The artist Benvenuto Cellini (1500 – 1571) was a goldsmith and musician, and also one of the greatest sculptors of the Renaissance. He seems also to have been kind of a thug. He killed quite a lot of people, first “legitimately” fighting off soldiers of Charles III during his siege of Rome in 1527, but also after that, in what appear to have been bar fights and street brawls. Suffice to say, he made a lot of enemies.

He also contracted syphilis, which was a dreaded disease of the Renaissance. He had refused to be treated with mercuric chloride (known as “corrosive sublimate”) because even then, everyone knew it often killed patients. Still, for those desperate enough to try it, it sometimes helped.

But with his disease left untreated, some historians have speculated that at the so-called tertiary phase of the disease, he became mentally unbalanced.

Some enemies of Cellini invited him to dinner and sprinkled his food with mercuric chloride, a favorite poison of the era. He developed severe gastrointestinal symptoms, including vomiting and diarrhea, but he eventually recovered. And his syphilis was also cured. His poisoners had intended to kill him, but healed him instead.