Customer Reviews

Bitter Nemesis: The Intimate History of Strychnine

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When I saw this book reviewed in Angew. Chem. Int. Eng. Ed. I thought it would be a great discussion of the long, difficult structure determination and the various total syntheses starting with the synthesis of Robert Burns Woodward. However, this book has almost nothing about the chemistry. A brief discussion of Sir Robert Robinson on structure determination and brief mention of the Woodward work is given without any chemical schemes. Page 227 does show 5 formulas that were proposed with structure "e" being the correct one proposed by Robinson, V. Prelog, and Woodward (all three were Nobel Prize winners in chemistry).

Very disappointing. Maybe someday someone will write a book about the chemistry.

BITTER NEMESIS is a medical and legal history of strychnine, beginning with its origins in India and tracing it through fairly modern times. There was, remarkable as it may seem now, a time when strychnine was viewed as a miracle drug, given on a regular basis as a tonic for women and children. Given the truly awful nature of a death from strychnine poisoning, it is difficult to understand why it fared so differently in the public perception than arsenic, for instance.

Quite a bit of BITTER NEMESIS is devoted to the legal arena. Several court cases are discussed very thoroughly. The acceptance by the courts of forensic evidence, it would seem, owes much to strychnine and its similarity to tetanus. The cases themselves are interesting, and Buckingham's analysis of them is quite thorough.

Buckingham is obviously an academic; there are footnotes for every chapter and an extensive bibliography. This does not mean his writing is dry and pedantic, just that sometimes there is a wealth of information that a reader may not find of interest. Depends, probably, on the expectations one brings to the book. If a person wishes to use BITTER NEMESIS as a resource when writing a mystery in which strychnine is used, the background is certainly there. There is enough information to write about a death by strychnine in enough detail for most readers.

While BITTER NEMESIS may not appeal to a universal audience, for those interested in such matters, it is an eminently readable book for anyone curious enough to track it down.