Science suggests that Jeanne died of natural causes. That poisoned gloves were the culprit is a common myth, and a gloriously believable one given the popularity of perfumed gloves at the time. It is said that her perfumer, Rene lé Florentin, concocted the perfumed, poisoned gloves that felled her rival, Jeanne D'Albret, who died after mysteriously falling ill following a shopping trip. If we're talking about perfume and war, we can't leave out the constantly squabbling Medici family: Catherine de Medici made a name for herself in France in the 1500s when she was implicated in the St. Portrait of Catherine de Medici by Corneille de Lyon, 1536. He wasn't totally wrong: Black clay and alcohol have disinfecting and filtering effects. While perfumes could be the face of poison, Sushruta also mentioned that sprinkling the earth with perfume and other materials (wine, black clay, and cow poop) could cure the earth of poison. The Sushrita Samhita lists common poisonings: Lethal doses of anything available were mixed with food, drink, honey, medicine, bathing water, anointing oils, eyelash pigments and sprinkled over clothes, beds, couches, shoes, garlands and jewelry, horse saddles, and perfumes-anywhere that might allow it to sink into pores. Writing in the sixth century BCE, the ancient Indian surgeon Sushruta outlined a perfumed connection to death and its use in warfare in his text, the Sushruta Samhita.

At this time, medicines and perfumes share both ingredients and centers of production. The ingredients lists of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny all explored the medicinal, political, and beautiful uses of herbs, animal parts, and floral absolutes. The Sumerians may have been the first, but ancient Rome and Greece quickly followed.

People were poisoning each other for political gain and biological warfare many thousands of years before Jesus walked. We could start in most countries when it comes to death by perfume-it's actually a tale older than Christ. Appropriately, much of the history of beauty-and in particular, of perfume-has been a one-way ticket, paid for in alcohol and essential oil, straight into the afterlife. In The Secret History, Donna Tartt writes the same and goes further: To her, death is the mother of beauty, and we endlessly seek its capture because we want to live forever. In his essay 'Privacy in the Films of Lana Turner,' the writer Wayne Koestenbaum describes it as a vector-and one that may not have a clear trajectory. Beauty has always been a direction marker.

Luca perfume poison