Let us often repeat useful truths. There have always been fewer poisonings than have been spoken of: it is almost with them as with parricides; the accusations have been very common, and the crimes very rare. One proof is, that we have a long time taken for poison that which is not so. How many princes have got rid of those who were suspected by them by making them drink bullock’s blood! How many other princes have swallowed it themselves to avoid falling into the hands of their enemies! All ancient historians, and even Plutarch, attest it.
I was so infatuated with these tales in my childhood that I bled one of my bulls, in the idea that his blood belonged to me, since he was born in my stable — an ancient pretension of which I will not here dispute the validity. I drank this blood, like Atreus and Mademoiselle de Vergi, and it did me no more harm than horse’s blood does to the Tartars, or pudding does to us every day, if it be not too rich.
Why should the blood of a bull be a poison, when that of a goat is considered a remedy? The peasants of my province swallow the blood of a cow, which they call fricassée, every day; that of a bull is not more dangerous. Be sure, dear reader, that Themistocles died not of it.
Some speculators of the court of Louis XIV. believed they discovered that his sister-in-law, Henrietta of England, was poisoned with powder of diamonds, which was put into a bowl of strawberries, instead of grated sugar; but neither the impalpable powder of glass or diamonds, nor that of any production of nature which was not in itself venomous, could be hurtful.
They are only sharp-cutting active points which can become violent. The exact observer, Mead, a celebrated English physician, saw through a microscope the liquor shot from the gums of irritated vipers. He pretends that he has always found them strewn with these cutting, pointed blades, the immense number of which tear and pierce the internal membranes.
The cantarella, of which it is pretended that Pope Alexander VI. and his bastard, the duke of Borgia, made great use, was, it is said, the foam of a hog rendered furious by suspending him by the feet with his head downwards, in which situation he was beaten to death; it was a poison as prompt and violent as that of the viper. A great apothecary assures me that Madame la Tofana, that celebrated poisoner of Naples, principally made use of this receipt; all which is perhaps untrue. This science is one of those of which we should be ignorant.
Poisons which coagulate the blood, instead of tearing the membranes, are opium, hemlock, henbane, aconite, and several others. The Athenians became so refined as to cause their countrymen, condemned to death, to die by poisons reputed cold; an apothecary was the executioner of the republic. It is said that Socrates died very peacefully, and as if he slept: I can scarcely believe it.
I made one remark on the Jewish books, which is, that among this people we see no one who was poisoned. A crowd of kings and priests perished by assassination; the history of the nation is the history of murders and robberies; but a single instance only is mentioned of a man who was poisoned, and this man was not a Jew — he was a Syrian named Lysias, general of the armies of Antiochus Epiphanes. The second Book of Maccabees says that he poisoned himself — “veneno vitam finivit”; but these Books of Maccabees are very suspicious. My dear reader, I have already desired you to believe nothing lightly.
What astonishes me most in the history of the manners of the ancient Romans is the conspiracy of the Roman women to cause to perish by poison............