• 4:39:34
  the affair seemed to complete mystery and the police investigations appeared likely to be
• 4:39:40
  fruitless. Then the particulars of the death of mister Barnett, who was chairman
• 4:39:45
  of the House Committee of the Knickerbocker Club, were brought to light, and
• 4:39:49
  connecting them with the fact that mister Cornish was also a prominent member of the
• 4:39:55
  club and had received the bottle of Bromo seltzer by post in the same manner,
• 4:40:00
  it seemed highly probable that both the poisoned packets, which contained cyanide of
• 4:40:06
  mercury, had been sent by the same hand. Further examination proved that the
• 4:40:11
  bottle used was not a genuine Bromo seltzer one and that the label had been
• 4:40:17
  removed from a genuine bottle and carefully pasted on that sent to mister Cornish.
• 4:40:22
  A firm of druggists in Cincinnati then came forward and stated that as far back
• 4:40:29
  as May thirty one, eighteen ninety eight, they had received a written application
• 4:40:33
  signed H. C. Barnett for a sample box of pills, and another
• 4:40:38
  similar application on December twenty one, eighteen ninety eight, which was signed H.
• 4:40:45
  Cornish. Both these applications were found to be in the same handwriting,
• 4:40:51
  which was also strikingly similar to the address on the packet sent to mister Cornish,
• 4:40:56
  which he had fortunately kept. The address given by the applicant, who
• 4:41:02
  called himself H. C. Barnett, was two five seven West forty second
• 4:41:07
  Street, New York, a place where private letterboxes are rented for callers.
• 4:41:12
  The address given by the applicant, signing himself H. Cornish was a similar
• 4:41:18
  place at sixteen twenty Broadway, in the same city. From these facts,
• 4:41:23
  it seemed evident that an attempt had been made to poison both Barnett and Cornish
• 4:41:30
  by someone who knew them, and the poisoner had concealed his identity by employing
• 4:41:36
  the names of his intended victims. The nature of the poison used cyanide of
• 4:41:41
  Mercury was also a slight clue, as it is a substance which is not
• 4:41:47
  used in medicine and must, in all probability have been specially prepared for the
• 4:41:52
  purpose by someone with a good knowledge of chemistry. At the coroner's inquest,
• 4:41:59
  which began on February ninth, eighteen ninety nine, certain facts were elicited that
• 4:42:04
  tended to bring suspicion on Rowland B. Molineux, who was also a member
• 4:42:10
  of the Knickerbocker Club and well acquainted with Barnett and Cornish. He was also
• 4:42:15
  known to have quarreled with the latter. At the close of the inquest,
• 4:42:21
  Molineux was arrested and removed to the Tombs Prison owing to legal technicalities in the
• 4:42:27
  original indictment which charged him with the murder of both mister Barnett and Missus Adams.
• 4:42:33
  He was twice liberated and then for the third time arrested. The trial
• 4:42:40
  of Molineux for the murder of Missus Adams was a memorable one and lasted nearly
• 4:42:45
  three months. It began on November fourteenth, eighteen ninety nine, at the
• 4:42:49
  Central Criminal Court one twenty, New York and was not concluded until February eleventh,
• 4:42:56
  nineteen hundred. The evidence was entirely circumstantial. Most of the experts in
• 4:43:03
  handwriting who were examined declared that the address on the packet sent to mister Cornish
• 4:43:08
  was in Molineu's writing, and that he had also written both applications to the
• 4:43:14
  Druggists in Cincinnati. Further, Molineer was engaged as a chemist to a color
• 4:43:19
  factory in which cyanide of mercury was used, which would enable him either to
• 4:43:25
  make or procure that special poison from which only three other fatal cases had been
• 4:43:32
  recorded. No witnesses were called for the defense, and the jury found Roland
• 4:43:37
  B. Molineer guilty of murder in the first degree, which according to American
• 4:43:42
  law, is murder with premeditation. End of Chapter twenty three, Chapter twenty
• 4:43:51
  four. Some Curious methods employed by secret poisoners. The strange and curious methods
• 4:43:59
  employed by poisoners to accomplish their deadly purpose form an interesting study to students of
• 4:44:04
  human nature. The poisoner generally sets to work on a preconceived and carefully thought
• 4:44:11
  out plan, which he proceeds to carry out with all the cunning he possesses.
• 4:44:17
  The methods that can be employed to introduce a poisonous substance into the human
• 4:44:22
  body are necessarily limited, and although they are varied at times according to the
• 4:44:27
  ingenuity in which the deed is planned, we find the poisoner, with all
• 4:44:33
  his craft, shows but little originality, and the modes used in ancient times
• 4:44:38
  are repeated down through the centuries to the present day. There seems little doubt
• 4:44:45
  that the earliest method employed by man was the poisoned weapon. The use of
• 4:44:49
  the poisoned arrowhead by primitive man goes back to a period of remote antiquity.
• 4:44:56
  Among the cave remains of the Paleolithic period, arrow and spear heads of bone
• 4:45:02
  have been found marked with depressions for containing poison, and this method of introducing
• 4:45:07
  poison seems to have been practiced by most of the aboriginal races. Arrow poisons
• 4:45:15
  were well known to the Greeks, and their word toxicon signified a poisonous substance
• 4:45:21
  into which the arrow toxon was dipped. Homer alludes to the use of poisoned
• 4:45:26
  arrows in the Odyssey, and Ovid mentions the bile and blood of vipers as
• 4:45:32
  being employed to poison weapons. The Scythians and the tribes of the Caucasus were
• 4:45:37
  reputed to use viper poison mixed with the serum of human blood that had decomposed
• 4:45:45
  the Celts, and the Gauls, according to Pliny, dipped their arrow heads
• 4:45:49
  in hellebore juice, and down to the seventh century we find poisoned weapons were
• 4:45:55
  commonly used in Europe. During the Middle Ages until the sixteenth century, the
• 4:46:00
  poisoned dagger or sword formed the favorite weapon of the assassin, and the preparation
• 4:46:07
  of the blade for this purpose was brought almost to a fine art. In
• 4:46:11
  Spain, it is recorded that Lorenzo de Medici was stabbed with a poisoned dagger,
• 4:46:17
  and the Duke de Bessalia, the second husband of the famous Lucregia Borgia,
• 4:46:22
  nearly fell a victim to the assassin's knife on the steps of Saint Peter's.
• 4:46:27
  Of all other methods employed by poisoners, the administration of the lethal dose
• 4:46:33
  through the medium of food or drink seems ever to have been the favorite.
• 4:46:37
  The poisoned wine or cake recurs with a somewhat monotonous frequency in the history of
• 4:46:44
  the poisoner, from the earliest times down to the present day women especially seem
• 4:46:49
  to have been attracted by this mode of poisoning, a fact probably due to
• 4:46:55
  their control and direction of domestic matters, which rendered the induction of a poisonous
• 4:47:00
  substance into food or drink an easy matter. Occasionally, they have fallen victims
• 4:47:07
  to their own evil designs, as instanced in the case of Rosamund, the
• 4:47:11
  wife of Helmicus, King of Lombardy, in the year five seventy five.
• 4:47:18
  Wishing to rid herself of her husband, she gave him a cup of poisoned
• 4:47:22
  wine. On coming from his bath. The king drank part of it,
• 4:47:26
  and, suspecting its nature from the strange effect it produced, he insisted she
• 4:47:30
  should drink the remainder, with the result that both died shortly afterwards. The
• 4:47:37
  Hindus have an ingenious method of using powdered glass as a lethal agent, either
• 4:47:44
  by mixing it with sherbet or some kind of food. In such cases,
• 4:47:48
  the substance acts by its irritant action on the stomach or intestines, while at
• 4:47:53
  the same time, if successful, no trace of poison can be discovered in
• 4:48:00
  the bodily organs. A celebrated case in which this agent was used occurred in
• 4:48:06
  India in eighteen seventy four, when the Gaekwar, or reigning Prince of Baroda,
• 4:48:11
  was tried for attempting to kill his political resident, Colonel Fayre, by
• 4:48:17
  administering powdered glass to him in Sherbet. The Gekwar was tried before a court
• 4:48:23
  consisting of three Indian princes and three English judges, and was defended by the
• 4:48:29
  late mister Sergeant Ballantine. The princes returned a verdict of not proven, while
• 4:48:34
  the judges decided that he was guilty, with the result that the Gurkwar was
• 4:48:40
  deposed. The sweetmeat was a favorite form employed to administer poison during the Middle
• 4:48:47
  Ages. Such confections were usually handed round to the guests after a meal.
• 4:48:52
  In Italy, princes and nobles frequently used this method of ridding themselves of an
• 4:48:59
  enemy, and if the plot failed in the first instance, they were always
• 4:49:03
  ready to try it again. For as Caesar Borgia is stated to have once
• 4:49:07
  exclaimed, what has failed at dinner time will succeed at supper time. Catherine
• 4:49:15
  de Medici introduced this method into France, and her Florentine perfumers were said to
• 4:49:19
  be adepths in mixing arsenic with sweetmeats. The poisoned flowers of medieval romance,
• 4:49:26
  and poisoned gloves and boots, which figure so often in legend and story as
• 4:49:33
  lethal media, we must dismiss as mere fables of an age when the historian
• 4:49:38
  drew largely on his imagination. The poison ring, with its carefully concealed tiny
• 4:49:45
  spike, which was intended to penetrate the flesh of the victim, might perhaps
• 4:49:49
  have set up blood poisoning, as would a similar wound if inflicted by a
• 4:49:55
  rusty nail. The use of rings with secret receptacles to contain poisons we have
• 4:50:02
  already mentioned. Among the gems in the British Museum, there is an onyx
• 4:50:07
  which has been hollowed out to form a receptacle for poison. The face of
• 4:50:11
  the stone is engraved with the head of a horned fawn. To take the
• 4:50:17
  poison, it was only necessary to bite through the thin shell of the onyx
• 4:50:22
  and swallow the contents. When the gold deposited by Camillus in the Capitol was
• 4:50:27
  taken away, it is recorded that the custodian responsible for it broke the stone
• 4:50:33
  of his ring in his mouth and died shortly afterwards. The poisoners of the
• 4:50:40
  seventeenth century, not content with introducing poison into wine and other drinks, sought
• 4:50:45
  to improve on this method by preparing the goblet or cup in such a way
• 4:50:51
  that it would impregnate any liquid that was placed in it. There is a
• 4:50:56
  record of one Francois Belot, who made a specialty of this art, and
• 4:51:00
  it is said received a comfortable income therefrom but he fitly ended his days by
• 4:51:07
  being broken on the wheel on June tenth, sixteen seventy nine. According to
• 4:51:14
  a contemporary writer, his secret method consisted in cramming a toad with arsenic,
• 4:51:19
  placing it in a silver goblet, and after pricking its head, crushing it
• 4:51:25
  in the vessel. While this operation was being performed, certain charms were uttered.
• 4:51:30
  I know a secret stated below, such that in doctoring a cup with
• 4:51:36
  a toad and what I put into it, if fifty persons chanced to drink
• 4:51:41
  from it afterwards, even if it were washed and rinsed, they would all
• 4:51:45
  be done for, and the cup could only be purified by throwing it into
• 4:51:49
  a hot fire. After having thus poisoned the cup, I should not try
• 4:51:55
  it upon a human being, but upon a dog, and I should entrust
• 4:51:59
  the cup to noble And yet Below's powers were believed in, and he enjoyed
• 4:52:03
  a substantial reputation in his day. His boasting is on par with that of
• 4:52:10
  the magician Blessus, who flourished about the same period. He declared to the
• 4:52:15
  world that he had discovered a method of manipulating mirrors in such a way that
• 4:52:19
  anyone who looked in them received his death blow. The stories of the poisoned
• 4:52:26
  shirt, which was a favorite medium with the poisoners of the seventeenth century,
• 4:52:32
  are not, however, without a substratum of fact. The tail of the
• 4:52:36
  shirt was prepared by soaking it in a strong solution of arsenic or corrosive sublimate.
• 4:52:41
  The object was to produce a violent dermatitis with ulceration about the perineum and
• 4:52:48
  neighboring parts, which should compel the victim to keep his bed. Medical men
• 4:52:55
  would then be summoned in due course, and would probably judge the patient to
• 4:52:59
  be suffering from syphilis and administer mercury in large quantities. The fatal dose could
• 4:53:04
  then be introduced at leisure. The notorious Labossa left on record her method of
• 4:53:11
  preparing the poisoned shirt. The garment was first to be washed, and the
• 4:53:17
  tail then soaked in a strong solution of arsenic, so that it only looked
• 4:53:22
  a little rusty, as if it had been ill washed, and was stiffer
• 4:53:26
  than usual. The effect, she concludes, it should produce on the wearer,
• 4:53:32
  is a violent inflammation and intense pain, and that when one came to
• 4:53:37
  examine him, one would not detect anything. The Duke of Savoy is said
• 4:53:42
  to have succumbed to the effects of a poisoned shirt of this kind. Some
• 4:53:48
  time ago, Doctor Nass, a French medical man, made some interesting experiments
• 4:53:53
  with a view to testing the truth of these stories. He carefully shaved a
• 4:53:59
  portion of the left lumbar region of a guinea pig and gently rubbed the skin
• 4:54:03
  with a paste containing arsenic in the proportion of one in ten. He repeated
• 4:54:10
  this operation several times during the day. Shortly afterwards, the animal became prostrate,
• 4:54:17
  the eyes became dull, it assumed a cholera like aspect, and in
• 4:54:22
  forty eight hours died. The skin on which the paste had been applied remained
• 4:54:26
  unchanged and unbroken, and showed no signs of ulceration. On examining the internal
• 4:54:34
  organs after death, fatty degeneration of the viscero was found, as is usual
• 4:54:41
  after arsenical poisoning. This experiment does not, of course, actually prove the
• 4:54:47
  effect of a shirt impregnated with arsenic being worn in direct contact with the skin,
• 4:54:52
  but it shows that arsenic may be introduced into the body by simple gentle
• 4:54:57
  friction on an unbroken oken's skin, and that the poisoned shirt theory was possible.
• 4:55:04
  The administration of poison in the form of medicine is another method which has
• 4:55:08
  often been criminally employed. In France, the enema was at one time frequently
• 4:55:15
  made use of for introducing arsenic, corrosive sublement and opium into the system.
• 4:55:22
  The poisoner's aim in such cases was to attribute the fatal effects which followed to
• 4:55:27
  disease. Within recent years, a curious case was tried at the Paris Court
• 4:55:34
  of Assizes in which a lady was charged with attempting to poison her husband.
• 4:55:40
  It was known that the couple had lived unhappily together and arrangements had been made
• 4:55:45
  for a divorce. One morning, the husband complained of a severe headache,
• 4:55:49
  and his wife suggested a dose of antipyrine, which she gave him in some
• 4:55:55
  mineral water. He remarked to her at the time that the draft had a
• 4:55:59
  picureculiar taste. Later in the day she administered sundry cups of coffee to him,
• 4:56:06
  but he grew rapidly worse, and at night a doctor was summoned.
• 4:56:10
  He failed to diagnose the complaint and called in other medical men, who were
• 4:56:15
  equally puzzled. One thing which they all noticed was a peculiar dilation of the
• 4:56:21
  pupils of the patient's eyes. A consultation was held the next day, and
• 4:56:26
  shortly afterwards one of the medical men received a note from the lady in which
• 4:56:30
  she stated that her husband was black. He was dead, more dead than
• 4:56:36
  any man I ever saw. The doctor at once went to see the patient
• 4:56:41
  and found him in a state of collapse. He bled him twice and injected
• 4:56:47
  caffeine, but he still remained motionless. After a time, it occurred to
• 4:56:52
  the doctor that the patient's symptoms resembled those of atropine poisoning, and resorting to
• 4:56:59
  other measures, he eventually brought him round. Then he remembered that the lady
• 4:57:03
  had previously asked him for some morphine for herself, and when he had refused
• 4:57:10
  it, she requested some atropine for her dog's eyes. He wrote her a
• 4:57:15
  prescription for a solution of atropine containing ten per cent of the drug and took
• 4:57:21
  it to the chemist himself. On further inquiries, it was proved that the
• 4:57:26
  lady had procured atropine upon various other occasions by copying the doctor's prescription and forging
• 4:57:33
  his signature. At the trial, the medical evidence was very conflicting, but
• 4:57:37
  the consensus of opinion was in favor of the theory that atropine had been administered
• 4:57:44
  in small, repeated doses. The accused woman declared in her defense that atropine
• 4:57:49
  had been put into the medicine for her husband in mistake by the chemist who
• 4:57:56
  had dispensed it. There was no evidence to support this theory, and she
• 4:58:00
  was found guilty and sentenced to five years penal servitude. A strange method,
• 4:58:07
  which said to have been employed by the Borgias and was afterwards used in France,
• 4:58:11
  was a combination of arsenic with the secretions or products of decomposition of an
• 4:58:18
  animal to which it had been administered. The poison was prepared by cutting open
• 4:58:23
  a pig and well sprinkling the carcass with arsenic or other poison. Then it
• 4:58:30
  was left to putrefy, after which the liquids that ran from the decaying mass
• 4:58:34
  were collected, and these formed the finished poison. As science advances, opening
• 4:58:42
  up fresh fields for research, and poisons of a still more deadly nature are
• 4:58:48
  revealed, so the chemist sets to work to discover methods for their certain detection,
• 4:58:55
  and thus renders the poisoner's fiendish work more difficult. It is well to
• 4:59:00
  remember that even the most deadly poisons have their proper use, and in skilled
• 4:59:06
  hands, prove valuable instruments in combating many diseases that afflict suffering humanity. End
• 4:59:15
  of Chapter twenty four.