In the reign of Henry VIII of England in 1530 an Act was passed making the crime of poisoning punishable by boiling alive. This was enacted in consequence of several deaths believed to have been due to poisons which had occurred in the household of the Bishop of Rochester. In 1542 it is recorded in the chronicles of the time that a young woman named Margaret Davie was “boyled alive in Smithfield” for having poisoned persons in three houses in which she had lived. The savage punishment was reduced to hanging in 1547 in the reign of Edward VI. In Queen Elizabeth’s reign in 1598 two men were hanged on a charge of having placed poison in her saddle. Italian poisoners are alleged to have found abundant employment in France. Catherine de Medici took with her to Paris her astrologer, Cosmo Ruggieri, and the people believed that he was responsible for the death of Charles IX. The ambitious queen has found many defenders, but the fiend capable of planning the massacre of St. Bartholomew may support a few extra crimes. Exili went to Paris in the next century with the reputation of having poisoned 150 persons in Rome. Michelet says this miscreant had been in the employment of Marie Olympia, Queen of Rome under Innocent X, and implies that it was on her account that he exercised his chemical skill. He had also been in the service of Queen Christina of Sweden, but this employment was apparently not a criminal one. The latter queen had only engaged Exili to instruct her in alchemy. It was from this teacher that the famous poisoners of Paris were alleged to have learned their arts. It is not possible, however, to ascertain the limits of exaggeration in the accounts which gossiping chroniclers give of that epoch. Royal edicts were issued forbidding “all sorts of sorcery or magic, divinations, philtres, invocations of demons, drinks to win love, enchantments to trouble the air or excite hail or tempests, to destroy the fruits of the earth or the milk of beasts, mathematics [which meant astrology], auguries, and interpretations of dreams.” But though the practice of the “diabolic arts” was punishable by death, it flourished abundantly, but it is not necessary to accept the estimate of a diarist named L’Estoile, who, describing the execution of a witch named La Miraille in 1587, stated that the number of such persons in Paris at that date exceeded thirty thousand. Perfumery and the publication of almanacks were businesses which covered many of the malfeasances struck at in the edict just quoted, and no doubt there was a widespread belief in the miraculous toxicological skill of the fortune tellers, who naturally wished their predictions to be verified. “Tasters” were employed in the houses of the wealthy, dishes of “electron” which it was believed would tarnish if poisons were placed on them, and Venetian glass, which was warranted to fly into atoms if the wine poured into it had been contaminated, were in frequent use. As Rogers has written