might best answer the object of the assassination. The writings of Plutarch, Tacitus, Theophratus, Quintillian, and Livy, abound with such instances of occult and slow poisoning; most of which, however, notwithstanding the weight they may acquire from their testimony, bear internal evidence of their fallacious character. Plutarch inforins us that a slow poison which occasioned heat, chough, spitting of blood, a lingering consump tion of the body, and a weakness of intellect, was administered to Aratus of Sicyon. This same poison is also alluded to by Quintillian in his declamations. Tacitus informs us that Sejanus caused a secret poison to be administered by an eunuch to Drusus, who in consequence gradually declined, as if by a consumptive disorder, and at length died. Theophratus,f speaks of a poison, prepared from aconite, that could be so modified as to occasion death within a certain period, such as two, three, or six months, a year, and even some times two years.

To such an extent does the crime of poisoning appear to have been carried, about two hundred years before the christian æra, that, according to Livy, above 150 ladies, of the first families in Kome, were convicted and punished for preparing and distributing poison. The most notorious and expert character of this kind is handed down to us by the historians and poets under the name of Locusta, who was condemned to die on account of her-infamous actions, but was saved in order that she might become a state engine and be numbered, as Tacitus expresses it," Inter instrumenta regni." She was accordingly employed to poison Claudius by Agrippina, who was desirous of destroying the Emperor, and yet feared to despatch him suddenly, whence a slow poison was prepared by Locusta, and served to him in a dish of mushrooms, of which he was particularly fond, "Boletorum appetentissimus ;" but it failed in its effects, as we learn from Tacitus, until it was assisted by one of a more powerful nature. "Post quem nihil amplius edit." This same Locusta prepared also the poison with which Nero despatched Britannicus, the son of Agrippina, whom his father Claudius wished to succeed him. on the throne. The poison appears to have proved too slow in its operation, and to have occasioned only a dysentery. The Emperor accordingly compelled her by blows and threats to prepare in his presence one of a more powerful nature, and

• Taciti Annal. lib. iv. c. 8. + Hist. Plant. lib. ix. c. 16. p. 189. Lib. viii, e. 18.

as the tale is related by Suetonius, it appears that it was then tried on a kid, but as the animal did not die until the lapse of five hours, she boiled it for a longer period, when it became so strong as instantaneously to kill a pig to which it was given. In this state of concentration it is said to have despatched Britannicus as soon as he tasted it.* Vide Tac. An. 13, s. 15,16. Now it would clearly appear from these statements that Locusta, avowedly the most accomplished poisoner of ancient Rome, was wholly incapable of graduating the strength of her poisons to the different purposes for which they were applied.

The records of modern times will furnish examples no less atrocious than those we have just related.

Tophana, a woman who resided first at Palermo, and afterwards at Naples, may be considered as the Locusta of modern history; she invented and sold those drops so well known by the names of Aqua Toffania, Aqua della Toffana, Acquetta di Napoli, or simply Acquetta. This stygian liquor she distributed by way of charity to such wives as wished for other hus bands; from four to six drops were sufficient to destroy a man, and it was asserted that the dose could be so proportioned as to operate within any given period. It appears that in order to secure her poison from examination, she vended it in small glass phials, inscribed "Manna of Saint Nicolas Bari," and ornamented the vessel with the image of the Saint. Having been put to the rack she confessed that she had destroyed upwards of six hundred persons, for which she suffered death by strangulation in the year 1709. In 1670 the art of secret poisoning excited very considerable alarm in France; the Marchioness de Brinvillier, a young woman of rank and great personal attractions, having intrigued with, and subsequently married an adventurer named Saint Croix, acquired from him the secret of this diabolical art, and practised it to an extent that had never before been equalled. She poisoned her two brothers through the medium of a dish at table. She also prepared poisoned buiscuits, and to try their strength she dis

For the ingenious mode in which this poison was administered, see Tacitus. The Prince having called for a cup of wine, it was purposely presented too hot; he desired cold water to be added to it, and the opportunity was then taken to infuse the poison. By this stratagem the taster ("calida gelidæque minister." Juv. Stat. V v. 63) escaped its effects, in which he must otherwise have participated with Britannicus.

The reader will find a very interesting account of this diabolical woman in Labat's Travels through Italy, and also in Beckman's History of Inventions. Hoffman Medicin. Rational.

tributed them herself to the poor at the Hotel Dieu. Her own maid was likewise the subject of her experiments. To her father she gave poisoned broth, which brought on symptons characteristic of those induced by corrosive sublimate. Her brothers lingered during several months under much suffering. The detection of this wretch is said to have been brought about in the following manner. Saint Croix, whenever engaged in the preparation of his poisons, was accustomed to protect himself from their dangerous fumes by wearing a glass mask, which happening to fall off by accident, he was found dead in his laboratory.* A casket directed to the Marchioness, with a desire that in case of her death it might be destroyed unopened, was found in his chamber, a circumstance which in itself was sufficient to excite the curiosity and suspicion of those into whose hands it fell. The casket was accordingly examined, and the disclosure of its contents at once developed the whole plot, and finally led to the conviction of this French Medea, who after a mumber of adventures and escapes, was at length arrested and sent to Paris, where she was beheaded, and then burnt, on the eleventh of July, 1676. The practice of poisoning, however, did not cease with her execution, and it became necessary in 1679 to establish a particular court, for the detection and trial of such offenders; which continued for some time to exert its jurisdiction under the title of Chambre de Poison, or Chambre Ardente.

With respect to the secret modes in which poisons have been supposed capable of acting, mankind have ever betrayed the most extravagant credulily, of which the numerous tales upon record afford ample proof; such as that reported of Parasapis by Plutarch, from Ctesias, in his life of Artaxerxes, who, it is said, by anointing a knife on one side by poison, and therewith dividing a bird, poisoned Statira with one half, and with the other regaled herself in perfect security. We are also told of Livia, who poisoned the figs on a tree which her husband was in the habit of gathering with his own hands. Tissot informs us that John, king of Castille, was poisoned by a pair of boots prepared by a Turk; Henry VI. by gloves; Pope Clement VII. by the fumes of a ta

This story, if we mistake not, suggested to the successful author of Kenilworth the tragic death of his alchymist.

The belief in the possibility of poisoning by the vestments is very ancient, as is shown by the fabled death of Hercules.

"Capit inscius h ros: Induiturque humeris Lernæææ virus Echidne

per;* and our king John in a wassail bowl, contaminated by matter extracted from a living toad. To these few instances of credulity may be added the offer of the priest to destroy queen Elizabeth by poisoning her saddle, and the Earl of Essex, by anointing his chair.

Incredible and absurd as these opinions now appear, they continued until a late period to alarm mankind, and to perplex and baffle judicial investigations; even Lord Bacon in his charge against the Earl of Somerset for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, in the Tower, seemed to give credit to the story of Livia, and he seriously stated, that "Weston chased the poor prisoner with poison after poison; poisoning salts, poisoning meats, poisoning sweetmeats, poisoning medicines and vomits, until at last his body was almost come, by the use of poisons, to the state that Mithridates's body was by the use of treacle and preservatives, that the force of poisons was blunted upon him;" Weston confessing, when he was reproached for not despatching him, that he had given enough to poison twenty men. The power of so graduating the force of a poison as to enable it to operate at any given period, seems to have been considered possible by the earlier members of the Royal Society; for we learn from Spratt's history of that learned body, that very shortly after its institution, a series of questions were drawn up by the direction of the Fellows, for the purpose of being submitted to the Chinese and Indians, viz. "Whether the Indians can so prepare that stupifying herb, Datura, that they make it lie several days, months, years, according as they will have it, in a man's body, without doing him any hurt, and at the end kill him without missing half an hour's time?"

That mankind were, in a very early stage of their existence, not only acquainted with the deadly effects of certain natural substances when applied in minute quantities, but that they availed themselves of such knowledge for the accomplishment of the worst purposes, is very satisfactorily shown by the records of sacred as well as profane authors. But such is the ambiguity of ancient writers upon this subject, and so intimately blended are all their receipts with the practices of super

stition, that every research, however learned, into the exact nature of the poisons which they employed, is necessarily vague and unsatisfactory. Of this one fact, however, we may be perfectly satisfied, that they were solely derived from the animal and vegetable kingdoms; for the discovery of mineral poisons was an event of later date; owing however to the defect of botanical nomenclature, it is even doubtful whether the plants which are designated by the terms cicuta, aconitum, &c. in ancient authors, were identical with those we designate by the same names. (See Pharmacologia, fifth edit. vol. 1. p. 66.) With respect to the poisons of Locusta, all cotemporary writers speak of the venom of the toad as the fatal ingredient of her potions, and in the Alexipharmaca of Dioscorides we find the symptoms described, which are said to be produced by it; but what is very extraordinary, the belief of the ancients on this matter was all but universal. Pliny is express on the subject; Atius describes two kinds of this reptile, the latter of which, as Dr Badham has suggested, was probably the frog as well from the epithet, as that he ascribes deleterious powers only to the former. It is scarcely necessary to observe that this ancient belief has descended into later times; we find Sir Thomas Browne treating such an opinion as one of the vulgar errors; and we have before alluded to the legend of King John having been poisoned by a wassail bowl, in which matter extracted from a living toad was said to have been infused. In still later times, we have heard of a barrel of beer poisoned by the same reptile having found its way into it. Borelli and Valisnieri maintain that it is perfectly harmless, and state that they had seen it eaten with impunity. Spielman* expresses the same opinion, "Minus recte itaque effectus venenati a bufonibus metuuntur." Franck,f on the contrary, accuses Gmelin of too much Precipitancy in rejecting the belief respecting toad-poison.‡ Modern naturalists recognise no poisonous species of toad; even the most formidable of the species, to appearance, that of Surinam, is said to be perfectly harmless.

If we may venture to offer a conjecture upon this subject, we are inclined to consider the origin of this opinion to have been derived from the frequency with which the toad entered into the composition of spells or charms, into philtres or love

Instit. Mater. Medic. p. 176. Manuale di Tossicologia, p. 79, 245. See also Instituzioni di Med. For. di. G. Tortosa, vol. ii. p. 67. and authorities there cited.