Poison has been used as an instrument of politics since ancient times. The great poisonings, like the great poisoners, have redrawn political history more than once. How many rulers who are believed to have died a natural death were actually poisoned? Historians have become the property of only attempts that ended unsuccessfully, or successful, but had chatty witnesses. The memory of most of the atrocities has gone into oblivion along with those who committed them.
Poisoning is one of the oldest methods of murder. For many years, they did not know how to establish the presence of poison in the body of the deceased, and therefore often cases of murder remained unsolved. After all, poisoning can not always be recognized by symptoms. Of course, external signs of exposure to inhaled or ingested poisons are known, but some of them (nausea, vomiting, convulsions) may have a different cause.
In addition, there are poisons that do not leave practical traces, and not every poison can be established by chemical research. Even today, with the help of insulin used by diabetics, it is possible to commit a murder that will never be solved, since this drug is completely dissolved in the blood and it is impossible to establish its presence. And this is at the current level of toxicology. What can we say about the times when there was no such science.
Sofonisba. Reception of the poisoned bowl / Simon Vouet, 1623.
If we talk about the flourishing of the art of poisoning, you need to turn to Rome. The custom of poisoning emperors became so common that each of them had a special position - a food taker.
He had to try every dish served to the emperor, and if there was poison in it, he would warn of the danger by his death. True, this measure only led to the fact that instead of instant poisons, they began to use poisons that act slowly. The philosopher Theophrastus also wrote about poisons that kill a person only after a certain time - after a month, a year or even three years.
Emperor Caligula was also an expert on poisons. He knew their properties, made various mixtures and, apparently, tested them on slaves. “The easiest of all,” he wrote, “are those who die quickly. There is no antidote for this poison."
Death of Socrates / Jacques-Louis David, 1787.
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The mention of slow poisons causing coughing, chills, or hemoptysis can be found in Plutarch. He also reports on another poison, which gradually leads to a significant decrease in mental abilities.
As in any science, the science of poisons had its bachelors in slow death and masters in fast death. One of these luminaries was the famous Roman poisoner Locusta. Agrippina, the wife of Emperor Claudius, used her services. According to one version, he died of the poison she served in a dish with mushrooms, according to the other, he was poisoned, paradoxically, by his own eunuch Galot.
Later, to please Nero, the same Locusta poisoned his brother Britannica, whom Nero considered his rival in the struggle for power. Contrary to the usual rule, when he became emperor, Nero did not forget the service rendered to him. He not only created all the conditions for Locuste for her activities, but also gave her disciples, so that with the death of the poisoner herself, her high art would not be lost.
Locusta and Nero test on a slave the action of the poison intended for Britannica / Joseph-Noel Sylvester.
True, there was practically no such danger: poisons were used in Rome quite often. They were well remembered by those who stood in power, every time the risk of being poisoned, and even better, those who were to inherit this power.
So, at one time there was a rumor that Domitian, who was seeking power, used a rare poison made from sea mollusks to deal with his predecessor and brother, the emperor Titus. Caligula allegedly turned to another subtle poison, having poisoned Tiberius in order to become the emperor himself.
The fear of being poisoned was well known to the Russian rulers. When the Kiev prince Oleg stood at the walls of Constantinople, the cunning Byzantines negotiated peace with him. Among the flattering speeches and feigned admonitions, they tried to treat the prince with poisoned food and drink. But the prince did not touch the treat that fell on his table from the hands of yesterday's enemies.
Boris Godunov, constantly fearing for his life, took special precautions. Six doctors, discharged from abroad, guarded the life of the king day and night. But this did not save Godunov. Somehow, barely getting up from the dining table, he suddenly felt bad. Blood gushed from his mouth, nose and ears, and two hours later the king died. Many said it was from poison.
Death of Boris Godunov / K. V. Lebedev.
The fear of being poisoned persistently stood behind the back of another Russian tsar - Emperor Paul. For decades, he was in the precarious status of the heir to the throne. The aged Empress Mother did not hide her contempt for Paul. Why not get rid of an impatient heir and an unloved son? There was not a day, not an hour, when Paul allowed himself to forget this danger.
Once served, the soup seemed suspiciously sweet to him. Is it from poison? And Paul did not eat. He ordered to give his bowl of soup to the dog. Thirty minutes later, she died in terrible convulsions. He calmed down somewhat only when he ordered an English cook, whom he trusted, from abroad.
The thought of poisoning also pursued Paul's son, Alexander I. Arakcheev soon became infected with these fears. The gloomy favorite, who terrified the entire empire, himself lived in a state of irresistible, constant fear. Wherever he went, the dog Zhuchka was led behind him on a leash. This dog with such a non-aristocratic name performed with him the functions of a personal food taker.
The "oppressor of all Russia" did not touch the dish until he saw that Zhuchka, having tasted it, remained alive. While in this position, Zhuchka, naturally, had to adhere to a menu that was far from the usual canine tastes: drink, for example, coffee, which the owner, before taking a sip, each time poured her from his cup.
But death lay in wait for the ruler not only under the lid of a gravy boat or in a goblet of wine. Any thing, any object that he touched, could be deadly. One of the Turkish sultans had a habit, playing chess, thoughtfully rubbing his bare foot on the sofa cushion. When it was necessary to kill him, it was enough to saturate the roller with a special poison, and the sultan did not stay in this world.
Cleopatra tests poison on prisoners / Alexander Cabanel, 1887.
In another case, a barber was bribed, who agreed to shave the Sultan with a poisoned razor. Unfortunately for everyone involved in the conspiracy, one of its participants shared this "cunning" plan with his wife, and she told her lover about it, he got drunk to his best friend, the best friend boasted to his friend, who was a guard officer. The latter reported to the vizier, the vizier to the sultan himself.
When the barber appeared at the appointed hour, the sultan gave orders to shave him with the razor he had prepared for his master. The Sultan had the pleasure of watching the barber turn black, swollen, and a few hours later died in agony. If, after this incident, the Sultan showed increased caution in everything related to shaving, then he could be understood.
One of the strongest herbal poisons is nicotine. The lethal dose of nicotine is 30 mg, which is two times lower than the lethal dose of arsenic. By the way, one smoked cigarette leaves about 1 mg of nicotine in the lungs.
Salieri pours poison into a glass of Mozart / M. A. Vrubel, 1884.
Nicotine was used as an insecticide for a long time until it was deemed too dangerous. Criminals have been using nicotine as a poison for over two centuries. It was thanks to this poison that forensic medicine arose in its current form.
So in 1850, the Count and Countess de Bocarme poisoned the countess's brother, Gustave Funy, the heir to his paternal fortune, at dinner, who managed to write a will in favor of the Countess, but suddenly decided to marry.
The husband and wife did not particularly care about hiding the traces: there was a chemical laboratory in their house, in which the remains of nicotine were found, as well as all the necessary means for its production from tobacco leaves. The face of the deceased and his clothes suffered from a caustic poison. But the poisoners hoped that this circumstantial evidence would not allow the court to find them - representatives of the upper class - guilty.
The investigation, however, decided to transfer the tissue samples of the poisoned to the best Belgian chemist of the time - Jean Servay Stas. For several months, the scientist searched for a way to isolate nicotine from samples and eventually succeeded. Count de Bocarme was executed by guillotine on July 19, 1851.
Jean Serve Stas.
His wife claimed that she acted out of fear of her husband and was found innocent, and humanity received a method for detecting poisons of plant origin, which, in an updated form, is still used in toxicology.
The French king Louis XIV was terrified of poison. When his favorite beef was served from the kitchen to the royal table, two bodyguards walked in front of the dish, and the other two brought up the rear. No one else was even allowed to come close to the dish.
In China, before serving any food to the emperor, it was previously tasted by a eunuch. In addition, on each dish and in each bowl was a silver plate, with which it was checked whether food and drink were poisoned. This saved many.
In early 1840, few people knew the name of the young, 24-year-old Frenchwoman Marie Lafarge. And a few months later it was on everyone's lips, and not only in Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna or Rome, but even in St. Petersburg and New York.
Marie Lafarge, accused of poisoning her 30-year-old husband Charles Lafarge, has gained worldwide fame. It may seem strange that the death of the most ordinary person, such as Charles Lafarge himself, the owner of the foundry, excited the whole world. Could it be the young woman's mysterious personality? Or in the fact that from time immemorial, poisoners were perceived by those around them as evil, sowing death sorceresses?
The reason should be sought solely in the fact that the Marie Lafarge trial allowed the world to learn about a new science - toxicology. Millions of people first learned about doctors and chemists appearing before the court, who are trying to wrest the secret of the poison that killed it from the corpse. The new science, brought to life by the general rise of chemistry, seemed as mysterious as the subject of its research, fraught with mortal danger.
The repulsive-alluring impression caused by the poisoning and the poisoner left a kind of eerie gloss on the new science, attracting the eyes of everyone. The age of scientific forensic toxicology has come. But he didn't finish the story of the poisoning.
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