The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul by Eleanor Herman

People in the time of Kings and Queens used to believe that they were going to be poisoned so they had tasters to taste their meals and servants to kiss their seats and napkin and bedchamber sheets as well as their clothes.  This all with not knowing that poison is very difficult to absorb in the skin from cloth or paper, a way in which some poisoners did try to kill with.  All the while they were poisoning themselves with their lead silverware plated in gold and their cosmetics and hair tonics.

They used unicorn horns (narwhal horns found on beaches) to wave over food as well as gemstones, especially emeralds and diamonds to ward off the effects of poison.  Something they did use actually worked. Toadstone (really sharks teeth) mixed in with poisonous wine will neutralize the poison.  They also used bezoars which had no effect whatsoever. The Italian De Medicis had a box of antidotes that they gave out to friends that contained mostly scorpion venom.  The Italians had a reputation for poisoning people.   

They smeared ox dung on their face to get rid of pimples and dog turds on their scalp to stop a receding hairline.  They put arsenic, mercury, and lead in their cosmetics to make themselves look beautiful and it's probably what killed some of them.  King Henri II of France's mistress Diane de Poitiers body was found in 2008 and examined to find high levels of heavy metal poisoning in her hair indicative of use as a cosmetic which she was famous for using.  

King Edward VI of England, who lived from 1537-1553, was thought to have been poisoned by his enemies of which he had many including Bloody Mary and his Lord Protector of the Realm who had ruled in his stead when he was younger, his uncle Edward Seymour.  Edward, though, likely died of tuberculous something he had undiagnosed since he was a child when he got the measles and came back from that rather quickly. However, measles leaves one's immune system vulnerable to tuberculosis.

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (from 1572-1610) was one of Italy's elite artists.  At age twenty he left Milan for the illustrious Rome after having apparently killed a man.  Caravaggio's art moved some people who saw his work's gritty realism with saints and holy figures with dirty feet.  But some thought this went against God.  Feeling unsafe from bounty hunters and the relatives of the man he killed he joined the Knights of Malta.  He left the organization after seriously injuring a man there and being put in a deep, dark hole as punishment.  He left for Naples in hopes of receiving a pardon for the death of the man in Rome, in order to come back to Rome.  While there he was seriously defaced after coming out of place that catered to men seeking men.  Caravaggio was a bisexual.  He set out on a boat ride to Palo a Spanish fort not far Rome. Insulting a soldier he wound up in jail being forced to leave behind a precious painting.  Hoping to get it back he rode a horse fifty miles to get back to the boat where his painting was and fell ill with a fever and stomach cramps and died there.  Did he die from heat exhaustion, poison as he thought, or something else? A body believing to be his was found in 1959 and it contained high levels of lead from his painting.  The lead in his body would have led him to act in ways that were wildly mercurial.  It was also believed that he had syphilis which was treated with mercury which also caused crazy behavior.  But whether he died of sunstroke or perhaps malaria that he picked up in prison is anybody's guess.  

Herman also examines Ivan the Terrible and his family who were believed to have died of poison, whether or not Salieri poisoned Mozart or whether he died from uncooked meat, Mademoiselle de Fontanges, the mistress of Louis XIV who was mixed up in the Royal Court's affair of the poisons, and Napoleon Bonaparte.  She also looks at modern poisoning which mostly seems to take place in Russia or by Russians the new Italians of poisoning.  This was an interesting book that delved into the mysteries of poisonings of long ago and today and how some people suspected of being poisoned by others were poisoned by themselves with the daily usage of their cutlery and cosmetics.  It was a bit disappointing to find so many thought to have been poisoned were not.   I give this book four out of five stars. 

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