This week’s Claire Chats has been inspired by the recent video I did on Richard Hesketh and the Hesketh plot, in which I mentioned Ferdinando Stanley and his belief that he’d been poisoned, so he took bezoar stone and unicorn’s horn to try and counteract the poison. It made me want to dig a bit deeper into poisoning in the medieval and Tudor period, and find out what poisons were used to do away with people.
Further reading
- Medieval Murder - http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/2016/06/medieval-murder-ten-handy-ways-to.html
- Why is monkshood considered a poison? https://www.poison.org/articles/why-is-monkshood-considered-a-poison...
- Wolfsbane - https://sites.evergreen.edu/plantchemeco/wolfsbane-fictious-plant-contains-very-real-dangers/
- Conium maculatum - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conium_maculatum
- Weird ways you could die in Tudor England - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/here-are-some-weird-ways-you-could-die-tudor-england-180955433/
- The Composition of Death - https://www.grimoire.org/spell/composition-of-death...
- Medieval Poisons - https://www.sarahwoodbury.com/medieval-poisons/
- Plant poisons - https://www.thewarsoftherosescatalogue.com/blog/digitalis-other-plant-poisons-used-in-medieval-times-by-toni-mount
- Macbeth of Scotland - https://herbologymanchester.wordpress.com/tag/macbeth-of-scotland/
- Classic Poisons - https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/23174/5-classic-poisons-and-people-who-used-them
- Datura - https://thethirdwave.co/psychedelics/datura/
- Writers' Guide: Medieval Poisons - https://rimajean.tumblr.com/post/59542507670/writers-guide-medieval-poisons/amp
- Murder by Poison - https://www.medievalists.net/2020/03/murder-by-poison/
- A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie by Kathryn Harkup
- Unicorn Horns as royal protection - https://www.history.com/news/unicorn-horns-royal-protection-poison-antidote
- Medieval murder - how to protect - http://the-history-girls.blogspot.com/2016/07/medieval-murder-part-2-how-to-protect.html
- Mistletoe - https://www.irishnews.com/lifestyle/2017/12/02/news/take-on-nature-hanging-mistletoe-a-tame-remnant-of-dramatic-druidic-ritual-1197772/