AQUAMBOE that she was in the habit of trying the effects of her poisons on the poor, and even on the patients in the Hotel Dieu, under pretence of charitably supplying them with biscuits. But Voltaire positively denies this horrible imputation, and says that she never attempted the life of her husband, who overlooked a connection of which he was the cause.
The information concerning the nature of the Eau de Brincilliers, derived from the examination of Sainte Croix's famous casket, is not satisfactory. It contained poisons enough to have killed a whole community; besides opium, lunar caustic, antimony, and vitriol, more than 75 lbs. of corrosive sublimate, and two bottles of a liquid like water, with a sediment in one. The clear liquid was probably his real poison; as none of the other substances could have been given so as to produce death, without instantly being detected by their abominable taste; but what this liquid was, we can now only conjecture; for its examination, as reported by Pitaval, shows that the physicians at that time had not the slightest notion of the mode of detecting arsenic even in substance, much less in solution; and accordingly, although both the liquor and powder killed the animals to which they were given, it is candidly admitted that the poison of Sainte Croix surpassed the art and capacity of the physicians, and that it baffled all their experiments to discover its composition. We have, however, no doubt that arsenic was the only active ingredient of all these pretended secret poisons, as it is the only substance capable of explaining all the credible circumstances related of them. From the mode of administering them in small but repeated and perhaps increased doses, there was some foundation for the belief that they could be given so as to kill in any determinate time, while their failing in any instance to produce death was easily accounted for by supposing antidotes to have been administered. But although the progress of knowledge has proved that there is no such thing as such antidotes, it has on the other hand, by rendering the detection of poison easy and certain, put a stop for ever to the trade of poisoner, and, what is perhaps of equal importance, to the general alarm and cruel punishment of individuals, which have often resulted from natural deaths being ascribed to poison. It is not because we know less, but because we know a great deal more than our forefathers, that the art of secret poisoning seems to be lost. (A. D.)