144 



IHB ALUMNI JOURNAL, 



with her husband, and, with but little 

 difficulty, bought from her a vial of her 

 famous "drops," which on analysis 

 proved to be a subtle and deadly poison. 

 La Spara was then captured by the police, 

 put to the torture and duly executed, 

 with some of the chief accomplices, while 

 several others, including representatives 

 of the best families in Rome, were pun- 

 ished in other ways. 



But she left a worthy successor in the 

 shape of La Tophania, a woman who, for 

 years, carried on a similar but far more 

 extended business at Naples. She, too, 

 was mainly consulted by women, and 

 flooded all Italy with her preparations, 

 the famous Aqua Toffana. She used to 

 ship them in small vials under the name 

 of " Manna of St. Nicholas of Bari," a 

 miraculous oil which was supposed to 

 exude from St. Nicholas' tomb, and pos- 

 sess wonderful curative properties, and 

 so, long after she had been forced to fly 

 for shelter, her goods passed without sus- 

 picion. She was a kind hearted old lady, 

 for it is related that when she found wo- 

 men living unhappily at home, but too 

 poor to pay the price of her drops, she 

 would furnish them gratis. She was 

 hunted by the police with more or less 

 success for years, taking refuge always 

 under the wing of the church, but final- 

 ly, about 1 718, was carried away from a 

 convent by a band of soldiers under the 

 orders of the Viceroy of Naples. The 

 whole church, headed by the Archbishop, 

 was intensely excited, threatened excom- 

 munication, inflamed the populace, and 

 for a while treated Tophania like an injur- 

 ed and persecuted saint. But after she 

 had been examined, with the aid of the 

 tribune, had confessed to over 600 deaths, 

 and had given an idea of the boldness 

 of her operations by telling of two boxes 

 of poison sent to Rome the day before her 

 capture, the interest of the clergy some- 

 what diminished, and the woman was 

 executed without much further delay. 



It is probable that in all these cases 

 arsenic was the poison mainly depended 



on, though in what form is not always 

 known. The famous German chemist 

 Hoffmann, in his System of Medicine 

 published in 1729, quotes a letter received 

 some ten years before from Nicola Garelli, 

 physician to the Emperor Charles VI., 

 "about the means used by that infamous 

 poisoner, still alive in prison at Naples, 

 employed to the destruction of upwards 

 of six hundred persons. It was nothing 

 else but crystallized 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 con- 

 fession of the criminal, was transmitted." 



Other authorities relate that the arsenic 

 was mixed with some peculiar toxines, 

 and thereby obtained its special powers. 

 According to these stories it was custom- 

 ary for the Italian poisoners of the Borgia 

 and later period to rub arsenic into the 

 flesh of some animal, or to inject it into 

 a fig, and then, letting the material 

 slowly putrify, to collect some of the re- 

 sulting liquid. 



Certainly the skill in the concoction of 

 these poisons must have been remarkable, 

 for not only were they perfectly tasteless, 

 but their efficiency could, so at least it 

 was believed, be graduated so as to kill at 

 any desired period, without causing any 

 acute symptoms. In a curious and 

 rare book published in London in 1782, 

 is a passage from Gagliani, an Italian 

 writer of the middle of the century, 

 giving some curious details of the "Aqua 

 di Tufania" as he calls it, which he 

 claimed was a mixture of opium and 

 cantharides. According to him the ef- 

 fects were simply general indisposition, 

 which responded badly to the various 

 violent remedies in general use, and which 

 terminated in a wasting away of the va- 

 rious organs, and finally in weakness and 

 disease of the lungs. It gives a pleasant 

 picture of the times to read that " There 

 is not a lady in Naples who has not some 



