Not only is their bite very unpleasant, but they may convey a variety of diseases, including plague and blood Poisonings of various sorts.
"A Handbook of Health"
Woods Hutchinson
And what a strange manner is this to exercise one's enmities and vengeance by having recourse to such damnable artifices, after force and arms have not succeeded, and to attack the person of princes by Poisonings and assassinations."
"History of the United Netherlands, 1594"
John Lothrop Motley
Yet he who understands life at all knows that it is easier to imagine and suspect romantic Poisonings of this sort than it is to carry them out.
"The Women of the Caesars"
Guglielmo Ferrero