Aqua Tofana was a strong, arsenic-based poison created in Sicily around 1630 that was reputedly widely used in Palermo, Naples, Perugia, and Rome, Italy, during the Renaissance. The name Aqua Tofana has evolved to refer to a category of slow poisons that are deadly but largely undetectable, just as Aqua Tofana was. These slow poisons may have been used frequently through the nineteenth century. It has been associated with Giulia Tofana, or Tofania, a woman from Palermo, purportedly the leader of a ring of six poisoners in Rome, who sold Aqua Tofana to Italian women who wanted to kill their husbands.
