Chapter X: The Slow and Time Poisons of Mediæval Times

The belief that certain slow and secret poisons could be so prepared that their administration could be controlled with such a degree of precision as to cause death at any given period, according to the will of the poisoner, has existed from ancient times. This idea was encouraged and fostered by the practitioners of alchemy and astrology, and others who professed to exercise magical powers. They also claimed a knowledge of certain lethal bodies which could be administered to the victims that would leave no trace behind them.

“Truly,” says a writer of the seventeenth century, “this poisoning art called ‘veneficium’ of all others is most abominable, as whereby [crime] may be committed where no suspicion may be gathered nor any resistance be made; the strong cannot avoid the weak; the wise cannot prevent the foolish, the godly cannot be preserved from the hands of the wicked; children may thereby kill their parents, the servant the master, the wife her husband so privily, so uncurably that of all other it hath been thought the most odious kind of murther.”

The origin of the time or slow poison tradition may be found in the cunning which is usually associated with the poisoner. In order to avoid suspicion, the poison was probably first administered to the victim in minute quantities, then gradually increased, from time to time, until it was finally decided to give the lethal dose, and so the culminating time was determined by the poisoner.

Theophrastus refers to a poison prepared from aconite which, he states, would produce its effects after two, three or six months, or even years, after it had been administered. Plutarch records that one of the Philips of Macedon caused such a poison to be given to Aratus King of Sicyon, which is said to have produced a gradual wasting of the whole body, accompanied by bleeding from the nose.

In Italy, during the Middle Ages, the highest dignitaries of the Church did not scruple to employ this evil method of gaining their ends, and statesmen used it as an instrument of diplomacy. Princes and nobles became adepts in devising the most cunning methods of administering a lethal dose to those whom they wished removed from their paths. This subtle method for the destruction of human life seems to have specially appealed to the Latin races of all classes. When they desired to dispose of a dangerous enemy or an inconvenient rival, they saw no distinction between using poison and the dagger. Many notable personages are said to have fallen victims to the poisoner’s craft, including Pope Victor II, Christopher I, King of Denmark, and Henry VII of Germany.

With respect to the latter monarch, it is stated that on his return from Italy, where he had made many enemies both in Church and State, he stopped at the small town of Buonconventis to celebrate the festival of Easter. After receiving the sacrament he fell suddenly ill and died in terrible agony. The sacred elements of the Eucharist are said indeed to have been often utilized as a medium for this evil purpose. A case occurred within recent years when the same method was employed, proving that even to-day, in some remote parts of Italy, the old craft of the poisoner still survives. A few years ago, an aged priest named Donato Marulli, while celebrating mass in his church in the village of Villamagua in Abruzzi, fell writhing in agony on the altar steps. Consternation ensued among the congregation present, who crowded round the sacristan demanding explanations. Hearing suspicions of poisoning mentioned, he seized the chalice and drained the contents to demonstrate that the priest’s seizure was not due to the consecrated cup, but in a few moments he collapsed in the same manner. Suspicion afterwards fell on a young priest, who was subsequently arrested. It was found that he had mixed corrosive sublimate with the wine just before the celebration, the motive being to get promoted as parish priest in the old man’s stead.

The extent to which the belief in the extraordinary power of poisons grew is instanced in the story of an association of women that flourished at Cassalis in Italy in the year 1536. The members are said to have poisoned whole families by

“smearing the posts and doors of their houses with a noxious ointment and powder of which they prepared about forty crocks for the purpose. The like villainy was practised at Genoa and execution was done upon the offenders. Their art consisted in poisoning cattle as well as men, for it is written by divers authors that if wolves’ dung be hidden in the mangers, racks, or else in the hedges about the pastures where cattle go (through the antipathy of the nature of the wolfe and other cattle) all the beasts that favour the same do not only forbear to eat but run about as though they were mad.”

It need hardly be said that this story is simply a phase of the witchcraft superstition so commonly believed at this period.

On carefully investigating the cases recorded of so-called secret and slow poisonings mentioned by writers of the Middle Ages, the substance employed in the majority of such cases was probably arsenic in some form. La Spara’s mysterious elixir, that was the cause of so many deaths in Rome in the seventeenth century, was a preparation of arsenic, and so also was the famous Aqua Toffana, which is said to have put an end to no less than six hundred persons. It is very improbable that any substances of a toxic nature were used in mediæval or earlier times that are unknown to science to-day, and most of the stories of slow and secret poisoning can be explained by the manner in which the poison was given. A common phrase used by historians of this period in closing the account of some personages of note was, “he died not without suspicion of venom.”

According to the Burghley papers, there was great dread of secret poisoning in Queen Elizabeth’s time.

On June 27, 1572, one Richard Bexley, writing to Burghley, advises him not to take any physic of Dr. Gyfford, recently from Rome, lest he might be “Italianated” (a phrase actually coined to express secret poisoning). As early as 1561 it became necessary to surround the Queen with precautions against poisons. Not an untasted dish was allowed to be brought to her table, not a glove or a handkerchief might approach her person which had not been scrutinized, and she was dosed weekly with antidotes.

Another story which shows the extraordinary credulity respecting the power of poisons that existed in the sixteenth century is related in a rare tract published in 1652, that purports to be an account of an attempt on the life of Queen Elizabeth. It states, in “Anno Dom. 1596 one Edward Squire sometime a scrivener at Greenwich, afterwards a deputy purveyor for the Queen’s stable, in Sir Francis Drake’s last voyage was taken prisoner and carried into Spaine, and being set at liberty, one Walpole a Jesuite grew acquainted with him and got him into the Inquisition whence he returned a resolved Papist, he persuaded Squire to undertake to poyson the pommell of the Queen’s [Elizabeth’s] saddle, and, to make him constant, made Squire receive the Sacrament upon it; he then gave him the poyson chusing that he should take it in a double bladder and should prick the bladder full of hoales in the upper part, when he should use it (carrying it within a thick glove for the safety of his hand) should after turne it downward pressing the bladder upon the pommell of the Queen’s saddle. This Squire confest. Squire is now in Spaine, and for his safer dispatch it was devised that two Spanish prisoners taken at Cales should be exchanged for Squire and one Rawles, that it might not be thought that Squire came over but as a redeemed captive.

“The Munday sennight after Squire returned into England, he understanding the horses were preparing for the Queen’s riding abroad laid his hand and crushed the poyson upon the pommell of the Queene’s saddle saying, ‘God save the Queene,’ the Queene road abroad and as it should seem laid her hand upon the place or els received no hurt (through God’s goodness) by touching it. Walpole counting the thing as done, imparted it to some principall fugitives there, but being disappointed of his hope, supposing Squire to have been false, to be revenged on him sent one hither (who should pretend to have stolne from thence) with letters wherein the plot of Squire was contained; this letter was pretended to be stolne out of one of their studies.

“Squire being apprehended confessed all without any rigor, but after denied that he put it into execution, although he acknowledged he consented to it in the plot, at length he confessed the putting it in execution also.”

The death of Niccolo Macchiavelli, whose abbreviated Christian name according to Macaulay was the origin of the term “Old Nick” commonly applied to the universal enemy of mankind, is said to have been due to a magic potion. Henry Morley, however, gives another version, and states that, “having failed in health after his last reverses, Macchiavelli increased his ailment by an overdose of castor oil, a medicine then in particular repute, and died two days afterwards on June 22, 1527.”

This statement is evidently an error, as castor oil (the oil expressed from the seeds of the _Ricinis communis_) was not in use as a medicinal agent until more than 200 years after Macchiavelli’s death. The drug that Macchiavelli may have taken is the oil of castor, a product of the animal of that name which was often used in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. An interesting light is thrown on the composition of the so-called magic potion in a letter written by him to his friend Guicciardini on August 17, 1525, nearly two years before his death. He states:

“I send you twenty-five pills made for you already four days since; you will find the receipt for them at the end of my letter. I tell you they have resuscitated me. Begin by taking one after supper; if it has any effect you will cease; if not, you will take two or three, but not beyond five. As for myself, two have always sufficed, and that only once a week, except when my head is heavy or my stomach loaded.... But let us return to the receipt for the pills:—

Aloes drachm 1½
Carman. deos? (Cardamom sem.) „ 1
Saffron „ ½
Myrrh „ ½
Betony „ ½
Pipinella „ ½
Armenian bole „ ½”

Such was the medicine of which Macchiavelli ordinarily made use, and which Paul Jove entitles an enchanted potion, saying that Macchiavelli, after having taken it, died mocking God, and pretending that he was, so to speak, become immortal.

These pills are a strong purgative taken in the dose prescribed, and it is possible Macchiavelli, while in a weakened condition, may have overdosed himself with them, and so hastened his end.

Elisabetta Sirani, one of the famous women painters of the Bolognese school in the seventeenth century, is supposed to have been poisoned by her maid, and an interesting account of her illness and death is recorded in a manuscript in the Archives of Bologna. It states, that, “In Lent 1665, she was seized with pains in her stomach. She grew thin and lost her colour so that every one wondered at it, for before she was healthy and robust. In the summer, about St. Bartholomew’s Day, a redness with a little swelling appeared under her chin and jaw. These were cured with an ointment in a few days. On August 12 or 13 she was again seized with pain which was worse after eating. Her sister was in bed stricken with fever and the family physician Doctor Gallerati was attending her. Elisabetta complained to him. He said, ‘it was no time to take medicine for the Sun was in Leo and that the pain was due to a little catarrh.’ He advised her to take a little acid syrup early in the morning. Her aunt made the syrup and she took it two or three times, four teaspoonsful for a dose and seemed relieved.

“But the pains returned. Nevertheless, she went with her mother on August 24 to the Feast of the Porchetta, and when asked how she was, said she ‘was all right when she didn’t think about it.’ On August 27 about two in the afternoon the pain returned with violence. She became ghastly and was bathed in cold perspiration. Her aunt with difficulty put her to bed. She could not lie flat, but was easier in a half sitting posture.

“She felt sick, but the emetics and clysters given had little effect. All through the night her relations applied hot cloths to her cold body. The pain continued and the extremities turned black.

“A little while before her death the pain seemed to lessen and go lower; she began to move in bed, then fainted and died about eleven o’clock after being ill about thirty-three hours. After death her body swelled. The nose thickened, the features changed. She looked like a woman of sixty albeit she was but twenty-six years of age. She was given by her relatives: 1, Teriaca; [6]2, Spetie di Elescoff in broth; 3, Bezoar and oil of the Grand Duke against poison.”

Footnote 6:

A purgative electuary composed of scammony, cream of tartar and salt
of tartar.

At her father’s urgent request a post-mortem examination was made the day following Elisabetta’s death! This, it is recorded, was carried out by Master Ludovico, Surgeon of the Ospedale della Morte, in the presence of six other physicians. Perforations were found in the stomach, which five out of the seven doctors, attributed to the action of a “corrosive poison.” A Doctor Fabri introduced his finger into one of these perforations and found the circumference was surrounded by hardened tissue, and Dr. Gallerati, the family physician who had attended her, was of the opinion there was evidence of a “corrosive poison.”

Suspicion fell upon a maidservant called Lucia Tolomelli, on the assertion of another domestic, that she had seen her place a “brown powder” in some food. So Lucia was arrested on September 1, 1665, and charged with the murder of Elisabetta Sirani. After a protracted trial, the evidence was deemed insufficient and she was released, it being concluded that death had been due to natural causes.

There seems little doubt that this conclusion was correct, and this gifted lady probably died from peritonitis.

In this case, as in many others where the physician was unable to diagnose the disease and was puzzled to account for a patient’s death, it was generally deemed to be the result of a slow poison, which deduction formed a ready solution of the difficulty.