The Royal Art of Poison by Eleanor Herman

The Royal Art of Poison is a hugely entertaining work of popular history that traces the use of poison as a political - and cosmetic - tool in the royal courts of Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the Kremlin today. Gazing at gorgeous portraits of centuries past, we don't see what lies beneath the royal robes and the stench of unwashed bodies the lice feasting on private parts and worms nesting in the intestines.

Physicians prescribed mercury enemas, arsenic skin cream, drinks of lead filings and potions of human fat and skull, fresh from the executioner. Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics, medications and filthy living conditions. Eleanor Hermans The Royal Art of Poison: Filthy Palaces, Fatal Cosmetics, Deadly Medicine, and Murder Most Foul under promises. Servants licked the royal family's spoons, tried on their underpants and tested their chamber pots. To avoid poison, they depended on tasters, unicorn horns and antidotes tested on condemned prisoners. 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. The story of poison is the story of power. Ironically, royals terrified of poison were unknowingly poisoning themselves daily with their cosmetics, medications and filthy living.

The story of poison is the story of power. 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.

The Royal Art of Poison by Eleanor Herman