and metallic mercury, which was reputed to be poisonous. Nicandor alludes to litharge, ceruse, and gypsum. By the last he may have meant quicklime. Berthelot translated from Olympiodorus (sixth century) the description of a process for making white arsenic from the sulphide. The product was called "alum, white and compact." The animal kingdom furnished the Romans with at least one famous poison which they extracted from the Lepidus marinus (in the Linnean system, Aplysia depilans) which they knew as the sea-horse. According to Philostratus it was by this poison that Domitian removed Titus.
Poisonings in the Middle Ages.
The belief in the skill of the compounders of philtres and mysterious charms grew rather than diminished in the Middle Ages and as alchemy developed. In Sir Walter Scott's "Talisman," the tale of the Crusades, the western physician says, "The oily Saracens are curious in the art of poisons, and can so temper them that they shall be weeks in acting upon the party, during which time the perpetrator has leisure to escape. They can impregnate cloth and leather, nay, even paper and parchment, with the most vile and subtle venoms."
Official records of the trial of a minstrel named Wondreton in Paris, in 1384, give a copy of instructions alleged to have been given to the accused by Charles the Bad, King of Navarre, who had employed this Wondreton to poison the then King of France, Charles VI, his brother, two uncles, and several dukes. The scheme was extraordinarily crude, although Charles the Bad was reputed to be an adept in alchemy. The minstrel was
