ABSTRACT
Armchair toxicologists will react with incredulity and indignation to the suggestion that many English monarchs were not poisioned at all, but died of porphyria, a disease invented by modern physicians. The poisoner’s art reached its highest achievements in Italy during the heyday of the Borgias. The claim that this family knew the secret of a subtle and deadly venom, beyond the reach of modern science, can hardly be substantiated, but poisoning was certainly a hazard among the nobility and clergy of sixteenth-century Rome. Livingstone went to Africa as a missionary, but he soon became an explorer and finally a reformer, dedicated to the overthrow of the slave trade by the foundation of colonial settlements to encourage legitimate industry and commerce. His achievements in these vocations have overshadowed his work as a doctor.
