AQUA TOFA'NA, a poisonous liquid which was much talked of in the s. of Italy Shout the end of the 17th century. Its invention is still a matter of dubiety, but it is ascribed to a Sicilian woman named Tofana, who lived first at Palermo, but was obliged, from the attention of the authorities having been attracted to her proceedings, to take refuge in Naples. She sold the preparation in small phials, inscribed "Manna of St. Nicholas of Ban," there being a current superstition that from the tomb of that saint there flowed an oil of miraculous efficacy in many diseases. The poison was especially sought after by young wives that wished to get rid of their husbands. The number of husbands dying suddenly in Rome about the year 1659, raised suspicion, and a society of young married women was discovered, presided over by an old woman named Spam, who had learned the art of poisoning from Tofana. Spars and four other members of the society were publicly executed. Tofana continued to live to a great age in a cloister, in which she had taken refuge, but was at last (1709) dragged from it, and put to the torture, when she confessed having been instrumental to 600 deaths. According to one account she
was strangled; but others affirm that she was still living in prison in 1730.
The A. T. is usually described as a clear, colorless, tasteless, and inodorous fluid; 5 or 6 drops were sufficient to produce death, which resulted slowly and without pain, inflammation, or fever; a constant thirst, a weariness of life, and an aversion to food, the strength of the person gradually wasted away. It is even stated that the poison could be made to produce its effects in a determined time, long or short, according to the wish of the administrator—a notion generally prevalent in those ages respecting secret poisoning. The most wonderful stones are told of the mode of preparing this poison; for example, the spittle of a person driven nearly mad by continued tickling was held to i be an essential ingredient. Later investigations into the real nature of the A. T. lead to the belief that it was principally a solution of arsenic.