Toxicology, or the history of Poisons, forms one of the most important and elaborate branches of Forensic Medicine, and in tracing the subject through all its numerous and interesting relations to Jurisprudence, we shall experience no small degree of gratification by observing, how greatly and progressively this obscure department of science has, within the last few years, been enlightened by the discoveries of Chemistry and Physiology.

The labours of the modern Chemist, indeed, have enabled us to recognise and identify each particular substance by its properties and habitudes, with an infallible delicacy, which the Physicians of a former age could scarcely have anticipated, and much less practised.

The Physiologist, by an invaluable series of observations and experiments, has demonstrated the particular organ, or texture, upon which each individual poison exerts its energies; and the Pathologist has been thus enabled to establish the mode in which it depraves the health, or extinguishes the life of an animal. Nor has the Anatomist withheld his contributions upon this interesting occasion, for he has demonstrated the situation, extent, and intensity of the organic lesions which result from the operation of these terrible agents upon the living body; and has pointed out several appearances which occur from natural causes, but which might be mistaken by the unskilful or superficial observer, for the ravages of poison. It remains for the Forensic Physician to converge into one focus the scattered rays which have thus emanated from so many points, and thereby to elucidate and determine the line of conduct which the medical attendant is called upon to pursue, for the relief of the patient suffering under the torments of poison, and for the establishment of the guilt or innocence of the party charged with the perpetration of a crime, which may be said to rob courage of its just security, while it transfers to cowardice the triumphs of valour. That engines so powerful and secret in their work of destruction, should have universally excited the terror of mankind is a fact which cannot surprise us, and, when we consider how intimate are the relations between fear and credulity, we need not seek farther for the solution of the many problems to which the exaggerated statements of ancient Toxicologists^[111] have given origin; the most extraordinary of those relate to the alleged subtlety of certain poisons, which was believed to be so extreme as to defeat the most skilful caution, and at the same time so manageable, as to be capable of the most accurate graduation; so that, in short, the accomplished assassin was not only thus enabled to ensure the death of his victim through the most secret, and least suspicious agents, but to measure his allotted moments with the nicest precision, and to occasion his death at any period that might best answer the objects of the assassination. The writings of Plutarch, Tacitus, Theophrastus, Quintillian, and Livy, abound with such instances of occult and slow poisoning; most of which, however, notwithstanding the weight they may acquire from their testimony, bear internal evidence of their fallacious character. Plutarch informs us that a slow poison which occasioned heat, cough, spitting of blood, a lingering consumption of the body, and a weakness of intellect, was administered to Aratus of Sicyon. This same poison is also alluded to by Quintillian in his declamations. Tacitus^[112] informs us that Sejanus caused a secret poison to be administered by an eunuch to Drusus, who in consequence gradually declined, as if by a consumptive disorder, and at length died. Theophrastus^[113] speaks of a poison, prepared from Aconite, that could be so modified as to occasion death within a certain period, such as two, three, or six months, a year, and even sometimes two years.

To such an extent does the crime of poisoning appear to have been carried, about two hundred years before the Christian Æra, that according to Livy,^[114] above one hundred and fifty ladies, of the first families in Rome, were convicted and punished for preparing and distributing poison. The most notorious and expert character of this kind is handed down to us by the historians and poets under the name of Locusta, who was condemned to die on account of her infamous actions, but was saved in order that she might become a state engine, and be numbered, as Tacitus expresses it, “Inter instrumenta regni.” She was accordingly employed to poison Claudius by Agrippina, who was desirous of destroying the Emperor, and yet feared to despatch him suddenly, whence a slow poison was prepared by Locusta, and served to him in a dish of mushrooms, of which he was particularly fond, “Boletorum appetentissimus;” but it failed in its effects, as we learn from Tacitus, until it was assisted by one of a more powerful nature. “Post quem nihil amplius edit.” This same Locusta prepared also the poison with which Nero despatched Britannicus, the son of Agrippina, whom his father Claudius wished to succeed him on the throne. This poison appears to have proved too slow in its operation, and to have occasioned only a dysentery. The Emperor accordingly compelled her by blows and threats, to prepare in his presence one of a more powerful nature, and as the tale is related by Suetonius, it appears that it was then tried on a kid, but as the animal did not die until the lapse of five hours, she boiled it for a longer period, when it became so strong as instantaneously to kill a pig to which it was given. In this state of concentration it is said to have despatched Britannicus as soon as he tasted it.^[115] Vide Tac. An. 13. s. 15. 16. Now it would clearly appear from these statements that Locusta, avowedly the most accomplished poisoner of ancient Rome, was wholly incapable of graduating the strength of her poisons to the different purposes for which they were applied.

The records of modern times will furnish examples no less atrocious than those we have just related. Tophana, a woman who resided first at Palermo, and afterwards at Naples, may be considered as the Locusta of modern history; she invented and sold those drops so well known by the names of Aqua Toffania; Aqua della Toffana; Acquetta di Napoli, or simply Acquetta. This stygian liquor she distributed by way of charity to such wives as wished for other husbands; from four to six drops were sufficient to destroy a man, and it was asserted that the dose could be so proportioned as to operate within any given period.^[116] It appears that in order to secure her poison from examination, she vended it in small glass phials, inscribed, “Manna of Saint Nicolas Bari,” and ornamented the vessel with the image of the Saint. Having been put to the rack she confessed that she had destroyed upwards of six hundred persons, for which she suffered death by strangulation in the year 1709^[117]. In 1670 the art of secret poisoning excited very considerable alarm in France; the Marchioness de Brinvillier, a young woman of rank and great personal beauty, having intrigued with, and subsequently married an adventurer named Saint Croix, acquired from him the secret of this diabolical act, and practised it to an extent that had never before been equalled. She poisoned her two brothers through the medium of a dish at table. She also prepared poisoned biscuits, and to try their strength she distributed them herself to the poor at the Hotel Dieu. Her own maid was likewise the subject of her experiments. To her father she gave poisoned broth, which brought on symptoms characteristic of those induced by corrosive sublimate. Her brothers lingered during several months under much suffering. The detection of this wretch is said to have been brought about in the following manner. Saint Croix, whenever engaged in the preparation of his poisons, was accustomed to protect himself from their dangerous fumes by wearing a glass mask, which happening to fall off by accident, he was found dead in his laboratory.^[118] A casket directed to the Marchioness, with a desire that in case of her death it might be destroyed unopened, was found in his chamber, a circumstance which in itself was sufficient to excite the curiosity and suspicion of those into whose hands it fell. The casket was accordingly examined, and the disclosure of its contents at once developed the whole plot, and finally led to the conviction of this French Medea, who after a number of adventures and escapes, was at length arrested and sent to Paris, where she was beheaded, and then burnt, on the 11th of July, 1676. The practice of poisoning, however, did not cease with her execution, and it became necessary in 1679 to establish a particular Court, for the detection and trial of such offenders; which continued for some time to exert its jurisdiction under the title of Chambre de Poison, or Chambre Ardente.

With respect to the secret modes in which poisons have been supposed capable of acting, mankind have ever betrayed the most extravagant credulity, of which the numerous tales upon record afford ample proof; such as that reported of Parasapis by Plutarch, from Ctesias, in his life of Artaxerxes, who, it is said, by anointing a knife on one side by poison, and therewith dividing a bird, poisoned Statira with one half, and with the other regaled herself in perfect security. We are also told of Livia who poisoned the figs on a tree which her husband was in the habit of gathering with his own hands. Tissot informs us that John, king of Castille, was poisoned by a pair of boots prepared by a Turk; Henry VI, by gloves^[119]; Pope Clement VII, by the fumes of a taper^[120]; and our king John, in a wassail bowl, contaminated by matter extracted from a living toad. To these few instances of credulity may be added the offer of the priest to destroy queen Elizabeth by poisoning her saddle^[121], and the Earl of Essex, by anointing his chair.

Incredible and absurd as these opinions now appear, they continued until a late period to alarm mankind, and to perplex and baffle judicial investigations; even Lord Bacon in his charge against the Earl of Somerset for the murder of Sir Thomas Overbury, in the Tower, seemed to give credit to the story of Livia, and he seriously stated, that “Weston chased the poor prisoner with poison after poison; poisoning salts, poisoning meats, poisoning sweetmeats, poisoning medicines and vomits, until at last his body was almost come, by the use of poisons, to the state that Mithridates’s body was by the use of treacle and preservatives, that the force of poisons was blunted upon him;” Weston confessing, when he was reproached for not despatching him, that he had given enough to poison twenty men.^[122] The power of so graduating the force of a poison as to enable it to operate at any given period seems to have been considered possible by the earlier members of the Royal Society, for we learn from Spratt’s history of that learned body, that very shortly after its institution, a series of questions were drawn up by the direction of the Fellows, for the purpose of being submitted to the Chinese and Indians, viz. “Whether the Indians can so prepare that stupifying herb, Datura, that they make it lie several days, months, years, according as they will have it, in a man’s body, without doing him any hurt, and at the end kill him without missing half an hour’s time?”

That mankind were, in a very early stage of their existence, not only acquainted with the deadly effects of certain natural substances when applied in minute quantities, but that they availed themselves of such knowledge for the accomplishment of the worst purposes, is very satisfactorily shewn by the records of sacred as well as profane authors. But such is the ambiguity of ancient writers upon this subject, and so intimately blended are all their receipts with the practices of superstition, that every research, however learned, into the exact nature of the poisons which they employed, is necessarily vague and unsatisfactory. Of this one fact, however, we may be perfectly satisfied, that they were solely derived from the animal and vegetable kingdoms, for the discovery of mineral poisons was an event of later date; owing however to the defect of botanical nomenclature, it is even doubtful whether the plants which are designated by the terms Cicuta, Aconitum, &c. in ancient authors, were identical with those we designate by the same names. (See Pharmacologia, edit. v. vol. 1, p. 66.) With respect to the poisons of Locusta, all cotemporary writers speak of the venom of the toad as the fatal ingredient of her potions, and in the Alexipharmaca of Dioscorides we find the symptoms described, which are said to be produced by it;^[123] but what is very extraordinary, the belief of the ancients on this matter was all but universal. Pliny is express on the subject; Ætius describes two kinds of this reptile,^[124] the latter of which, as Dr. Badham has suggested, was probably the frog, as well from the epithet, as that he ascribes deleterious powers only to the former. It is scarcely necessary to observe that this ancient belief has descended into later times; we find Sir Thomas Browne treating such an opinion as one of the vulgar errors; and we have before alluded to the legend of king John having been poisoned by a wassail bowl in which matter extracted from a living toad was said to have been infused. In still later times, we have heard of a barrel of beer poisoned by the same reptile having found its way into it. Borelli and Valisnieri maintain that it is perfectly harmless, and state that they had seen it eaten with impunity. Spielman^[125] expresses the same opinion, “Minus recte itaque effectus venenati a bufonibus metuuntur.” Franck,^[126] on the contrary, accuses Gmelin of too much precipitancy in rejecting the belief respecting toad-poison,^[127] Modern naturalists recognise no poisonous species of toad; even the most formidable of the species, to appearance, that of Surinam, is said to be perfectly harmless.

If we may venture to offer a conjecture upon this subject, we are inclined to consider the origin of this opinion to have been derived from the frequency with which the toad entered into the composition of spells or charms, into philtres or love potions, and which, like the bat and the owl, most probably derived its magical character from the gloom and solitude of its habitation. Shakspeare has accordingly introduced this reptile into the witches’ enchanted cauldron, in Macbeth.

This opinion receives further strength when it is considered how frequently poisons were administered under the insidious form of charms or incantations.^[128]

It has, however, been shewn by late experiments that the toad has, under particular circumstances, the power of ejecting from the surface of the body an acrid secretion which excoriates the hands of those that come in contact with it; and this fact may perhaps have assisted in supporting the general belief respecting the poisonous nature of this reptile. Pelletier has ascertained, that this corrosive matter, contained in the vesicles which cover the skin of the common toad, (Rana Bufo) has a yellow colour, and an oily consistence, and to consist of,—1st, an acid partly united to a base, and constituting 1/20th part of the whole. 2d, very bitter fatty matter. 3d, an animal matter bearing some analogy to gelatine.

It would also appear from the writings of Dioscorides, Galen, Nicander, Ætius, Ælian, and Pliny, that the ancients derived a very energetic poison from the Sea Hare, Lepus Marinus,—the Aplysia Depilans of LinnÆus; and, if we may credit Philostratus, it was with such a poison that Titus was killed by Domitian.

There is, however, ample ground for supposing that the poisons of the ancients were, for the most part, obtained from the vegetable kingdom, and from the class of Narcotic plants;^[129] that they were compounded of a great variety of such ingredients, together with others that were quite inert and useless, and which merely served to disguise their composition.

Ancient writers also allude to the blood of the bullock as a poison; Themistocles is said by Plutarch to have destroyed himself by this fluid; and Strabo states that Midas died of drinking the hot blood of this animal, which he did, as Plutarch mentions, to free himself from the numerous ill dreams which continually tormented him. Some historians assign the death of Hannibal to the same draught.

With respect to the poisons employed by Tophana, the Locusta of modern days, and her infamous successors, there is less doubt; Arsenic, Corrosive Sublimate, Sugar of Lead, and Antimony,^[130] were amongst the most powerful of their instruments of torture and death. According to the declaration of the Emperor Charles VII to his physician Garelli, the Aqua Toffania was a solution of arsenic in Aqua CymbalariÆ.^[131] Dr. Hahneman considered its basis to have been an arsenical salt. Others have, with little probability, regarded Opium and Cantharides as the active ingredients. Franck,^[132] speaking of the Aqua Toffania, agrees with Gmelin,^[133] that it is no other than a solution of arsenic. The Pulvis Successionis, another instrument of death, whose title announces the diabolical intention with which it was administered, has been supposed to have been a preparation of lead; while others have considered it to have consisted of diamond dust, and to have acted mechanically.

Having thus noticed a few of the more remarkable and interesting features in the literary history of Toxicology, we shall proceed to consider the subject of Poisons, in relation to their operation.

A Poison, (Toxicum, Venenum, Virus), has been very correctly defined by Gmelin to be a substance which when administered internally, or applied externally, in a small dose, impairs the health, or destroys life. This definition is adopted by Mead, Sproegel, Plenck, and Tortosa, and is to be preferred to every other,^[134] not only for its simplicity, but for its independence of any theory relative to the modus operandi of such agents. But it will be seen that, by accepting this definition, we are necessarily led to admit the fact, that poisoning may be acute, or chronic, that is to say, that it may at once destroy life, or produce a disease which can be protracted to any indefinite period. After the erroneous and vague notions which have been entertained upon the subject of “Slow poisons,” it is highly essential that the latitude of our belief should be accurately ascertained, and the precise meaning of our terms defined.

OF SLOW, CONSECUTIVE,^[135] AND ACCUMULATIVE POISONING.

1. Slow Poisons. According to the popular acceptation of the term, they may be defined, Substances which can be administered imperceptibly; and a single dose of which will operate so gradually, as to shorten life like a lingering disease; their force, at the same time, admitting of so nice an adjustment as to enable the artist to occasion death at any required period. We have now to inquire how far such alleged powers are consistent with the known laws of physiology. It cannot be denied that certain substances have been introduced into the alimentary canal, where they have remained for an indefinite period, without occasioning the slightest inconvenience, and at length excited a disease that has terminated fatally; in the London Medical and Physical Journal for February 1816, a case is related in which death was occasioned by a chocolate-nut having lodged in the entrance of the Appendix Vermiformis; and in the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal for July 1816, we have an analogous case, communicated by Dr. Briggs of Liverpool, where the Appendix cÆci sphacelated, owing to the irritation of a human tooth which was found sticking in its cavity. Mr. Children has lately communicated to the Royal Society a case where a concretion in the colon produced death; upon examination it was found to contain a plum-stone, as a nucleus, and to consist of a fine fibrous vegetable substance, from the inner coat enveloping the farina of the oat, and which was derived from the oatmeal upon which the deceased had fed. (Phil. Trans. 1822.) However disposed we may feel, by a forced construction of the term, to consider such agents as slow poisons, it is very evident that they can rarely have been made subservient to the purposes of secret poisoning; although a case occurred in the practice of the author,^[136] in which a girl swallowed six copper pence for the avowed purpose of destroying herself; the coin produced a disease which remained chronic for a very considerable period, when, after a lapse of five years, they were voided, and the young woman recovered. A similar attempt was also made by Theodore Gardelle, after his conviction for the murder of Mrs. King (vide ante), he swallowed a number of halfpence, for the purpose of destroying himself, but without any ill effect. Dr. Baillie, in his ‘Morbid Anatomy,’ relates an instance where five halfpence had been lodged in a pouch in the stomach for a considerable time, without occasioning any irritation; and Mr. A. Thomson has also furnished us with two analogous cases in children, in one of which the copper coin remained six months in the intestines, and in the other, two months. These facts furnish sufficient data to enable the practitioner to appreciate the degree of danger attendant upon such agents, and to determine how far they can ever become successful instruments in the hands of the assassin.^[137]

But it has been supposed that certain bodies, as glass, enamel, diamonds,^[138] agates, smalt, &c. when administered in the form of powder, so lacerate the membranes of the stomach, by the sharpness of their particles, as slowly to destroy life; and upon the same principle, it has been asserted, that human hair, chopped fine,^[139] constitutes the active ingredient of a slow poison frequently employed in Turkey, and that it induces, by irritation, a chronic disease resembling cancer. With respect to the danger arising from the ingestion of diamond dust, enamel powder, powdered glass, and the like, there still may be said to exist some difference of opinion. Caldani, Mandruzzato,^[140] and M. Le Sauvage, have reported experiments made upon men and inferior animals, in which no bad consequences followed the administration of such bodies; whereas Schurigius^[141] and Cardanus^[142] cite instances where persons have died of ulcerations of the stomach from such causes; and this opinion receives the support of Plouquet,^[143] Stoll,^[144] Gmelin,^[145] FoderÉ,^[146] Mahon,^[147] Franck,^[148] and many others. The modern pathologist will not find much difficulty in reconciling such conflicting testimony. The experimentalist may administer mechanical substances a thousand times without producing any ill effects, while, under certain circumstances, the most trivial body may lodge in the intestines and produce death; but surely the occasional occurrence of such accidents ought not to confer the general title of poison upon the substances which may happen to produce them.

Having thus disposed of a considerable number of bodies, which have been classed as slow poisons, we may proceed to observe that most of the other substances which have found a place in the same division, appear to us to deserve consideration under a very different head, and that we shall get rid of much obscurity by adopting the following arrangement.

2. Consecutive Poisoning. Where the patient, having recovered from the acute effects occasioned by the ingestion of a single dose of poison, subsequently suffers a series of symptoms from the injured structure to which it had given origin. By referring to our definition of slow poisoning, we shall at once perceive the striking and important distinction between that and Consecutive poisoning. The following case, related by M. Orfila, may serve as an illustration. Maria Ladan drank by mistake a spoonful of Aqua fortis, the most violent symptoms supervened, but which by judicious treatment gradually subsided, when at length she passed by stool a long membranous substance, rolled up, and which represented the form of the Æsophagus and stomach, and which, in fact, was found to be the interior membrane of these organs; from that moment the sensibility of the digestive organs became excessive, and two months after the accident she experienced a sudden shock and died. M. Tartra, in observing upon cases of this kind, asserts that the symptoms produced at first by the nitric acid decrease insensibly; and that at the end of a certain period, the internal membrane of the digestive canal is struck with death, and thrown off, and the person dies of a Marasmus. Fordyce^[149] relates the case of a woman who was subject to cholics for the space of thirty years, in consequence of having once taken an infusion of the pulp of Colocynth prepared with beer. This was undoubtedly an extraordinary instance of idiosyncrasy, but it is probable that some organic lesion was occasioned by its operation, to which the subsequent suffering is to be referred. We have hitherto only considered the effects that may arise from the ingestion of a single dose of poison, but there are numerous and very interesting cases in which fatal results have been produced by the repetition of small doses at various intervals. We therefore propose a third, and new subdivision of our subject, viz.

3. Accumulative Poisoning.—By the repeated administration of a substance, in doses, of which no single one could occasion harm; but which, by gradually accumulating in the system, ultimately occasions disease, and death.

The familiar operation of mercury will at once suggest itself to the Physician, as a striking illustration of that species of poisoning which we have ventured to name Accumulative, and to the forensic student the effects of this metal, in reference to such a quality, will form a more than ordinary object of interest, as involving questions which have frequently embarrassed judicial inquiry; as, for instance, Whether it can lie dormant any considerable time without betraying its effects upon the constitution, and, having displayed its powers, and the symptoms having subsided, viz. salivation, &c. Whether they can be renewed without a fresh application of the substance? See Corrosive sublimate.

To how many substances this power of accumulation extends is at present not well understood. It may occur in those that act by absorption, and in those whose action is wholly local. Arsenic, digitalis, and several of the narcotic plants, as hemlock, may undoubtedly occasion serious mischief in this manner, as the author has more fully explained in another work,^[150] and we have lately heard of several fatal cases arising from accumulated masses of magnesia in the primÆ viÆ, from the habitual use of small doses of that earth.

The history of many of the arts, especially those of metallurgy, would furnish also abundant examples of this kind of poisoning.

These few facts are we trust sufficient to authorise the foregoing arrangement, and we apprehend that the adoption of the distinctions, upon which it is founded, will be of great service in establishing fixed and definite notions with regard to the chronic operation of poisons. It may perhaps be useful to present the reader with a synoptical recapitulation of the subject.

A Slow Poison. A single dose is sufficient; which produces upon its administration no sensible effect, but gradually undermines the health.

A Consecutive Poison. A single dose is sufficient; producing the most violent symptoms, very shortly after its ingestion, but which gradually subside, and the patient is supposed cured; when, at some future period, death takes place from the organic lesions that had been occasioned.

An Accumulative Poison. Many doses are required; the effects being produced by the repetition of doses which would, individually, be harmless.

There still remains another point of view in which it is essential to regard the operation of a poison, in order to establish a distinction between those substances which, in a given dose, will destroy life under every circumstance of constitution, and those which occasion death in consequence of some constitutional peculiarity in the individual to whom they may have been administered, and which are innocuous to the general mass of mankind; the gradations by which food, medicine, and poison, are thus enabled to branch into each other cannot be defined, because the circumstances with which they are related, defy generalization. The distinction, however, must be acknowledged and preserved, and we know no terms better adapted for expressing it than those of Absolute and Relative poisons; and our readers are accordingly requested to receive them in conformity with this explanation, whenever they occur in the following pages. Every work professing to treat the subject of Poisons, abounds with instances, in which articles that, by universal consent, are considered innocuous, have occasioned the most direful effects. Morgagni relates a case of a person who died from eating bread made with the farina of the chesnut. Dr. Winterbottom^[151] says that he is subject to severe nettle-rash after eating sweet almonds. Schenkius relates a case in which the general law of astringents and cathartics was always reversed. Donatus tells us of a boy whose jaws swelled, whose face broke out in spots, and whose lips frothed, whenever he eat an egg: we might add many more examples, but it is needless to encumber a subject with illustrations which is already so obvious and indisputable. Nor do the anomalies of constitutional idiosyncrasies end here, for they not only convert food into poison, but they change poison into food, or at least, into a harmless repast. The most extraordinary exemplification of this on record is contained in the history of the old man at Constantinople, as related by M. Pouqueville, physician to the French army in Egypt, and who was a prisoner at Constantinople in the year 1798^[152]. “This man,” says he, “was well known all over Constantinople, by the name of Suleyman Yeyen, or Suleyman, the taker of corrosive sublimate. At the epoch when I was there he was supposed to be nearly a hundred years old, having lived under the Sultans Achmet III, Abdul Hamet, and Selim III. He had in early life habituated himself to taking opium; but, notwithstanding that he constantly increased the dose, he ceased to feel from it the desired effect, and then tried sublimate, the effects of which he had heard highly spoken of; for thirty years this old man never ceased to take it daily, and the quantity he could now bear exceeded a drachm. It is said, at this epoch he came into the shop of a Jewish apothecary, and asked for a drachm of sublimate, which he swallowed immediately, having first mixed it in a glass of water. The apothecary, terrified, and fearing that he should be accused of poisoning a Turk, immediately shut up his shop, reproaching himself bitterly with what he had done; but his surprise was very great, when, the next day, the Turk came again, and asked for a like dose of sublimate.”

Morbid states of the body may also exist which are capable of resisting, to a certain extent, or of modifying, the violent operation of particular poisons. In the history of the Royal Academy of Sciences for 1703, a case is related of a woman, who being tired out by a protracted dropsy, under which her husband had suffered, charitably administered to him fifteen or twenty grains of opium with the intention of despatching him; but the dose immediately produced such copious evacuations by sweat and urine, that it restored him to health. This relation will immediately recal to the recollection of the classical reader the story, recorded by Plutarch, in his life of Crassus, of Hyrodes king of the Parthians, who having fallen into a dropsical complaint had poison (Aconite) administered to him by his second son, Phraates, but which, instead of destroying the king, as intended, cured his disease. The son, however, having thus failed in his attempt, shortly afterwards smothered his father with his pillow.