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Aqua Tofana: The 17th Century Husband Killer

Sometime in the summer of 1791, or perhaps even earlier, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart fell ill. His biographer, Franz Niemetschek, described him as pale and melancholy.

Constanze later told the musician Vincent Novello and his wife, Mary, that Mozart believed the poison was Aqua Tofana, a colourless, tasteless, and odourless liquid that could be mixed with the victim's food without detection. Di Adamo was reportedly hanged, drawn, and quartered, though another account claims she was "closed and bound, alive, in a canvas sack… [and] thrown from the roofs of the bishop’s palace into the street in the presence of the populace." To conceal its true purpose, the poison was often sold in glass jars labelled as Manna of St. Nicholas —a popular healing oil supposedly collected from the bones of the saint in a church in Bari.

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