Galileo Galilei, a young man 23 years old in Galileo’s Revenge, went on to become the most famous astronomer and scientist of his day.
His use of the newly discovered telescope to explore the Heavens made him famous, but also led him to clash with the Roman Inquisition.
‘Arsenic’ is sometimes called ‘the king of poisons’. But already in the sixteenth-century ‘arsenic’ was available in several different forms, each more or less suited to the job in hand. This article looks at the main alternatives, and the problems that a tyro poisoner might have with sourcing and administering their preferred choice. [The featured…
Continue Reading Ratsbane! or: How to poison an Elizabethan (part 1)
In my novel ‘Galileo’s Revenge’, our hero Galileo Galilei has to solve the suspicious death of Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici (1541-87). In the course of his investigation, Galileo turns to the work of French barber-surgeon Ambroise Paré (c.1510-90), especially the treatise on poisons.
Fynes Moryson (1566-1630) needed to find board and lodging for the winter. The young English gentleman, a near contemporary of Galileo (and Shakespeare), had left England on Mayday, 1591. (See my first Fynes Moryson blog, A rough guide to Shakespeare’s Europe.) After two years of travel around northern Europe, he had crossed the Alps into…
Continue Reading Fynes Moryson, 3: Where to stay and what to eat in Padua
Ambroise Paré (c.1510 – 90) was an innovative barber-surgeon, who became chief surgeon to the kings of France. His collected works, first published in 1582, discuss a wide range of surgical and medical problems, including poisons.
Orlando Furioso – that is, Mad Orlando, or Orlando goes Mad – is a wonderful 33,000-line epic poem written in Italian by the poet and courtier Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1535).
Continue Reading Orlando Furioso, a sixteenth-century Game of Thrones
In Ariosto’s epic poem Orlando Furioso, the noble knight Orlando is driven mad by jealousy. Eventually, his friend, the English knight Duke Astolfo, travels to the Moon to recover Orlando’s lost wits.
