Название: A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume I (of 2)
Автор: Johann Beckmann
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
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Among a number of persons suspected of being concerned in this affair, was a German apothecary, named Glaser, who on account of his knowledge in chemistry, was intimate with Exili and Sainte Croix. From him they had both procured the materials which they used, and he was some years confined in the Bastille; but the charge against him being more minutely investigated, he was declared innocent, and set at liberty. He was the author of a Treatise on Chemistry, printed at Paris in 1667, and reprinted afterwards at Brussels in 1676, and at Lyons in 1679.
By the execution of this French Medea, the practice of poisoning was not suppressed; many persons died from time to time under very suspicious circumstances; and the archbishop was informed from different parishes that this crime was still confessed, and that traces of it were remarked both in high and in low families. For watching, searching after, and punishing poisoners, a particular court, called the Chambre de Poison or Chambre ardente, was at length established in 1679. This court, besides other persons, detected two women named La Vigoreux and La Voisin129, who carried on a great traffic in poisons. The latter was a midwife. Both of them pretended to foretell future events, to call up ghosts, and to teach the art of finding hidden treasures, and of recovering lost or stolen goods. They also distributed philtres, and sold secret poison to such persons as they knew they could depend upon, and who wished to employ them either to get rid of bad husbands, or recover lost lovers. Female curiosity induced several ladies of the first rank, and even some belonging to the court, to visit these women, particularly La Voisin; and who, without thinking of poison, only wished to know how soon a husband, a lover, the king or his mistress, would die. In the possession of La Voisin was found a list of all those who had become dupes to her imposture. They were arrested and carried before the above-mentioned court, which, without following the usual course of justice, detected secret crimes by means of spies, instituted private trials, and began to imitate the proceedings of the holy inquisition. In this list were found the distinguished names of the Countess de Soissons, her sister the Duchess de Bouillon, and Marshal de Luxembourg. The first fled to Flanders to avoid the severity and disgrace of imprisonment; the second saved herself by the help of her friends; and the last, after he had been some months in the Bastille, and had undergone a strict examination, by which he almost lost his reputation, was set at liberty as innocent. Thus did the cruel Louvois the war minister, and the Marchioness de Montespan, ruin those who opposed their measures. La Vigoreux and La Voisin were burnt alive on the 22nd of February 1680, after their hands had been bored through with a red-hot iron and cut off. Several persons of ordinary rank were punished by the common hangman; those of higher rank, after they had been declared by this tribunal not guilty, were set at liberty; and in 1680 an end was put to the Chambre ardente, which in reality was a political inquisition.
It is certain that notwithstanding such punishments, like crimes have given occasion to unjust succession both in Italy and in France, and that attempts have been made for the same purpose even in the northern kingdoms. It is known that in Denmark Count Corfitz de Ulfeld was guilty, though it was not proved, of having intended to give the king a poison, which should gradually destroy him like a lethargy130. Charles XI. also, king of Sweden, died by the effects of such a poison. Having ruined several noble families by seizing on their property, and having after that made a journey to Torneo, he fell into a consumptive disorder which no medicine could cure. One day he asked his physician in a very earnest manner, what was the cause of his illness? The physician replied, “Your majesty has been loaded with too many maledictions.” “Yes,” returned the king, “I wish to God that the reduction of the nobility’s estates had not taken place, and that I had never undertaken a journey to Torneo!” After his death his intestines were found to be full of small ulcers131.
The oftener poisoning in this manner happens, the more it is to be wished that preventives and antidotes were found out, and that the symptoms were ascertained; but this is hardly possible as long as it is not known of what the poison properly consists. Governments, however, have wisely endeavoured to conceal the recipes, by suppressing the criminal procedures. Pope Alexander VII. caused them to be shut up in the castle of St. Angelo; in France, it is said, they were burnt together with the criminals; in Naples only the same precaution was not taken. I do not know that observations on the bodies of persons destroyed by slow poison have been ever published; for what Pitaval says on that subject is not sufficient132. People talk of powders and pills, but the greater part of this kind of poison appears to be a clear insipid water, and that prepared by Tophania never once betrayed itself by any particular effects on the body. The sale of aqua-fortis was a long time forbidden at Rome, because it was considered as the principal ingredient; but this is very improbable. At Paris it was once believed that succession powder consisted of diamond dust pounded exceedingly fine. Without assenting to this idea, one may contradict Voltaire, who conceives that diamond dust is not more prejudicial than powder of coral. It may be rather compared to that fine sand which is rubbed off from our mill-stones, and which we should consider and guard against as a secret poison, were we not highly negligent and careless of our health in the use of food133. In the casket of Sainte Croix were found corrosive sublimate, opium, regulus of antimony, vitriol, and a large quantity of poison ready prepared, the principal ingredients of which the physicians were not able to distinguish. Many have affirmed that sugar of lead was the chief ingredient134; but the consequences of the poison did not seem to indicate the use of that metal. For some years past a harmless plant, which is only somewhat bitter and astringent, the ivy-leaved Toadflax (Linaria Cymbalaria), that grows on old walls, has been loaded with the opprobrium of producing this slow poison, while at the same time it has been celebrated by others on account of its medicinal properties; but it is perhaps not powerful enough to do either mischief or good; and it is probable that it has been added to poisons either through ignorance, or to conceal other ingredients; for the emperor Charles VI., who was king of the Two Sicilies at the time when Tophania was arrested, told his physician Garelli, who communicated the same in a letter135 to the celebrated Hoffmann, in 1718 or 1719, that the poison of that Italian Circe was composed of an arsenical oxide, dissolved in aqua cymbalariæ, and which I suppose was rendered stronger and more difficult to be detected by a salt that may be readily guessed. It is dreadful to think that this secret poison is administered as a febrifuge by ignorant or unprincipled physicians, quacks, and old women. It drives off obstinate fevers, it is true; but it is equally certain that it hastens death: it is therefore a cure, which is far worse than the disease, and against which governments and physicians cannot exclaim too severely. It was remarked at Rome, by accident, that lemon juice and the acid of lemons are, in some measure, counter-poisons; and a physician named Paul Branchaletti, respecting whom I can find no information, wrote a book expressly on this antidote to these drops, according to the account of Keysler, who however adds, “Everything hitherto found out, supposes that one has taken the drops only for a short time, or that one has had an opportunity to be upon one’s guard when suspicious circumstances occurred, and to discover the threatened danger.”
It seems to be almost certain that the poisons prepared by Tophania and Brinvillier were arsenical mixtures, or, as Dr. HahnemanСКАЧАТЬ
127
Martinière says that she was burnt alive, together with all the papers respecting her trial. The latter is improbable, and the former certainly false, notwithstanding the account given in the Encyclopédie.
128
The following description of Brinvillier may perhaps be of use to our physiognomists: – “In order to satisfy the curiosity of those who may be desirous of knowing if such a celebrated criminal partook of the beauties of her sex, I shall observe that nature had not been sparing of them to the marchioness; her features were exceedingly regular, and the form of her face, which was round, was very graceful. This beautiful outside concealed a heart extremely black. Nothing proves more that
129
Some information respecting La Voisin may be found in Lettres Historiques et Galantes par Madame de C – . A Cologne, 1709–1711, 4 vols. 12mo, ii. p. 101, and iv. p. 376. The authoress of these letters was Mad. du Noyer.
130
Leben des Grafen von Ulfeld, von H. P. aus dem Dänischen übersetzt. Copenhagen und Leipzig, 1775, 8vo, p. 200.
131
This anecdote was told to me by the celebrated Linnæus. An account of what appeared on opening the body of this prince may be seen in Baldinger’s Neues Magazin für Aerzte, vol. i. p. 91.
132
“The lieutenant-civil continued still to grow worse. After having languished a long time, being seized with a loathing of every kind of food presented to him, his vomitings still continuing, and nature being at length exhausted, he expired without any fever. The three last days he had wasted very much; he was become extremely shrunk, and he felt a great heat in his stomach. When opened, that part and the duodenum were found to be black, and sloughing off in pieces; the liver was mortified, and as it were burnt. The counsellor was ill three months, had the like symptoms as the lieutenant-civil, and died in the same manner. When opened, his stomach and liver were found in a similar state.” – pp. 274, 275.
133
In one year a ton of sand, at least, which is baked with the flour, is rubbed off from a pair of mill-stones. If a mill grinds only 4385 bushels annually, and one allows no more than twelve bushels to one man, a person swallows in a year above six pounds, and in a month half a pound of pulverized sandstone, which, in the course of a long life, will amount to upwards of three hundred weight. Is not this sufficient to make governments more attentive to this circumstance?
[Although not very agreeable to the reader to learn that he swallows above six pounds of mill-stone powder in the course of the year, it may perhaps ease his mind to know that the learned author is entirely mistaken in regarding it as a poison. The inhabitants of the northern countries of Europe frequently mix quartz powder with their heavy food to assist in its digestion; and we are informed by Professor Ehrenberg, that in times of scarcity, the inhabitants of Lapland mix the siliceous shells of some species of fossil Infusoria with the ground bark of trees for food. It is probably from this circumstance that the infusorial deposit derives its name of
134
For the following important information I am indebted to Professor Baldinger: – “There is no doubt that the slow poison of the French and Italians, commonly called succession powder (
135
Garelli, the emperor’s principal physician, lately wrote to me something remarkable in the following words: – “Your elegant dissertation on the errors respecting poisons brought to my recollection a certain slow poison, which that infamous poisoner, still alive in prison at Naples, employed to the destruction of upwards of six hundred persons. It was nothing else than crystallised arsenic, dissolved in a large quantity of water by decoction, with the addition, but for what purpose I know not, of the herb cymbalaria. This was communicated to me by his imperial majesty himself, to whom the judicial procedure, confirmed by the confession of the criminal, was transmitted. This water, in the Neapolitan dialect, is called