WEBVTT - Giulia Tofana: World's Most Dangerous Apothecary 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:03.720 Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in 0:00:03.800 --> 0:00:12.400 partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalia. 0:00:12.920 --> 0:00:17.119 I'm a Holly Fry and Marquis and this week we 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:19.480 are going to look at the life of Julia to Fauna, 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:24.240 an Italian apothecary known for her beauty, her secrecy, and 0:00:24.400 --> 0:00:28.760 her poisonous proclivities. If the numbers are all to be believed, 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:32.440 she might be the most successful serial killer that you 0:00:32.520 --> 0:00:35.640 have never heard of. But unlike many of the women 0:00:35.680 --> 0:00:37.880 we've talked about and we'll talk about on this show, 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:41.000 Julia wasn't in it for a personal power grap She's 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:44.800 best known as having invented a famous poison called Akuata fauna, 0:00:45.320 --> 0:00:48.680 and that perhaps sounds more like a light submarine fragrance 0:00:48.800 --> 0:00:51.320 rather than what it really was, because it was a 0:00:51.400 --> 0:00:55.400 deadly potion laced with arsenic belladonna and lead that she 0:00:55.520 --> 0:00:59.319 sold two hundreds of women. Those are primarily women who 0:00:59.320 --> 0:01:02.920 wanted to escape dangerous marriages, and when we say dangerous, 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:06.199 we are talking about abuse. So let's set her scene. 0:01:06.400 --> 0:01:08.920 This was during the Italian Renaissance, which was an era 0:01:09.000 --> 0:01:13.039 of enlightenment and achievement between the fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, 0:01:13.319 --> 0:01:17.520 but not for women. For women, this was still really 0:01:17.560 --> 0:01:21.160 a dark time of arranged marriage, and that was marriage 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:23.720 that did not have a possibility of divorce. No matter 0:01:23.760 --> 0:01:28.039 what the situation, women found themselves with no financial or 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:32.120 social power, and they really only had a few available options. 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:36.399 So one they could get married, Two they could stay 0:01:36.400 --> 0:01:39.720 single and rely on something like sex work to survive. 0:01:40.120 --> 0:01:42.880 Or three they could become a well off widow, which 0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:48.200 naturally required option one to happen first. Often, marriages at 0:01:48.240 --> 0:01:51.400 this time were decided based on how the families financial 0:01:51.520 --> 0:01:55.440 or political interests aligned. Love was really not part of 0:01:55.440 --> 0:01:58.400 the equation at all. Not only did women not have 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:01.280 a say regarding who they were married to, they were 0:02:01.320 --> 0:02:05.760 also considered legally subject to their husband's and a husband 0:02:06.280 --> 0:02:09.360 could beat his wife without any fear of punishment. So 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.959 the only way out was to become a widow. Although 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:14.960 many women at this time were skilled in making some 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:18.240 common medicinal home remedies are Julius spent a lot of 0:02:18.280 --> 0:02:21.120 time in and out of apothecaries, watching and learning as 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:23.920 they made their medicines and potions, so by this time, 0:02:23.960 --> 0:02:27.280 for instance, in an an apothecary would know remedies like 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:30.040 how to treat heartburn with chalk, which is really similar 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:32.560 to how we treat it with Tom's Uh, it doesn't 0:02:32.560 --> 0:02:36.639 just taste like chalk because of coincidence. Eventually, Julia ran 0:02:36.680 --> 0:02:39.640 her own apothecary and developed her own potions. So up 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:43.600 until roughly the nineteenth century, apothecaries were kind of like 0:02:43.760 --> 0:02:47.320 the common ancestor to our modern day pharmacies, hospitals, and 0:02:47.880 --> 0:02:53.160 perhaps surprisingly our modern day liquor stores. Unlike today's pharmacists, though, 0:02:53.480 --> 0:02:58.359 apothecaries would also distill, mix and prescribe both medications and 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:02.560 alcohol right there in house, and when tobacco was commonly 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:06.120 used in medical treatment, it too was sold through an apothecary. 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:09.359 So an apothecary had to have a combination of talents 0:03:09.360 --> 0:03:14.920 and skills, including being a general physician, surgeon, dentist, obstetrician, optometrist. 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:17.360 The list just keeps going, um, But in this role, 0:03:17.440 --> 0:03:20.480 they were available to provide medical advice and treatments to 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:23.400 the general public who wouldn't normally have access to such 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:26.720 a thing. In addition to preparing treatments, they also typically 0:03:26.720 --> 0:03:28.840 sold the ingredients you'd need to make up a home 0:03:28.880 --> 0:03:32.720 remedy as well as prepared goods and herbal medicines, and 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:35.960 they often took on apprentices and they trained both men 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:38.760 and women in the field. So, if he'll indulge us, 0:03:38.760 --> 0:03:40.720 we'd like to go down a quick rabbit hole on 0:03:40.800 --> 0:03:45.280 apothecary history, because the actual origins of this particular service 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:48.840 go way back, and you could debate where exactly on 0:03:48.880 --> 0:03:52.120 the timeline it starts. Yeah, we know that as early 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:57.160 as two thousand BC, Ambersia now of China was prioritizing 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:01.640 the examination and the cataloging of hundreds of samples from nature, 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:06.280 so think of herbs, barks, roots, in order to develop 0:04:06.320 --> 0:04:09.680 a database of how such things could be used medicinally. 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:15.640 Mesopotamia similarly had proto apothecaries figuring out how to extract 0:04:15.760 --> 0:04:20.000 and combine and dose natural elements to address countless issues. 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:22.159 And they were recording all of this and in the 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:26.040 mid fifteen hundreds d c. And estimated eight hundred different 0:04:26.040 --> 0:04:30.040 prescriptions were inscribed on the Ebbers pavirus in Egypt. At 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:34.160 that time, formulas are compounding medications were recorded, serving as 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:37.719 the ancestors to our modern day medicine. Ancient Egypt also 0:04:37.920 --> 0:04:42.920 established and codified a hierarchy of professionals in the apothecary field. 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:47.000 So one class of job was defined for gathering, another 0:04:47.120 --> 0:04:50.040 for compounding, and then there was a third category that 0:04:50.120 --> 0:04:53.440 was the chief pharmacists. So I think it's fairly safe 0:04:53.480 --> 0:04:57.160 to consider that an apothecary at this point. Right right 0:05:00.960 --> 0:05:03.320 by the year one d c e. The idea of 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:08.200 a pharmacist botanist existed in the form of Greece's Padanias Discorides, 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:11.440 who wrote five volumes of books outlining the compounding and 0:05:11.520 --> 0:05:15.080 uses of ointments, the uses of animal derived products in medicine, 0:05:15.120 --> 0:05:18.640 and a fairly comprehensive god to botanicals and their uses 0:05:18.640 --> 0:05:23.120 for treating maladies of almost every imaginable type, as well 0:05:23.160 --> 0:05:25.200 as what sorts of vessels and containers were best for 0:05:25.279 --> 0:05:28.760 holding all of these things, because that's important too. Yeah. Yeah. 0:05:28.760 --> 0:05:30.960 He made notes about, like, things will go bad if 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:33.440 you store them in this kind of container. Store this 0:05:33.600 --> 0:05:38.920 only in this kind of contain a lid. You know, well, 0:05:38.920 --> 0:05:43.240 saran wrap, it'll be great. Um. And the first establishments 0:05:43.279 --> 0:05:47.360 that you would probably consider a drug store actually popped 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:50.559 up in Baghdad in the late eighth century, where both 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:55.000 medicines and confections of various kinds, including everything you would 0:05:55.000 --> 0:05:57.000 need to make cocktails, so they weren't called that at 0:05:57.000 --> 0:06:01.800 the time would be found. That's fantastic. The pharmacological field 0:06:01.800 --> 0:06:03.920 and Europe really got a boost in the thirteenth century 0:06:04.000 --> 0:06:07.919 when Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Second introduced a series of 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:10.760 regulations into the field, and that started in the Kingdom 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:12.839 of Two Sicilies, which is what we would point to 0:06:12.839 --> 0:06:16.800 today as Italy and Sicily. And at this point pharmacists 0:06:16.800 --> 0:06:19.960 there started to be governed not only by regulations that 0:06:20.000 --> 0:06:22.760 were put into effect by Frederick the Second, but they 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:25.080 also had to take an oath that they would not 0:06:25.160 --> 0:06:28.520 exploit patients and that the drugs that they prepared were 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:31.760 both uniform and reliable. Well, the concept of a public 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:34.520 pharmacy spread rapidly throughout Europe from that point in the 0:06:34.640 --> 0:06:38.680 Kingdom of Two Sicilies. It's not surprising that fifteenth century Italy, 0:06:38.839 --> 0:06:42.880 especially in forward thinking Florence specifically, was where the first 0:06:42.920 --> 0:06:46.039 Farm of Copia was written, called the Nuevo Receiptorio. And 0:06:46.120 --> 0:06:49.719 during the Renaissance as well, nuns were learning and practicing 0:06:49.720 --> 0:06:54.000 apothecary medicine in Italian convents, and they had a pretty 0:06:54.040 --> 0:06:58.000 decent reputation among the medical community. So all of this 0:06:58.080 --> 0:07:00.000 is to say that Julie was part of a law 0:07:00.040 --> 0:07:04.080 understanding tradition of offering apothecary and pharmacology in history and 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:07.200 specifically in Italian history. And we're going to get a 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:09.480 whole lot deeper into her story, but before we do, 0:07:09.560 --> 0:07:16.720 we're gonna take a quick break. Welcome back to Criminalia. 0:07:18.560 --> 0:07:21.760 So after becoming a widower herself, and we don't actually 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:25.200 know if it was through poison or other circumstance, Julia 0:07:25.400 --> 0:07:29.360 and her daughter Girolama moved from Sicily to Naples and 0:07:29.400 --> 0:07:32.120 eventually settled in Rome. References to the elixir that she's 0:07:32.160 --> 0:07:36.240 credited with inventing, Aquata fauna um, have always been closely 0:07:36.280 --> 0:07:39.760 associated with Rome and Naples, but not necessarily Sicily. So 0:07:40.160 --> 0:07:42.760 it's in Rome when we first encounter her and her work, 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:46.680 and the first recorded mention of aquaita fauna, which actually 0:07:46.720 --> 0:07:50.360 translates simply to to fauna water, can be traced to 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:54.320 either sixteen thirty two or sixteen thirty three. And while 0:07:54.400 --> 0:07:58.000 the ingredients of arsenic lead and belladonna were well known 0:07:58.040 --> 0:08:01.320 at this time, exactly how those things were blended into 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:04.800 a clear, tasteless liquid has been lost to the ages, 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:08.240 and I would say that's probably a good thing. Probably 0:08:08.400 --> 0:08:12.560 probably yes, uh all, Julia was an apothecary. She probably 0:08:12.720 --> 0:08:15.880 wasn't running a public pharmacy. She was known to be 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:19.680 discreet and worked mostly by referrals. And though the information 0:08:19.720 --> 0:08:22.200 about her background is pretty sparse, we do know that 0:08:22.240 --> 0:08:24.560 she was born in Sicily, in the city of Palermo, 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:27.480 in sixteen twenty, so if you do that math those 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:31.320 sixteen thirties references to Aquata Fano, she would have been 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:34.360 still a young teenager when she was starting to develop 0:08:34.360 --> 0:08:37.400 and pedal that. Yes, she was probably the daughter of 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:44.040 Teofania di Adamo, an apothecary who made and sold herbal medicines, cosmetics, perfumes, 0:08:44.120 --> 0:08:49.120 and other potions and poisons. It's a little bit hard 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.400 to know for sure, but it is not unheard of 0:08:52.480 --> 0:08:55.840 for a poison to be sold as a perfume. And 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:58.960 in fact, in Sanskrit, the word for red arsenic, is 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:02.560 the same word that used for perfume, so those two 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:05.600 words have a history of being linked, and they may 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:09.160 well have been used to cover the trade of toxic substances. 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:13.720 In sixty three, Julia's mother, Tiofanio, was accused of murdering 0:09:13.760 --> 0:09:17.079 her husband, and she was ultimately executed um if the 0:09:17.120 --> 0:09:20.319 cause of his death was poison, though that's not recorded anywhere. 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:32.319 So at this point Julia was on her own, an orphan. 0:09:32.440 --> 0:09:35.680 Her father was killed, presumably by her mother based on 0:09:35.720 --> 0:09:37.600 what the courts found, and her mother had been put 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:41.240 to death. But Julia was armed with the knowledge of 0:09:41.280 --> 0:09:44.800 an apothecary, and eventually also armed with the help of 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:48.360 her daughter and a small group of trusted associates, and 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:51.360 with all of that backing her up, Julia built her 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:54.800 own reputation in Rome as a friend too abused women, 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:59.959 all under the cloak of being a perfectly benign apothecary. 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:05.040 The usual assortment of tinctures, medicines and beauty products. There's 0:10:05.080 --> 0:10:09.720 really nothing to see here, right, Like the bottles all 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:15.240 have lids on them. It was brilliant, really, what she 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:18.240 was doing. If anyone questioned the nature of Julia's business, 0:10:18.280 --> 0:10:20.480 she could just point to bottles of her popular face 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:23.880 creams and powders. It appeared she sold cosmetics, and Aquatafano 0:10:24.000 --> 0:10:25.680 was packaged in such a way that it could be 0:10:25.720 --> 0:10:29.079 easily blended in on a woman's vanity, beside her makeup 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:32.920 and creams and perfumes and a true bit of genius design. 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:34.960 I feel like on my vanity no one could find 0:10:35.000 --> 0:10:40.320 anything anything, It's a mess. It all blends. I guarantee 0:10:40.440 --> 0:10:42.680 that the Italian women felt the same way. They're like, yeah, 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:47.240 find the poison and like we should be super clear. 0:10:47.360 --> 0:10:50.880 There was plenty of toxic stuff in use in Rome 0:10:50.920 --> 0:10:53.000 at this time that was just considered normal to have 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:55.800 in your household. Right. This was a period of time 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:59.360 when arsenic and lead were commonly used in facial powders 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:03.120 as skin eight Nurse and Belladonna, which if you even 0:11:03.200 --> 0:11:07.520 have rudimentary Italian skills you know means beautiful woman was 0:11:07.679 --> 0:11:10.160 used in eye drops as a way to dilate a 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.360 person's pupils and make a woman's eyes look more dough 0:11:13.400 --> 0:11:17.920 like and therefore more alluring. Of course, this all had 0:11:17.960 --> 0:11:25.320 to do with careful dosage, dosage and intention, right. Julia's 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:29.080 cleverly packaged poison product could be disguised in one of 0:11:29.160 --> 0:11:32.200 two ways. It could either be made to look like 0:11:32.240 --> 0:11:35.880 a cosmetic powder, or it could be sold in vials 0:11:35.920 --> 0:11:39.520 as a devotional object. Called Mana of St. Nicholas of Bari, 0:11:39.720 --> 0:11:43.600 which was actually a very popular healing oil for blemishes 0:11:43.640 --> 0:11:47.480 at the time. Aquatafana itself was a slow acting mixture 0:11:47.559 --> 0:11:50.360 that was easily mixed into water wine. I mean, it 0:11:50.360 --> 0:11:52.040 didn't have to be liquid. It could be any food 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:55.000 that you wanted to put it into. Four small doses 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:57.839 was what Julia recommended to kill a husband, and she 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:00.199 wanted you to spread them apart slowly, as if to 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:03.120 plan the victim's time of death or just give him 0:12:03.120 --> 0:12:06.600 time to write his will. Probably also it looked less 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:08.320 suspicious if it was like, I don't know, he's been 0:12:08.320 --> 0:12:11.160 ailing for a while. So with the first dose, the 0:12:11.160 --> 0:12:13.640 way this worked was that the victim would likely develop 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:17.480 some cold like symptoms, such as fatigue or weakness, and 0:12:17.520 --> 0:12:20.800 then the second dose would intensify those symptoms. But by 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:23.480 the third dose the person would be quite ill, with 0:12:23.559 --> 0:12:26.960 symptoms including vomiting and diarrhea, which we see a lot 0:12:27.080 --> 0:12:30.840 with arsenic dehydration and a and a burning sensation throughout 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:34.280 the digestive system, which would be similar to heartburn, but 0:12:34.760 --> 0:12:38.400 much much worse than heartburn. The fourth dose would be, 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:42.600 of course, the lethal dose, although Julia and her associates 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:46.320 were really good at keeping a low profile. You can't, 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:48.840 of course, trust that all your clients will do so 0:12:48.920 --> 0:12:52.000 as well. Uh, this is you know, common knowledge, right. 0:12:52.040 --> 0:12:54.720 The more people that know a secret, the more likely 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:57.280 it is that it will get out. And the way 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:03.240 Julia was caught goes something like this. So in the end, 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:06.600 Julia's business practices were revealed to the authorities by one 0:13:06.600 --> 0:13:09.400 of her own customers. This was a woman who had 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.160 laced her husband's dinner with a drop of aquita fauna. 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:14.600 But then she had a change of heart about things, 0:13:15.120 --> 0:13:16.920 so there would be poison or beg your husband not 0:13:16.960 --> 0:13:20.319 to eat the tainted soup she had prepared. Now, once 0:13:20.360 --> 0:13:22.960 she had confessed to her husband that his soup was 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:30.360 in fact poisoned, he understandably ted her into the authorities. Listen, 0:13:30.559 --> 0:13:33.400 nobody knows what a relationship is like from the outside exactly. 0:13:34.400 --> 0:13:38.400 But then the authorities took her in and she confessed 0:13:38.400 --> 0:13:41.920 to the authorities, under extreme torture, that she had bought 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:45.640 her bottle of aquita fauna from Julia. So keep in 0:13:45.679 --> 0:13:48.160 mind here that Julia was well liked. I mean, she 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:50.840 had helped a lot of women in their situations. It 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:54.040 was probably also in her client's best interests to keep 0:13:54.120 --> 0:13:57.040 Julia off of the authority's torture table. So when word 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:00.480 got out that her apothecary had been exposed for selling poison, 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:04.480 locals were quick to help Julia escape to a church. Um. 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:07.600 There's an alternate story that she fled to a convent, 0:14:07.640 --> 0:14:11.240 which is totally plausible. Um. Either way, she was granted 0:14:11.280 --> 0:14:15.400 sanctuary while authorities searched for her. Yeah, Maria made an 0:14:15.400 --> 0:14:18.760 astute comment as we were talking about this case that 0:14:18.760 --> 0:14:23.480 that connection of nuns being associated with apothecary and respected 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:26.920 by the medical community kind of ties in like, of 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:30.240 course they might take in someone like Julia. But as 0:14:30.400 --> 0:14:33.880 is often the case, this story kind of exploded and 0:14:34.160 --> 0:14:36.920 rumors started to flare up, and those rumors got bigger 0:14:36.920 --> 0:14:40.400 and bigger. And then after a rumor claiming that she 0:14:40.480 --> 0:14:44.120 had poisoned Rome's water supply caught on throughout the city, 0:14:44.240 --> 0:14:47.760 the police forced their way into the church and detained Julia. 0:14:48.040 --> 0:14:51.760 It's said that, under accounts of extreme torture, she confessed 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:54.440 to providing the poison to kill as many as six 0:14:54.520 --> 0:14:57.720 hundred men in Rome between the years sixteen thirty three. 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:00.680 And sixteen fifty one. But can sitaring it was a 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:05.320 confession given under torture, she probably would have also confessed 0:15:05.320 --> 0:15:08.160 to the future assassination of Abraham Lincoln or maybe too 0:15:08.200 --> 0:15:11.400 being a duck. I mean, it's hard to know exactly 0:15:12.000 --> 0:15:15.640 what her truth was. Confessions extracted through torture are not 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:19.440 really trustworthy. Um, while we are pretty sure she was 0:15:19.480 --> 0:15:22.680 not innocent and also that she was not a duck. Uh, 0:15:23.320 --> 0:15:25.840 there could be a version of this story where Julia 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:29.240 could have been selling harmless cosmetics and face creams at 0:15:29.240 --> 0:15:33.240 her apothecary when she was wrongfully accused of murderous intentions. 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.280 There's also part of me that wonders if she isn't like, hey, 0:15:36.320 --> 0:15:38.080 I'm not mixing it, but do you know that the 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:40.560 stuff in your face cream is actually poisonous and maybe 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:43.720 you could use it for that reason. I wondered the 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:45.600 same thing right where she was like, it comes in 0:15:45.680 --> 0:15:48.040 oil and it comes in powder, but if you put 0:15:48.040 --> 0:16:04.600 the two together, right. But in sixteen hundreds Italy, those 0:16:04.720 --> 0:16:09.000 torture confessions were good enough evidence to convict on Julia 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:12.640 and her daughter, along with her accomplices that worked at 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:15.760 her store, So they may have just been employees. We're 0:16:15.800 --> 0:16:19.600 all executed in Rome in the Campo de Fiori, or 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:23.040 they were strangled by a mob. The specifics dipper among 0:16:23.360 --> 0:16:26.520 the story accounts, and because Julia's story is so sensational, 0:16:26.960 --> 0:16:29.920 there was a lot of variation in the accounts about her, 0:16:30.640 --> 0:16:34.760 and some of Julia's clientele who had used Aquatafano were 0:16:34.840 --> 0:16:40.040 also arrested. Some, perhaps as many as forty, were executed 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:44.400 just like Julia herself. Others were, it is told again, 0:16:44.440 --> 0:16:48.000 so this is unsubstantiated bricked into the dungeons of the 0:16:48.040 --> 0:16:51.120 Palazzo Pucci. But considering that that is in Florence and 0:16:51.160 --> 0:16:54.640 not Rome, that particular version of the story is highly unlikely. 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:58.760 What's interesting is it comes up a lot like there 0:16:58.760 --> 0:17:01.840 wouldn't have been like a a really good like reason 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:05.960 for them to be bricked in in Florence. It seems 0:17:06.000 --> 0:17:09.480 so strange from an account, but okay, you know, maybe 0:17:09.480 --> 0:17:14.120 it was I don't know. Um. Upper class women, however, 0:17:14.240 --> 0:17:16.439 who were accused of using her product were said to 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:20.960 have escaped punishment, at least mostly mainly by virtue of 0:17:21.040 --> 0:17:25.000 being an upper class woman, but many feigned shock upon 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:29.960 learning their quote unquote cosmetics were actually poisonous, and that's 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:33.360 actually a plausible excuse because, as we talked about earlier, 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:36.679 in seventeenth century Italy, a lot of cosmetics did have 0:17:36.880 --> 0:17:42.800 arsenic and belladonna as just a regular ingredient. We're going 0:17:42.840 --> 0:17:46.680 to talk more about why Julia tafauna story still resonates, 0:17:47.359 --> 0:17:49.040 but first we'll have a little bit of a pause. 0:17:49.119 --> 0:18:04.840 I'm here from my sponsor. Welcome back to Criminalien. What's 0:18:04.880 --> 0:18:07.879 interesting is that more than a hundred years after her death, 0:18:08.080 --> 0:18:11.880 Julia to Fauna's legacy has still survived, and by brand 0:18:12.040 --> 0:18:15.480 name too. That is the kind of reach most companies 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:20.480 today would kill for no pun intended. And there is 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:24.080 even a high profile story about the use of Aquata 0:18:24.119 --> 0:18:28.800 fauna a century after Julia's death, and while almost all 0:18:28.880 --> 0:18:32.320 historians since the eighteenth century have dismissed this as pure 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:36.080 gossip and rumor, according to some accounts at the time, 0:18:36.760 --> 0:18:40.080 Mozart feared on his deathbed in seventeen ninety one that 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:43.159 he had been poisoned, and likely by his colleague and 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:47.960 rival Antonio Salieri, saying quote, I feel that I will 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:50.919 not last much longer. I am sure that I have 0:18:50.960 --> 0:18:55.320 been poisoned. I cannot rid myself of this idea. Someone 0:18:55.520 --> 0:18:59.000 has given me aquata fauna and what are the interesting things? 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:02.119 Is like all of the instances where you read his quote, 0:19:02.160 --> 0:19:04.840 sometimes this is a little longer, sometimes it's a little shorter. 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:12.159 It always mentions aquata fauna like by name. But in 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:16.520 truth it's it's so highly unlikely that Mozart was poisoned 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:20.400 by anyone, Sally Area or or his maide. You know, um, 0:19:20.440 --> 0:19:23.560 there's just no evidence to support his wild claim, although 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:26.400 he may have really truly believed he felt like he'd 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:30.600 been poisoned. Today most studies UM and historians point to 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:34.880 actually a possible strep infection that had gone too far, 0:19:35.320 --> 0:19:38.640 which can lead to complications of rheumatic fever um. They 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:43.440 also point to possible tricken noses from eating undercooked pork um, 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:46.720 and he had been having really terrible headaches near his 0:19:46.720 --> 0:19:49.719 his death, and they attribute that to possibly having been 0:19:49.760 --> 0:19:54.440 a subdural hematoma. Now, Mozart was not the only eighteenth 0:19:54.520 --> 0:19:59.000 century figure that was worried about aquata fauna. Pope Clement 0:19:59.080 --> 0:20:02.080 the fourteenth lived his final year in fairly poor health, 0:20:02.200 --> 0:20:06.840 with depression and also a fear of assassination. In fact, 0:20:06.960 --> 0:20:10.679 following his death in seventeen seventy four, rumors circulated that 0:20:10.760 --> 0:20:15.600 he had indeed been poisoned ultimately, though an autopsy determined 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:20.399 that he had died of natural causes. So julius legacy 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:22.960 is clearly kind of an interesting one. While her life 0:20:23.040 --> 0:20:25.240 story is often billed as a tale of a woman 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:27.920 who killed more than six hundred men, when you look 0:20:27.960 --> 0:20:30.719 more closely, what emerges is the case that looks a 0:20:30.720 --> 0:20:33.399 little bit more like she she felt she had a 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:37.120 personal calling in helping women out of abusive situations. Yeah. 0:20:37.160 --> 0:20:39.400 I always wonder if it goes back to her mother 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:41.639 and whatever was going on in that marriage. I wonder 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:44.280 that too, And we will never know what the truth 0:20:44.440 --> 0:20:47.760 was there. Uh. And certainly we don't have hard evidence 0:20:47.800 --> 0:20:51.679 regarding whether all of her clients were after akwatafauna or 0:20:51.760 --> 0:20:54.879 they really just needed her assistance with fine lines and wrinkles. 0:20:55.480 --> 0:20:57.920 It's not as though we have some handy dandy dust 0:20:57.960 --> 0:21:02.120 statistic tables regarding fatalities in Rome in the mid seventeenth century, 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:04.720 categorized by sex and cause of death that we could 0:21:04.800 --> 0:21:08.200 use to compare her story against. But we can look 0:21:08.320 --> 0:21:11.439 at some modern statistics. As we look at Julia's story, 0:21:11.680 --> 0:21:14.720 like the fact that, according to the National Coalition Against 0:21:14.800 --> 0:21:18.960 Domestic Violence, twenty people in the United States are physically 0:21:18.960 --> 0:21:24.840 abused by an intimate partner per minute per minute. Like, 0:21:24.920 --> 0:21:27.680 stop and let that sink in for a second. It's 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:30.720 just into the United States, and it's not a problem 0:21:30.840 --> 0:21:34.480 just in the United States. According to the World Health Organization, 0:21:34.920 --> 0:21:38.960 around the world, almost of women, it's a third of 0:21:39.040 --> 0:21:42.280 all women globally who have been in a relationship report 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:45.240 that they have experienced some form of violence by their 0:21:45.280 --> 0:21:49.879 internet partner in their lifetime. That is literally just the 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:54.320 tip of the iceberg when considering the modern domestic violence story. 0:21:54.359 --> 0:21:56.399 But when you think about that and all of the 0:21:56.480 --> 0:22:00.480 ramifications of it, it starts to become even clearer why 0:22:00.640 --> 0:22:03.879 Julia Tafauna emerges as a sort of folk hero in 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:06.840 some modern tellings of her story. And that's even with 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:09.440 so many gaps in terms of details about her life 0:22:09.440 --> 0:22:12.680 and work, you can still see where the fascination comes 0:22:12.680 --> 0:22:14.679 from and why the idea of a woman who was 0:22:15.040 --> 0:22:17.679 kind of a badass becomes even more compelling when the 0:22:17.720 --> 0:22:20.399 possibility is introduced that she was using her skills and 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:24.320 knowledge of botany and pharmacology to offer a means of empowerment. 0:22:25.240 --> 0:22:28.199 I mean, I'll be illegal, to be sure, to the 0:22:28.240 --> 0:22:33.840 women of the seventeenth century in Rome. Yeah, Julia, and 0:22:34.040 --> 0:22:36.720 I know you love her. I love Julia because I 0:22:36.840 --> 0:22:39.439 really she stood out to me as being one of 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:41.920 these women who we absolutely needed to keep on our 0:22:41.960 --> 0:22:45.800 list because she wasn't in it for the politics of anything. 0:22:45.920 --> 0:22:49.239 She seemed to be truly involved in this for the 0:22:49.280 --> 0:22:57.359 benefit of other women, and that that's just cool. Hey, Holly, 0:22:57.480 --> 0:23:01.359 what's your poison this week? Well? Uh, this is actually 0:23:01.400 --> 0:23:03.359 I feel like it should be your poison because you 0:23:03.400 --> 0:23:08.320 pointed out this recipe to me. Oh and the Italian 0:23:08.400 --> 0:23:10.959 Sicilian is of it is is kind of heavy as well, 0:23:11.080 --> 0:23:15.760 right right, You pointed me at a recipe for a 0:23:15.800 --> 0:23:19.080 cocktail called a pimpanilla, which because I had to click 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:22.880 on that, right, and how could you not? Uh So, 0:23:23.119 --> 0:23:28.159 this particular cocktail features one point five ounces of grappa, 0:23:28.320 --> 0:23:32.320 an ounce of freshly squeezed lime juice, three quarters of 0:23:32.320 --> 0:23:35.880 an ounce of Annas syrup, and one quarter of announce 0:23:35.960 --> 0:23:39.800 of Saint germains. So there's also a lot of accoutremal 0:23:40.000 --> 0:23:44.080 in the original recipe. There's some really fancy pants unicorn 0:23:44.760 --> 0:23:47.720 Um salt for the rim that you can make that 0:23:47.840 --> 0:23:50.000 is a lemon rosemary salt. I did not do that. 0:23:50.040 --> 0:23:53.240 I went the simple route. I also didn't like garnish 0:23:53.240 --> 0:23:55.920 it with an Annis pod, and I didn't even though 0:23:55.920 --> 0:23:58.720 I have a beautiful rosemary bush right outside my front door. 0:23:58.800 --> 0:24:00.879 Did I go out and get one to arnish it with? No? 0:24:00.960 --> 0:24:03.320 I did not. I just wanted to get it in 0:24:03.320 --> 0:24:06.639 the shaker and go to town. I expected to hate 0:24:06.720 --> 0:24:10.000 this cocktail. I know you did. Like everything about this 0:24:10.040 --> 0:24:12.560 cocktail is everything that I like, and I'm not the 0:24:12.560 --> 0:24:16.080 way you're drank it, right. It's one of those things where, um, 0:24:16.960 --> 0:24:20.360 I mean my my proclivities are usually towards something kind 0:24:20.400 --> 0:24:23.240 of like soft and light. I don't like a particularly 0:24:23.240 --> 0:24:26.080 fancy drink usually, like my go to is vodka and 0:24:26.119 --> 0:24:29.520 diet coke. I'm a very basic person. Now. Granted, if 0:24:29.600 --> 0:24:33.440