A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins (Vol. 1&2). Johann Beckmann

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ 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. Hahneman136 rightly conjectures, neutral salts of arsenic. Loss of appetite, faintness, gnawing pains in the stomach, loss of strength without any visible cause, a continual indisposition, followed by a wasting of the viscera, a slow fever, &c., are all symptoms which seem to announce that dangerous metallic oxide. The opinion, however, that it was composed of opium and cantharides has, in latter times, received so many confirmations, that one is almost induced to believe that there are more kinds than one of this Stygian water. The information given by the abbé Gagliani, seems to carry too much weight with it to be denied137. It is confirmed also by M. Archenholz138; but what he says of the use made of Spanish flies, by the Chinese, to invigorate the sixth sense, gives reason to suspect that his voucher is L’Espion Dévalisé, to whom the abbé Gagliani ascribes the same words. It appears to me, however, if I may be allowed to judge from probabilities, that the poison known in the East Indies under the name of powst is also water which has stood a night over the juice of poppies. It is given in the morning fasting to those persons, and particularly princes, whom people wish to despatch privately, and without much violence. It consumes them slowly, so that they at length lose all their strength and understanding, and in the end die torpid and insensible139.

      [Chemical science has made such rapid progress of late years, that there are but few, if any, poisonous substances which cannot be detected with certainty. The improved state of our medical knowledge, and the institution of coroners’ inquests in all cases where any suspicion of the cause of death occurs, fortunately renders secret poisoning almost, if not quite impossible, at least in this country.]

      FOOTNOTES

103 Heberden in the Neue Hamburg. Mag. xvii. p. 219. I am convinced that many of the accounts we have of the extraordinary effects of poison are fabricated, like those mentioned in Frid. Hoffmanni Dissert. de Læsionibus externis, abortivis Venenis ac Philtris. Francof. 1729, et recusa Lips. 1755. That author, however, denies some which are true. It is, for example, certain that camphor and rue do not produce the effects ascribed to them by Dioscorides, Paulus Ægineta, and others; but there are without doubt other substances which will produce these effects.

104 Sennerti Instit. Med. ii. 2, 12.

СКАЧАТЬ