Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 2).djvu/245

 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

Brave men trembled if a hand held out A nosegay or a letter, while the great Drank only from the Venice glass that broke, That shivered, scattering round it as in scorn If aught malignant, aught of thine was there, Cruel Tophana.

But probably nine-tenths of the crimes suspected were the mere result of the disordered fancies of the