Of all other methods employed by poisoners, the administration of the lethal dose through the medium of food or drink seems ever to have been the favourite. The poisoned wine or cake recurs with a somewhat monotonous frequency in the history of the poisoner, from the earliest times down to the present day. Women especially seem to have been attracted by this mode of poisoning, a fact probably due to their control and direction of domestic matters, which rendered the introduction of a poisonous substance into food or drink an easy matter. Occasionally they have fallen victims to their own evil designs, as instanced in the case of Rosamond the wife of Helmichis, King of Lombardy, in the year 575. Wishing to rid herself of her husband, she gave him a cup of poisoned wine on coming from his bath. The king drank part of it, and suspecting its nature from the strange effect it produced, he insisted she should drink the remainder, with the result that both died shortly afterwards. The Hindoos have an ingenious method of using powdered glass as a lethal agent, either by mixing it with sherbet or some kind of food. In such cases the substance acts by its irritant action on the stomach or intestines, while at the same time, if successful, no trace of poison can be discovered in the bodily organs. A celebrated case in which this agent was used occurred in India in 1874, when the Gaekwar, or reigning prince of Baroda was tried for attempting to kill his political resident, Colonel Phayre, by administering powdered glass to him in sherbet. The Gaekwar was tried before a court consisting of three Indian princes and three English judges, and was defended by the late Mr. Serjeant Ballantine. The princes returned a verdict of "Not proven," while the judges decided that he was guilty, with the result that the Gaekwar was deposed. The sweetmeat was a favourite form employed to administer poison during the Middle Ages. Such confections were usually handed round to the guests after a meal in Italy. Princes and nobles frequently used this method of ridding themselves of an enemy; and if the plot failed in the first instance, they were always ready to try it again, for, as Cæsar Borgia is stated to have once exclaimed, "what has failed at dinner-time will succeed at supper-time." Catherine de Medici introduced this method into France, and her Florentine perfumers were said to be adepts in mixing arsenic with sweetmeats. The poisoned flowers of mediæval romance, and poisoned gloves and boots, which figure so often in legend and story as lethal media, we must dismiss as mere fables of an age when the historian drew largely on his imagination. The "poison ring," with its carefully concealed tiny spike, which was intended to penetrate the flesh of the victim, might perhaps have set up blood-poisoning, as would a similar wound if inflicted by a rusty nail.