Poison Romance and Poison Mysteries

by C. J. S. Thompson

The stories of the "poisoned shirt," which was a favourite medium with the poisoners of the seventeenth century, are not, however, without a substratum of fact.

The tail of the shirt was prepared by soaking it in a strong solution of arsenic or corrosive sublimate. The object was to produce a violent dermatitis, with ulceration about the perineum and neighbouring parts, which should compel the victim to keep his bed. Medical men would then be summoned in due course, and would probably judge the patient to be suffering from syphilis, and administer mercury in large quantities. The fatal dose could then be introduced at leisure.

The notorious La Bosse left on record her method of preparing the "poisoned shirt." The garment was first to be washed, and the tail then soaked in a strong solution of arsenic, so that it only looked "a little rusty," as if it had been ill-washed and was stiffer than usual. "The effect," she concludes, "it should produce on the wearer is a violent inflammation and intense pain, and that when one came to examine him, one would not detect anything."

The Duke of Savoy is said to have succumbed to the effects of a poisoned shirt of this kind.

Some time ago Dr. Nass, a French medical man, made some interesting experiments, with a view to testing the truth of these stories. He carefully shaved a portion of the left lumbar region of a guinea-pig, and gently rubbed the skin with a paste containing arsenic, in the proportion of one in ten. He repeated this operation several times during the day. Shortly afterwards the animal became prostrate, the eyes became dull, it assumed a cholera-like aspect, and in forty-eight hours died. The skin on which the paste had been applied remained unchanged and unbroken, and showed no sign of ulceration. On examining the internal organs after death, fatty degeneration of the viscera was found, as is usual after arsenical poisoning.

This experiment does not, of course, actually prove the effect of a shirt impregnated with arsenic being worn in direct contact with the skin, but it shows that arsenic may be introduced into the body by simple, gentle friction on an unbroken skin, and that the poisoned shirt theory was possible.

The administration of poison in the form of medicine is another method which has often been criminally employed. In France, the enema was at one time frequently made use of for introducing arsenic, corrosive sublimate, and opium into the system. The poisoner's aim, in such cases, was to attribute the fatal effects which followed to disease. Within recent years a curious case was tried at the Paris Court of Assizes, in which a lady was charged with attempting to poison her husband. It was known that the couple had lived unhappily together, and arrangements had been made for a divorce. One morning the husband complained of a severe headache, and his wife suggested a dose of antipyrine, which she gave him in some mineral water. He remarked to her at the time that the draught had a peculiar taste. Later in the day she administered sundry cups of coffee to him; but he grew rapidly worse and at night a doctor was summoned. He failed to diagnose the complaint, and called in other medical men, who were equally puzzled. One thing which they all noticed, was a peculiar dilation of the pupils of the patient's eyes.

A consultation was held the next day, and shortly afterwards one of the medical men received a note from the lady, in which she stated, that her husband "was black. He was dead, more dead than any man I ever saw."

The doctor at once went to see the patient, and found him in a state of collapse. He bled him twice and injected caffeine, but he still remained motionless. After a time it occurred to the doctor that the patient's symptoms resembled those of atropine poisoning, and, resorting to other measures, he eventually brought him round. Then he remembered, that the lady had previously asked him for some morphine for herself, and when he had refused it, she requested some atropine for her dog's eyes. He wrote her a prescription for a solution of atropine, containing ten per cent. of the drug, and took it to the chemist himself. On further inquiries it was proved that the lady had procured atropine upon various other occasions by copying the doctor's prescription and forging his signature.

At the trial, the medical evidence was very conflicting; but the concensus of opinion was in favour of the theory that atropine had been administered in small, repeated doses. The accused woman declared in her defence, that atropine had been put into the medicine for her husband in mistake by the chemist who had dispensed it. There was no evidence to support this theory, and she was found guilty and sentenced to five years' penal servitude.