POISON 



POISSON 



267 



were speedily dissolved by the sickness and death 

 of the husband ; and further inquiries resulted in 

 the discovery of a secret society of young matrons 

 which met at the house of an old hag, by name 

 Hieronyma Spara, a reputed witch and fortune- 

 teller, who supplied those of them who wished to 

 resent the infidelities of their husbands with a slow 

 poison, clear, tasteless, and limpid, and of strength 

 sufficient to destroy life in the course of a day, 

 week, month, or number of months, as the pur- 

 chaser preferred. The ladies of Rome had been 

 long acquainted with the 'wonderful elixir' com- 

 pounded by La Spara ; but they kept the secret so 

 well, and made such effectual use of their know- 

 ledge, that it was only after several years, during 

 which a large number of unsuspected victims had 

 perished, and even then through a cunning artifice 

 of the police, that the whole proceedings were 

 brought to light. La Spara and thirteen of her 

 companions were hanged, a large number of the 

 culprits were whipped half-naked through the 

 streets of Rome, and some of the highest rank 

 suffered fines and banishment. About half a 

 century afterwards the discovery was made of a 

 similar organisation at Naples, headed by an old 

 woman of threescore and ten named TorTania, 

 who manufactured a poison similar to that of La 

 Spara, and sold it extensively in Naples under the 

 name of acijuetta, and even sent it to all parts of 

 Italy under the name of ' Manna of St Nicola of 

 Bar!,' giving it the same name as the renowned 

 miraculous oil of St Nicola to elude discovery. , 

 This poison, now best known as the ' Acqua 

 Tofana' or 'Acqua di Perugia,' is said by Hahne- 

 mann to have been compounded of arsenical neutral 

 salts ; while Garelli states that it was crystallised 

 arsenic dissolved in a large quantity of water ; but 

 both agree that it produced its effect almost imper- 

 ceptibly by gradually weakening the appetite and 

 respiratory organs. After having directly or 

 indirectly caused the death of more than 600 

 persons, Toffania was at length seized, tried, and 

 strangled in 1719. From this time the mania for 

 secret poisoning gradually died away in Italy. 



Catharine de Medici has been frequently charged 

 with wholesale poisoning, and in 1558 four of the 

 Scottish commissioners who had been present at 

 Queen Mary's marriage to the Dauphin were 

 poisoned, it was believed, at Dieppe. But it 

 was about the middle of the 17th century that 

 this horrible practice seems to have become most 

 prevalent in France. Here, too, the agents 

 were married women, and their husbands the 

 victims ; and, as in Italy, the extent to which the 

 practice was carried was first made known by the 

 clergy. The government, acting on the informa- 

 tion thus obtained, seized and imprisoned in the 

 Bastille two Italians named Exili and Glaser, who 

 were suspected of having been the manufacturers 

 and vendors of the poisons. Glaser died in prison ; 

 but Exili, becoming acquainted with another 

 prisoner named St Croix, communicated to him his 

 secret, which the latter made considerable use of 

 after his release, compounding in particular the 

 poison known as ' succession powder,' which sub- 

 sequently became so celebrated. It was the same 

 St Croix who played such a prominent part in the 

 tragical history of the Marquise de Brinvilliers 

 (q.v.). Penantier, the treasurer of the province of 

 Languedoc, and the Cardinal de Bonzy were both 

 pupils of St Croix, and managed, the one to pave 

 the way for his own advancement, and the other to 

 rid himself of his numerous creditors by the 

 Administration of poison ; but the great influence 

 of these men and the want of direct evidence 

 barred all proceedings against them. Secret poison- 

 ing now became fashionable ; the passions of 

 jealousy, revenge, avarice, and even petty spite 



were all satisfied in the same way, and as a 

 necessary consequence other offences decreased in 

 proportion. The prisons teemed with suspected 

 criminals, and the ' Chambre Ardente ' was insti- 

 tuted for the special purpose of trying these 

 offenders. In Paris this trade was chiefly in the 

 hands of two women named Lavoisin and Lavigo- 

 reux, who combined witli the ostensible occupa- 

 tion of midwife that of fortune-teller, and foretold 

 to wives the decease of their husbands, to needy 

 heirs that of their rich relatives, taking care at the 

 same time to be instrumental' in fulfilling their own 

 predictions. Their houses were frequented by 

 numbers of all classes, both from Paris and the 

 provinces, among whom were the celebrated 

 Marshal de Luxembourg (q.v.), the Duchess de 

 Bouillon, and the Countess de Soissons ; the two 

 former of these, however, went merely from 

 curiosity. Lavoisin and her confederate were at 

 last discovered, tried, condemned, and burned alive 

 in the Place de Greve, 22d February 1680; and 

 from thirty to fifty of their accomplices were hanged 

 in various cities of France. So common had this 

 atrocious practice been that Madame de Sevigne, 

 in one of her letters, expresses a fear lest the terms 

 ' Frenchman ' and ' poisoner' should become synony- 

 mous. For two years after the execution of the 

 two Parisian poisoners the crime continued to be 

 largely committed, being fostered by the impunity 

 with which offenders of nigh rank were allowed to 

 escape ; and it was not till more than a hundred 

 persons bail died at the stake or on the gallows 

 that the government succeeded in suppressing it. 

 The mania for secret poisoning has not since been 

 revived to the same extent, though isolated 

 instances of its practice have occasionally been dis- 

 covered, particularly in Hungary, where, within 

 the last half of the 19th century, very extra- 

 ordinary disclosures have at different times been 

 made of the prevalence of this frightful crime 

 among the peasant women. During the times of 

 slavery the Obeah men among the negroes in the 

 West Indies were credited with being expert 

 poisoners. They used vegetable poisons obtained 

 from plants, and there can be no doubt were often 

 instrumental in getting rid of tyrannical or other- 

 wise objectionable masters. In Britain famous 

 poisoning trials have been those of W. Palmer 

 (three victims, 1856), Madeleine Smith ('not 

 proven,' 1857), E. W. Pritchard, M.D. (two 

 victims, 1865), Mary Ann Cotton (sixteen victims, 

 1872), G. H. Lamson, M.D. (1882), P. Cross, M.D. 

 (1887), and Mrs Maybrick ( 1889). 



See the articles on ADULTERATION, ASPHYXIANTS, 

 NARCOTICS, DISSECTION WOUNDS, LEAD-POISONING, PY- 

 AEMIA, PTOMAINES, SNAKES, VENOMOUS BITES, WOUNDS ; 

 the classification of diseases at DISEASE ; for poisoned 

 arrows, ARCHERY and CURARI ; for the more important 

 poisons and their treatment, ACONITE, ARSENIC, HYDRO- 

 CYANIC ACID, STRYCHNINE, UPAS, &c. ; for toxin and 

 anti-toxic methods, and theories therein involved, 

 GERM, BACTERIA, DIPHTHERIA, HYDROPHOBIA, TETA- 

 NUS, TOREHCLE, &c. ; the manuals of medical juris- 

 prudence ; and works on toxicology by Christison 

 (1829), Taylor (1847; 2d ed. 1875), Reese (1874), 

 Wormley ( 1867 ; 2d ed. 1875), A. Winter Blyth (1883; 

 2d ed. 1886), and J. D. Mann (1893). For the Poison 

 Ivy, see SUMACH. 



Poisson, SIMEON-DENIS, was born at Pithi- 

 viers, in Loiret, 21st June 1781 ; and received into 

 the Ecole Polytechnique in 1798, attracted the 

 noticeof Lagrange and Laplace, both of whom antici- 

 pated for him a brilliant career. In 1802 he became 

 a professor in the Polytechnique ; in 1808 a member 

 of the Bureau des Longitudes ; in 1809 professor in 

 the Faculty of Sciences ; member of the Institute 

 in 1812, &c. ; and this list of distinctions was 

 crowned in 1837 l>y his elevation to the dignity of a 

 peer of France. He died 25th April 1840. Poisson 's 



