Note 135 — SECRET POISON.

Garelli, the emperor’s principal physician, lately wrote to me something remarkable in the following words:—“Your elegant dissertation on the errors respecting poisons brought to my recollection a certain slow poison, which that infamous poisoner, still alive in prison at Naples, employed to the destruction of upwards of six hundred persons. It was nothing else than crystallised arsenic, dissolved in a large quantity of water by decoction, with the addition, but for what purpose I know not, of the herb cymbalaria. This was communicated to me by his imperial majesty himself, to whom the judicial procedure, confirmed by the confession of the criminal, was transmitted. This water, in the Neapolitan dialect, is called aqua del Toffnina. It is certain death, and many have fallen a sacrifice to it.”—Hoffmanni Med. Rationalis System., p. ii. c. 2. § 19.