The public are highly indebted to professor Beckman for a very elaborate
article, in which he has concentrated nearly all that is known
concerning _secret poisoning_. Of this we shall here present our readers
with an abstract, as peculiarly adapted to the demonology of medicine,
aided with some facts from other sources.
Professor Beckman considers it unquestionable, that the ancients were
acquainted with this kind of poison, and thinks that it may be proved
from the testimony of Plutarch, Quintilian, and other respectable
authors. The former states that a slow poison, which occasioned heat, a
cough, spitting of blood, a consumption, and weakness of intellect, was
administered to Aratus of Sicyon. Theophrastus speaks of a poison
prepared from aconite, which could be moderated in such a manner as to
have effect in two or three months, or at the end of a year or two
years; and he also relates, that Thrasyas had discovered a method of
preparing from other plants a poison which, given in small doses,
occasioned a certain but easy death, without any pain, and which could
be kept back for a long time without causing weakness or corruption.
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