Book Spotlight: The Cameo Keeper by Deborah Swift. Audiobook read by Diana Croft.

 

Rome 1644: A Novel of Love, Power, and Poison

 

Remember tonight... for it is the beginning of always ― Dante Alighieri

 

In the heart of Rome, the conclave is choosing a new Pope, and whoever wins will determine the fate of the Eternal City.

 

Astrologer Mia and her fiancé Jacopo, a physician at the Santo Spirito Hospital, plan to marry, but the election result is a shock and changes everything.

 

As Pope Innocent X takes the throne, he brings along his sister-in-law, the formidable Donna Olimpia Maidalchini, known as La Papessa – the female Pope. When Mia is offered a position as her personal astrologer, she and Jacopo find themselves on opposite sides of the most powerful family in Rome.

 

Mia is determined to protect her mother, Giulia Tofana, a renowned poisoner. But with La Papessa obsessed with bringing Giulia to justice, Mia and Jacopo's love is put to the ultimate test.

 

As the new dawn of Renaissance medicine emerges, Mia must navigate the dangerous political landscape of Rome while trying to protect her family and her heart. Will she be able to save her mother, or will she lose everything she holds dear?

For fans of "The Borgias" and "The Crown," this gripping tale of love, power, and poison will keep you on the edge of your seat until the very end.

 

Praise:

 

'historical fiction that is brisk, fresh and bristling with intrigue' 
~ Bookmarked Reviews ★★★★★

 

 Buy Link:

 Universal Buy Link: https://mybook.to/CameoKeeper

 

Deborah Swift is the author of twenty novels of historical fiction.

Her Renaissance novel in this series, The Poison Keeper, was recently voted Best Book of the Decade by the Wishing Shelf Readers Award. Her WWII novel, Past Encounters, was the winner of the BookViral Millennium Award and is one of seven books set in the WWII era.

Deborah lives in the North of England, close to the mountains and the sea.

 Author Links:

Website: www.deborahswift.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deborahswiftauthor/

Twitter / X: https://twitter.com/swiftstory

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authordeborahswift/

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/deborahswift1/

 

 

Poisonings Went Hand in Hand with the Drinking Water in Ancient Pompeii

Ancient Origins

The ancient Romans were famous for their advanced water supply. But the drinking water in the pipelines was probably poisoned on a scale that may have led to daily problems with vomiting, diarrhea, and liver and kidney damage. This is the finding of analyses of water pipe from Pompeii.

"The concentrations were high and were definitely problematic for the ancient Romans. Their drinking water must have been decidedly hazardous to health." This is what a chemist from University of Southern Denmark reveals: Kaare Lund Rasmussen, a specialist in archaeological chemistry. He analyzed a piece of water pipe from Pompeii, and the result surprised both him and his fellow scientists. The pipes contained high levels of the toxic chemical element, antimony.

 The result has been published in the journal Toxicology Letters.

 Romans Poisoned Themselves
For many years, archaeologists have believed that the Romans' water pipes were problematic when it came to public health. After all, they were made of lead: a heavy metal that accumulates in the body and eventually shows up as damage to the nervous system and organs. Lead is also very harmful to children. So there has been a long-lived thesis that the Romans poisoned themselves to a point of ruin through their drinking water.

Lead water pipe, Roman, 20-47 CE with owner’s name cast into the pipe. The most notable lady Valeria Messalina’ (third wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius) (CC BY 4.0)

 "However, this thesis is not always tenable. A lead pipe gets calcified rather quickly, thereby preventing the lead from getting into the drinking water. In other words, there were only short periods when the drinking water was poisoned by lead: for example, when the pipes were laid or when they were repaired: assuming, of course, that there was lime in the water, which there usually was," says Kaare Lund Rasmussen.

Ancient roman lead pipes in Ostia Antica (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Advanced Equipment at SDU
Unlike lead, antimony is acutely toxic. In other words, you react quickly after drinking poisoned water. The element is particularly irritating to the bowels, and the reactions are excessive vomiting and diarrhea that can lead to dehydration. In severe cases, it can also affect the liver and kidneys and, in the worst-case scenario, can cause cardiac arrest.

 This new knowledge of alarmingly high concentrations of antimony comes from a piece of water pipe found in Pompeii. -

 Or, more precisely, a small metal fragment of 40 mg, which I obtained from my French colleague, Professor Philippe Charlier of the Max Fourestier Hospital, who asked if I would attempt to analyse it. The fact is that we have some particularly advanced equipment at SDU, which enables us to detect chemical elements in a sample and, ever more importantly, to measure where they occur in large concentrations.

 Volcano Made it Even Worse
 Kaare Lund Rasmussen underlines that he only analyzed this one little fragment of water pipe from Pompeii. It will take several analyses before we can get a more precise picture of the extent, to which Roman public health was affected.

But there is no question that the drinking water in Pompeii contained alarming concentrations of antimony, and that the concentration was even higher than in other parts of the Roman Empire, because Pompeii was located in the vicinity of the volcano, Mount Vesuvius. Antimony also occurs naturally in groundwater near volcanoes.

The lead pipe sample is being analyzed at University of Southern Denmark. Credit: SDU

This is What the Researchers Did
The measurements were conducted on a Bruker 820 Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer.

The sample was dissolved in concentrated nitric acid. 2 ml of the dissolved sample was transferred to a loop and injected as an aerosol in a stream of argon gas which was heated to 6000 degrees C by the plasma.

All the elements in the sample were ionized and transferred as an ion beam into the mass spectrometer. By comparing the measurements against measurements on a known standard the concentration of each element is determined.

Top Image: An original Roman lead waterpipe in Bath, England. Photo: Andrew Dunn/CC BY SA 2.0).

 University of Southern Denmark. "Poisonings went hand in hand with the drinking water in ancient Pompeii." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 17 August 2017. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/08/170817110902.htm

The article ‘Poisonings went hand in hand with the drinking water in ancient Pompeii’ was originally published on Science Daily and has been republished under a Creative Commons license.

Renaissance-Era Italian Warlord Was Poisoned, Mummy Reveals

Renaissance-Era Italian Warlord Was Poisoned, Mummy Reveals

by Megan Gannon

Cangrande's carefully carved sarcophagus was opened so that his body could be studied by scientists. Credit: Courtesy of Gino Fornaciari

Forensic scientists in Italy have uncovered a mummy murder mystery.
A Renaissance-era warlord who dropped dead in 1329 wasn't killed by a nasty stomach illness, as had been previously suspected; he was actually poisoned, an autopsy of his corpse reveals.
Scientists say they've found traces of digitalis, or foxglove — a beautiful but potentially heart-stopping plant — in the digestive tract of Cangrande della Scala of Verona. [Image Gallery: 7 Potent Medicinal Plants] 

At the time of his death, Cangrande had a grip on an impressive chunk of northern Italy. He ruled Verona, and through successful military campaigns, he conquered the nearby cities of Vicenza, Padua and Treviso. And Cangrande wasn't just a powerful leader in battle; a true Renaissance man, he was also the leading patron of the poet Dante Alighieri.
On July 18, 1329, Cangrande made a triumphant entrance into Treviso, months after taking control of the city. But days later, he fell ill, with symptoms that included vomiting, fever and diarrhea. He died on July 22, 1329, at the age of 38.
Historical sources from that time said Cangrande died after drinking from a polluted spring. There were also rumors that Cangrande was intentionally poisoned, but Gino Fornaciari, a paleopathology researcher from the University of Pisa, who led the new study, told Live Science that he considered that possibility a legend.
Nearly 700 years later, scientists exhumed Cangrande from his richly decorated tomb at Verona's church of Santa Maria Antiqua and subjected his mummy to several medical investigations. They found that Cangrande suffered from a mild form of black lung and emphysema, probably because he was often exposed to smoky environments — palaces without fireplaces and military camps. The nobleman's bones also showed signs of arthritis consistent with regular horseriding.
In an examination of the mummy's digestive system, Fornaciari and colleagues found that Cangrande had consumed chamomile and black mulberry before his death. But then, they discovered something more unusual: foxglove pollen in Cangrande's rectum, as well as toxic concentrations of digoxin and digitoxin, two molecules from foxglove plants, in Cangrande's liver and feces samples.
"It was a real surprise," Fornaciari said in an email.

Even after nearly 700 years, Cangrande's body was relatively well preserved. Some of his clothing even survived.
Credit: Courtesy of Gino Fornaciari

View full size image

Careful doses of foxglove have historically been used for medicinal purposes, and even today, digoxin is recognized as a treatment for congestive heart failure. But the plant is extremely potent. Eating any part of a foxglove plant — its roots; drooping flowers; or long, green leaves — can induce nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hallucinations and a potentially fatal change in heart rate. Cangrande's symptoms described in historical accounts were consistent with a foxglove overdose, Fornaciari and his colleagues said.
The study, which appears in the February issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, doesn't completely solve the mystery of Cangrande's death. It is still possible that Cangrande's consumption of foxglove was a terrible mistake, Fornaciari and his colleagues wrote. But if the nobleman was intentionally poisoned with foxglove — perhaps disguised in a mixture of chamomile and black mulberry — there are a few likely suspects. Rival seats of power in the region, including the Republic of Venice or Ducate of Milan, may have been behind the murder. Or perhaps Cangrande was killed by someone even closer to him: Mastino II della Scala, his ambitious nephew and successor.