If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways: Get help with access Institutional accessĪccess to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. He also noted that Caravita knew how to make the oil and might be willing to pass on that knowledge, for a price. L’Abbatino boasted that Giovio had promised him a sample of the antidote to bring back to Mantua. A second test of the oil, on a Mantuan criminal poisoned with arsenic, yielded similar results. The other prisoner, who was given no antidote, died in great agony. Immediately, Caravita anointed one of them with some of the oil, and the man’s heart and pulse quickly returned to normal. Led by the pope’s personal physician, Paolo Giovio, the doctors gave both prisoners a good quantity of a deadly aconite called napellus, enough to kill “not merely two men, but one hundred.” As the poison took effect, the prisoners started to gesticulate wildly and cry out from the pain in their hearts. He commanded his medical personnel to try it on two criminals who had been condemned to death. Far from ignoring Caravita’s claims, Pope Clement decided to have the oil tested. The antidote had been created by a surgeon named Gregorio Caravita, who offered it to Pope Clement VII with the assurance that it would cure any poison taken into the body. When he returned home to Mantua, he would bring the prince “the most precious thing one could have in the world.” This marvelous item was not a rare gem, nor a priceless metal, nor a weapon of war, but instead a medicinal oil that had been proven to work against poison. In the heat of a Roman August in 1524, an agent called L’Abbatino wrote to his patron, Federico II Gonzaga of Mantua, with a bold pronouncement.
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