The story of poison is the story of power. For centuries, royal families have
feared the gut-roiling, vomit-inducing agony of a little something added to
their food or wine by an enemy. To avoid poison, they depended on tasters,
unicorn horns, and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. Servants licked the
royal family's spoons, tried on their underpants, and tested their chamber pots.
Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves
daily with their cosmetics, medications, and filthy living conditions. Women
wore makeup made with mercury and lead. Men rubbed turds on their bald spots.
Physicians prescribed mercury enemas, arsenic skin cream, drinks of lead
filings, and potions of human fat and skull, fresh from the executioner. The
most gorgeous palaces were little better than filthy latrines. Gazing at
gorgeous portraits of centuries past, we don't see what lies beneath the royal
robes.
In The Royal Art of Poison, Eleanor Herman combines her unique access to
royal archives with cutting-edge forensic discoveries to tell the true story of
Europe's glittering palaces: one of medical bafflement, poisonous cosmetics,
ever-present excrement, festering natural illness, and, sometimes, murder.
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