Word: 1670s
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...idea in France. During the 17th Century one of the principal sources of income for France's alchemists was the sale of arsenic, or "succession powder," as it was happily known, to ambitious members of the upper classes. In the 1670s Paris was so beset by an epidemic of poisonings that a special court, the Chambre Ardente, was set up to handle this type of crime. One of its most fabulous accused was the glamorous and charitably-minded Marquise de Brinvilliers (a "much courted little woman," according to one source, "with a fascinating air of childlike innocence"), who, assisted...
...invasion of the Caithness estates by the Campbells in the 1670s is one of several possible origins of the legend-shrouded song, The Camp bells Are Comin...