According to a letter addressed to Hoffmann[2] by Garceli, physician to the emperor, he informed the latter that, being Governor of Naples at the time that the Acquetta was the dread of every noble family in the city, and when the subject was investigated legally he had an opportunity of examining all the documents, and that he found the poison consisted of a solution of arsenic in _Aqua cymbalariæ_. The dose was said to be from four to six drops in water, and that it was colourless, transparent and tasteless. When the manufacture and sale of the poison was at last traced to Toffana, she took refuge in a convent, from which the abbess and archbishop refused to give her up, and so continued to sell the water for twenty years longer, and evaded punishment for the time. Public indignation was roused to such a pitch, that at last the convent was broken into by a body of soldiers, who secured Toffana and handed her over to the authorities. She was tortured until she confessed in 1709, and then strangled, her body being thrown into the garden of the convent which had sheltered her. Aqua Toffana was reputed to possess some very peculiar properties, and, among others, that of causing death at any determinate period, after months, for example, or even years of ill-health (a common supposition attributed to poisons in the Middle Ages). Its alleged effects are graphically described by Behrens as follows: "A certain indescribable change is felt in the whole body, which leads the person to complain to his physician. The physician examines and reflects, but finds no symptoms either external or internal, no vomiting, no inflammation, no fever. In short, he can only advise patience, strict regimen, and laxatives. The malady, however, creeps on, and the physician is again sent for. Still he cannot detect any symptoms of note. Meanwhile the poison takes firmer hold of the system; languor, wearisomeness, and loathing of food continue; the nobler organs gradually become torpid, and the lungs in particular at length begin to suffer. In a word, the malady from the first is incurable; the unhappy victim pines away insensibly even in the hands of the physician, and thus is he brought to a miserable end through months or years, according to his enemy's desire." Toffana had many imitators, and some time after her death a similar scheme was attempted with a poisonous solution reputedly sold as a cosmetic, called the "Acquetta di Perugia." It is said to have been prepared by killing a hog, disjointing it, strewing the pieces with white arsenic, which was well rubbed in, and finally collecting the juice which dropped from the meat itself. This preparation was supposed to be much stronger and a more powerful poison than arsenic itself, but doubtless had the same fatal effect.