“To poison’s one neighbor then was all the fashion.”
On the slowest news day in the history of the printed word, the New York Times published an article about poisoning in 16th-century France. The December 29, 1907 piece:
“Paris–Apropos of Sardou’s new play at the Theatre St. Martin, ‘L’Affair des Poisons,’ a cabled synopsis of which has already appeared in the New York Times, boulevard historians are writing much nowadays about the vogue which poisoning enjoyed during the sixteenth century. To poison’s one neighbor then was all the fashion.
L’Estoile, writing of this in his journal, estimated that in 1572 no fewer than 30,000 persons were mixing noxious compunds in Paris alone. As the population of the city at that time only numbered about 300,000, one out of every ten Parisians was a poisoner. Contemporaneous writers tell weird tales of the methods employed.
It appears that a perfumed glove or the prick of a jeweled ring could be as deadly as a blunderbuss. Only the common horde put poison in food. Some dilettantes of the craft put their ‘cruel venoms on a horse’s saddle,’ so one writer says, and the cavalier was doomed. Another amateur acquired such singular address in his art that all he had to do was to rub his concoction into the stirrup of the man he wished to kill. Riding boots were about an inch thick in those days, but the victim only a few minutes after mounting ‘felt his limbs convulse, his blood burn,’ and so he died.
Kings, Princes, prelates and other high personages whose taking off would cause somebody’s advancement were regarded as legitimate prey. But panic was spread by them to the lowest classes. Thus, according to the author of the ‘Memoires de l’Estat de France sous Francois II,’ peasants for twenty leagues round hid their children when they heard that the royal family was about to come their way.
“The tip of a stag’s tail and the brain of a cat are specimen ingredients of some of the concoctions.”
They feared that the King’s relatives would steal their little ones for the sake of their blood, children’s blood being necessary to a ‘venom’ of sufficient strength to affect the royal health. The habit of stealing children for this purpose was attributed especially to the Italians living in France, and the chronicles of the time are full of accounts of lynchings which such accusations inspired.
Catherine de Medicis, whose Italian nativity was doubtless to blame for many of the stories told about her, was commonly believed to be something of a witch. It was represented that her favorite companions were her perfumer, René, and her astrologer, Cosme Rugieri. She was believed to mix with her own hands, eternally gloved, the deadliest powders and pastes.
But while many of the poisons used in this murderous epoch were doubtless effective enough, some of them were of a nature to give the intended victim the reputation of bearing a charmed life. The tip of a stag’s tail and the brain of a cat are specimen ingredients of some of the concoctions. And according to Ambroise Paré, the bite of a red-headed man, ‘especially if he be freckled,’ was almost as bad as the bite of an adder.
Against all these evils they possessed, fortunately, admirable antidotes. Precious stones, especially the sapphire, were far more useful in warding off evil in those days than they are now. Nuts and dried figs also nullified any ordinary poison. And if those proved impotent, there was always that heroic remedy or splitting open a horse or an ox and getting inside.”