Milestones and Discoveries
in the Renaissance
(02/24/06)
Renaissance - 14th – 16th Centuries
(started in Italy and spread across Europe – period of great
artistic and intellectual achievement)
Leonardo da Vinci - Pope
Clement - Paracelsus
- Agricola - Medici
Piso - Shakespeare
- Spara - Monvoisin
- Tophania - Louis
Leonardo da Vinci
(1452-1519)
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Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Architect, inventor, engineer, anatomist,
physiologists, and painter Leonardo Da Vinci also experimented
with various poisons. In a effort to increase the potency
of a poison, he used a method known as "passages".
da Vinci feed to organs of poisoned animals to other animals
to increase the concentration of the poison. (Left is a self
portrait of Leonardo da Vinci).
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Pope Clement VII (1478-1534)
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Pope Clement VII (1478-1534)
Died (possibly murdered) after eating amanita
phalloides (death-cap) mushroom.
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Paracelsus
(1493-1541)
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Paracelsus
(1493-1541)
Phillippus Aureolus was born in Switzerland,
a year after Columbus sailed in 1493. He took the pseudonym
of Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim and still later invented
the name Paracelsus. Famous for his words "the dose makes
the poison", Paracelsus was born in Switzerland and studied
at the University of Vienna and was one of the first to apply
chemicals and minerals into medicines.
“All substances are poisons;
there is none which is not a poison.
The right dose differentiates a poison from a remedy.”
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Georgius Agricola
(1494-1555)
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Georgius Agricola
(1494-1555)
Born in Glauchau, Saxony, Agricola wrote a
treaties on mineral s and metallurgy named De re metallica
libri xii. This publication was used by many chemists
as a tool of locating the minerals and reagents they needed
for experiments.
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Catherine Medici (1519-1589)
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Catherine Medici (1519-1589)
An avid political advocate later on in her
life as Queen of France, Catherine Medici often used poisoning
as a political tool during her reign. To develop more advanced
poisons, Catherine also experimented with poisons on the sick
and poor.
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William Piso
(1640)
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image from Medizinal Pflanzen, first published
in 1887, by Franz Eugen Köhler (image
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William Piso
(1640)
Piso, while in Brazil, was the first to study
the
effects of
Cephaelis Ipecacuanha,
used as an emetic and to treat dysentery.
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Shakespeare (1564-1616)
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Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Famous playwright Shakespeare makes an early
reference to poisoning in the 16th century with his play Romeo
and Juliet in act 5:
Come bitter pilot, now at once run on
The dashing rocks thy seasick weary bark!
Here’s to my love! O true apothecary!
Thy drugs are quick. Thus with a kiss I die.
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Hieronyma Spara (~1659)
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Hieronyma Spara (~1659)
Using arsenic to poison their victims, Roman
women & fortune teller, Hieronyma Spara formed Spara's
secret organization in Rome and help women plot to kill their
wealthy husbands to inherit the money and become wealthy widows.
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Catherine Monvoisin
(La Voisin) (1640-1680)
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Catherine Deshayes Monvoisin (La Voisin)
(1640-1680)
Accused sorcerer and convicted
poisoner in France. She was burned at the stake February 22,
1860.
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Guilia Tophania (1635-1719)
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Guilia Tophania (1635-1719)
Tophania also was a supplier of poison to
wives who wanted to be widows. She was executed later on by
strangulation and to stop the murder incidents from continuing,
King Louis XIV passed a decree forbidding the sale of poisons
from apothecaries to unknown persons.
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King Louis XIV 1682
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King Louis XIV (1638-1715)
In 1682 passed a royal decree forbidding
apothecaries to sell arsenic or poisonous substances except
to persons known to them.
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