toxicology in history
The elements of murder. A history of poison, John Emsley (2006) (and listen to an interview with the author here)
A delightful potion of chemical erudition, forgotten science history and ghastly murder schemes.... Reading The Elements of Murder is like watching a hundred episodes of CSI, but without having to sit through the tedious personal relationships of the characters.... Along the way the bodies pile up as Emsley relates spectacular case histories of poisonings, accidental and criminal.... Emsley mines what he calls 'the darker side of the periodic table' with consumate skill.
Dick Teresi, The New York Times Book Review
Molecules of murder: criminal molecules and classic murders, John Emsley (2008)
John Emsley has crafted this clever book about murder by poisoning with the intention of serving two audiences – those fascinated by crime and by science. He deals with each poison with a detailed description of its properties, and as such it sometimes reads like a chemistry textbook. However, this heaviness of scientific description is alleviated by the detail about the precise use of the poisons in real life.
Emsley says there are, thankfully, few poisons available to the assassins and murderers of the 21st century that are not fully understood. So perhaps the days of murder by poisoning are coming to a close.
Steve Conner, The Independent (read the full review here)
The Poisoner's Handbook, Blum D (2010)
Blum's extraordinary narrative alchemy fuses Gettler and Norris's painstaking, laborious undertakings with the birth of safety measures (the Food and Drug Administration wasn't much of one until the 1930s), the scandal surrounding workers' exposure to radium, and many other measures that bring home how volatile the transformation from prosperity to struggle really was. A few things get lost, like what debt both Norris and Gettler owed to colleagues in other cities and countries (Blum, to her credit, makes a note of this in supplementary material) or what clashes they had with law enforcement (though the ones with government are well-documented.) But these flaws don't diminish The Poisoner's Handbook's glorious depictions of the "coming-of-age party for forensic toxicology." The book is an unexpected yet appropriate open-sesame into a world that was planting seeds for the world -- with lethal toxins and cutting-edge tools -- that would later, darkly bloom.
Weinman S (2010) The Criminalist - Barnes and Noble Review
See also ..
- video presentation (youtube)
- National Public Radio interview (audio)
- Time Magazine interview
forensic toxicology in history - selected references
- Mathieu Orfila's life (as a toxicologist in the 19th Century) - Chemistry, Medicine and Crime and on the detection of poisons (in the Lancet 1831; 16(398): 72-76) and book search results in Google Books; his story at NLM Visible Proofs exhibition
- Forensic chemistry in 19th Century Britain. Coley NG Endeavour 1998; 22(4): 143-147
- Francoise-Emanuel Fodere
- Sir Robert Christison (and his life story/ autobiography)
- Alfred Swaine Taylor, On poisons in relation to medical jurisprudence and medicine (1875) and on Poisoning with strychnia (1856)
- The odour of (potassium) cyanide. Gwilt JR. The Medico-Legal Journal 1961; 29(2):98-99
- Paul Brouardel, Les asphyies par les gaz, les vapeurs et les anesthesiques (1896)
- Ambroise Tardieu (Wikipedia) L'empoisonnement (1867)
- 50 Years of Forensic Science, Daeid NN (2010), Wiley-Blackwell - for a more recent 'historical review' of forensic science through the eyes of those writing in the Journal of the Forensic Science Society (buy it here)
arsenic in history - the Marsh test
The Marsh test equipment
Dr. Alfred Swaine Taylor (left) and a colleague, performing the Marsh test on samples taken from the body of John Parsons Cook.
The two were looking for traces of arsenic and antimony (1856). National Library of Medicine
- The Marsh test for arsenic (James Marsh) described in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 1836; 21: 229-236
- arsenic at Wolfram Alpha and at Theodore Gray's photographic Periodic Table
Arsenic flametest (Wikimedia)
Trial of Madeleine Smith
Trial of the Seddons
Trial of William Palmer