On the 24th she was able to go with her mother to see the fair.
But on the 27th, as she was working in an upper room at her picture, the pain became so violent, that she with difficulty went down stairs to the room where Barbara was ill in bed, and sitting down on the edge of it, said, "Oh! sister, I have so dreadful a pain in my stomach, that I feel as if I were dying!"
Barbara seeing the sudden changes in her colour, and contortions of her features, feared that she really was about to die; and hurriedly called their mother, who was in the next room. The mother immediately got her into bed; and a succession of fainting fits, accompanied by profuse cold perspirations followed. A messenger sent in haste to Dr. Gallerati, not finding him at home, brought a Doctor Mattaselani, who was, it appears, one of the leading physicians of the city. This gentleman ordered her purgatives, and ointment for exterior use.
Her mother in the meantime had given her a dose of "Theriaca," that time–honoured Venetian medicine, which was then celebrated all over Europe. It is a very thick oily substance, compounded of some fifty different ingredients, the receipt for which is said, with much probability, to have been brought from the East by the Venetians at a very early period. It was a specific adapted to the then state of medical science, no doubt. But it is a curious fact worth noticing, that this "triaca" as the Lombards call it, is still manufactured at Venice from the old recipe, is still prepared by the principal—perhaps only—manufacturer annually on the same fixed day set apart for generations for this purpose; and quainter still, that on that day the persons employed in the process, dress themselves in fifteenth century costume, and thus accoutred make their fire, bring out their cauldrons, and concoct their medicament on one of the open "campi" of Venice, amid a concourse of people assembled to watch the annual ceremony. Theriaca now–a–days hardly finds its way beyond Venice and the neighbouring parts of Lombardy. But within those limits hardly a peasant's cottage would be found without its bottle of the drug, in which their ancestors placed their faith for so many generations.
THERIACA.
The Theriaca, however, as may be supposed, availed nothing to our poor Elisabetta; and the treatment of Dr. Mattaselani as little. The fainting–fits and cold–sweats continued the whole night. In the morning of the 28th came Dr. Gallerati, and ordered more purgatives, more ointment, and the application of the diaphragm of a sheep to the stomach! And when no advantage was found to result from this, he gave the patient the celebrated poison antidote "Bezoar," and the "Olio del Granduca;"—the Grand–duke's oil;—an antidote prepared, it should seem, in that Medicean laboratory of poisons in the Uffizi at Florence, which may well be believed to have been more successful in the preparation of them than in its providing antidotes against them.
When the Bezoar and the Grand–duke's oil failed to produce any abatement in the symptoms, the parish priest was sent for! And thus the young artist life, so rich in promise, and in dreams of beauty yet to be embodied, of long years of labour, and praise to be won, was cut short in its spring.
Elisabetta, intent only on her art, and habituated to a wholly objective frame of mind, had made so little account of the symptoms of malady that had manifested themselves during the last four or five months of her life, that her death struck her bereaved family as a wholly sudden and inexplicable calamity. Poison was the first thing that occurred to them. Indeed the idea had already presented itself to the physicians, as is evident from the treatment. The practice of poisoning was so common in Italy in those ages, and the perpetration of it was rendered so little hazardous by the prevailing ignorance of pathological anatomy, that every death arising from causes not understood, was immediately attributed to this crime. And as a medical decision to that effect was a very convenient screen for medical ignorance, the faculty were by no means backward in encouraging and increasing the popular suspiciousness on the subject.
Poor Giovanni, therefore, was readily convinced that his daughter had died by poison; and ordered a post–mortem examination of her body, as the first step towards a judicial investigation. So the body was opened by the hospital barber, the recognised operator on such occasions, in the presence of Doctors Gallerati and Mattaselani, and other four of the first practitioners of Bologna.
Gallerati, the family medical man, who had already, it is to be observed, treated her case as one of poisoning, reported to the father, as the result of the examination, that a hole was found in the lower part of the stomach, large enough for a pea to pass, that around the hole there was a livid circle appearing as if burned with a hot iron, that the bowels were much inflamed, the diaphragm corroded, and that these appearances could only have been produced by the action of a corrosive poison. But on Sirani further questioning him on the nature of the poison, he answered, that it was certainly corrosive, "but whether administered to her, or generated naturally, was not a matter to speak with him—the father—on, as he had already given his opinion in the consultation of physicians."