without reference to a particular poison), is impossible, improbable, possible, probable, or certain. It likewise comprises an appreciation of the circumstances which usually lead the unprofessional, as well as the professional, to infer correctly or erroneously a suspicion of such poisoning.
Under the present head might likewise be included the history of poisoning, the art of secret poisoning, and some other topics of the like kind. But the want of proper documents, and the unmeasured credulity which has prevailed on the subject of poisoning throughout all ages down to very recent times, has entangled these subjects in so intricate a maze of fable, that a notice of them, sufficiently detailed to interest the reader, would be quite misplaced in this work.
On the art of secret poisoning, however, as having been once an important object of medical jurisprudence, it might be expected that some comments should here be offered. But really I do not see any good reason for wading through the mass of credulous conjectures and questionable facts, which have been collected on the subject, and which have been copied into one modern work after another, for no other cause than that they are of classic origin, or feed our appetite for the mysterious. No one now seriously believes that Henry the Sixth was killed by a pair of poisoned gloves, or Pope Clement the Seventh by a poisoned torch carried before him in a procession, or Hercules by a poisoned robe, or that the operation of poisons can be so predetermined as to commence or prove fatal on a fixed day, and after the lapse of a definite and remote interval. With regard to the noted instances of secret poisoning, which occurred towards the close of the seventeenth century in Italy and France, it is plain to every modern toxicologist, from the only certain knowledge handed down to us of these events, that the actors in them owed thir success rather to the ignorance of the age, than to their own dexterity. And as to the refined secrets believed to have been possessed by them, it is sufficient here to say, that although we are now acquainted with ten times as many and ten times as subtile poisons as were known in those days, yet none exist which are endowed with the hidden qualities once so universally dreaded.
The crime of poisoning, from its nature, must always be a secret one. But little apprehension need be entertained of the art of secret poisoning as understood by Toffana or Brinvilliers,[1] or as it might be improved by a modern imitator. It seems to have escaped the attention of those who have written on the subject, that the practice of such an art requires the knowledge not only of a dexterous toxicologist, but also of a skilful physician; for success must depend on the exact imitation of some natural disease. It is only among medical men, therefore, and among the higher orders of them, that a Saint-Croix can arise now-a-days. How little is to be dreaded on that head is apparent from the domestic history of the European kingdoms for the last half century, compared with their history some centuries
- ↑ See the Chapter on Arsenic for some remarks on this subject.—Also Beckman's History of Inventions.
