Customer Reviews

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

5 star:		(60)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I love reading about famous crimes, medical oddities, and cases solved by forensics. This book has them all, and is every bit as entertainingly well-written as my old favorite, THE MEDICAL DETECTIVES. by Berton Roueche.

Better yet, the title, THE POISONER'S HANDBOOK, is not just hyperbole. In describing famous New York City crimes committed with poison, the author discusses the chemical makeup, toxic effects, and early-20th-century sources of (1) chloroform, (2) methyl alcohol, (3) cyanide, (4) arsenic, (5) mercury, (6) carbon monoxide, (7) radium, and (8) thallium.

In reading this book, you will probably find that there is a lot you thought you knew but didn't really know about well-known poisons frequently encountered in mystery novels and television shows. Did you think that fast-acting cyanide delivers a "one whiff, you're done" death? Think again! Did you think that only Skid Row bums drank wood alcohol during Prohibition? Not so! Did you know that Marie Curie died of radiation poisoning? Probably, but did you know exactly how radium works in the body to produce aplastic anemia and death?

In reading this book, you will also learn about pioneering forensics efforts that required the grinding up of large samples of brain and organ tissue prior to laboratory testing. (In the early 20th century, testing was done with "wet" chemistry; today it is done with "dry" chemistry that only requires smears for testing.) The testing itself required many time-consuming steps and tricky procedures. Some of the testing involved tissue samples that were retained in room-temperature containers for weeks and months.

The book also tells the story of three great pioneers in forensics science--NYC medical examiner Charles Norris, his chief chemist, Alexander Gettler, and New Jersey medical examiner Harrison Martland. Norton and Gettler lobbied tirelessly against Prohibition, which caused countless deaths from bad booze (renatured industrial alcohol), and against other toxic commercial products sold for hair removal, better-looking skin, and generally improved health. Martland did important research into the effects of radium on factory workers who painted radium watch dials, and also lobbied against the sale of radium-laced health elixirs, such as Radithor. Some of these toxic products actually worked--until they succeeded in poisoning the user.

Although the book is an easy read, it is well-researched, and includes footnotes describing the author's sources. (My advance review copy did not include footnote numbers within the text, but presumably the numbers will appear in the final printed book.) The book also includes a useful bibliography of scholarly works on forensic toxicology.

I love true crime books. I find it fascinating to read about crimes that really happened. I know that makes me weird, but so be it.

For a person who has similar (morbid) tastes, "The Poisoner's Handbook" perfectly fits the bill. These crimes take place in New York City during the Jazz Age. The author carefully describes various poisons, such as wood alcohol, arsenic, and radium and the various effects it had on the victims. If your knowledge of poisons is based on tv shows or movies, you will be surprised to find out a lot you (probably) didn't know already.
As you can guess, forensic science was in its infancy at the time. This book focuses on Charles Norris, the New York City coroner, Alexander Gettler, Mr Norris' lead chemist and Harrison Martland, the New Jersey coroner. These people are for real, not like the old "Ouincy, ME" television show of long ago.
When you see old movies of people drinking "bathtub gin" during Prohibition, it looks so carefree and fun. But it wasn't. Many deaths were caused by the "hooch" that was made from renatured industrial alcohol. It wasn't a pretty death, either. It makes me wonder why anyone would be willing to take the risk of drinking homemade booze, but plenty of people did it, I guess thinking "It won't happen to me".
When you see what types of ingredients were in the common ordinary household items, you will wonder how anybody managed to stay alive in that type period. You think toxic products are bad now, when you read this book, you will be surprised how far (or maybe not) we have come.
One of the more interesting sections (to me) was the part about radium. You wouldn't think of ingesting a radium laced "health elixir" now. But it was very common during that time period. It also made me think of the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz. It makes me wonder what happened after the end of the story.
I had heard the story of the radium watch factory workers from my father. I was pleasantly surprised to see it told in full in this book. It seems somebody might have thought about the possibility of poisoning in the factory workers, but apparently the company didn't realize what radium is capable of doing.
I strongly recommend this book for any fans of true crime or the "CSI" roster of shows. It's a great read and you will learn a lot about poisons,

Police work has always included an element of an arms race between criminals trying to outwit authorities and get away with a crime and police trying to prevent this from happening. This battle of wits is especially true in the case of murder. Science in the latter part of the 1800's had exponentially added to the store of chemicals whose use could prove to be fatal to humans. Science was great at finding all sorts of new elements and chemical compounds. The problem was that science was not always good at seeing if these new discoveries were safe around people, and there was no shortage of people who were willing to explore the lethality of these new chemical. It is against this "golden age of poison" that Blum builds her history. Through the dangerous poisons (chloroform, arsenic, mercury, cyanide, radium and wood and grain alcohols) active in the early twentieth century New York City she tells the story of Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler, who are arguably the fathers of the modern Medical Examiner's office and of forensic science. Set against the backdrop of the hubbub of New York City as a growing city, a center of society and money, and as ground zero in the social experiment of Prohibition, Norris works to advance the medical examiner's office from a position of patronage to Tammany Hall to an office integral to the solving of crime and building a knowledge base for civic health information. Norris would be the driving force of change trying to build a modern department built upon science, as well as be a Cassandra warning about the coming dangers of Prohibition in terms of public health as drinkers, cut off from their normal alcohol, would turn to poisonous wood alcohol drinks, despite the government's attempts to render industrial wood alcohols poisonous (denatured). Meanwhile Gettler, the meticulous toxicologist continues experimenting to test and discover new ways to identify and test organs and tissue for the presence of poisons - the better to convict poisoners.

Each chapter revolves around cases encountered that involved the particular poison, covering the two decades between 1915 and 1936. A recurring theme of the chapters is how society focused on the triumph of the industrial age, blasting ahead with new chemicals without worry or heed to potential health effects. Cyanide gas would be freely pumped into areas to rid buildings and ships of rats and other pests with little regard to the dangers should the gas seep up pipes to inhabited areas on the floors above, or the danger to sailors in fumigated ships that had not had the gas fully ventilated from below decks. Arsenic, mercury compounds, cyanide compounds and thallium were all generously available for purchase as rat poison, cleaning agents and for, often dubious, medicinal purposes. But what could be a benefit to society could also very quickly become deadly when used incorrectly or illicitly. Glow in the dark radium watch faces were a boon that came from necessity in World War I, but the need to `retip' the radium paint brushes by using one's lips introduced radium poisons to the factory worker's bodies, eating them from the inside out.

It fell upon science to prove these poisonings were often deliberate, and may be a result of a crime. Toxicology searched for ways to detect even minute traces in the body after death, and to determine how long this telltale trace lingers in the body after death and burial. It was up to the medical examiner's office to take their research and package it for juries to understand in order to obtain a conviction. This took time, dedicated research and effort of Norris, Gettler and many others. Today, with crime procedure shows such as CSI the norm it is amazing to think that the structure, procedures and values of these kinds of investigations is only 60-80 years old. This book is a blend of several stories - part history, part science and part sociology. The book also points out how attempts from some areas of government to remove poisons from the lives of citizens came up against other government efforts to remove one large `poison' from people's lives only to force them to seek out even deadlier poisons in Prohibition. The result is a very readable account of the government at some of its best and its worst in regards to the safety of the public.

As I started "The Poisoner's Handbook", I thought this was a great book: a fine history of modern American forensic science, told through a double biography of Norris and Gettler, two of its major founders, and illuminated with engrossing tales of murder, mayhem, and nightmarish misadventure. That thought died as soon as I started to spot the technical explanations that were uninformative, misleading, or downright wrong. Will a dozen examples do?

p. 56: Hydrocyanic acid (HCN) is not a potent acid or corrosive; it is just about the weakest acid known. The fact that it is ferociously toxic has nothing to do with its acidic strength.

p. 22: Chloroform is not terribly corrosive; on keratinized tissue (normal skin) it has no effect at all.

p. 86: You cannot get anything by mixing arsenic (As), copper (Cu) and hydrogen (H2) because the first two are metals and the last is a gas that does not react spontaneously with either of them.

p. 179: Radium (Ra) does not react with water to produce radon (Rn); it produces Rn by atomic decay.

p. 183: Radium (Ra) does not decay to produce polonium (Po) and radon (Rn) - its atomic weight is far less than that of Po and Rn combined so it cannot produce both. It can decay to produce Rn, which then decays to produce Po.

p. 187: Sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) is not slightly acidic; as any highschooler knows, it is moderately basic.

p. 191: There is no such thing as diethyl phlatate. (Did Blum mean diethyl phthalate? Did anyone proofread this book?)

p. 201: Ethanol (EtOH) does not "dissolve" into acetic acid; it is converted to acetic acid by tissue enxymatic activity.

p. 206: DDT is not an organophosphate; it contains no phosphorous at all. It is a chlorinated hydrocarbon.
passim: Blum does not seem to realize that wood alcohol, methyl alcohol, and methanol are just three different names for the same compound, used at different times as chemical terminology became more precise over the years.

And at least two misconversions from US weight units to metric.

How Blum got a Pulitzer for popular science writing and a job teaching it at the university level I cannot imagine; perhaps her zoology is better than her chemistry (it would have to be much, MUCH better), but her chemistry is far too inadequate to qualify her to explain it to others.

I propose that henceforward any book purporting to explain chemistry for the layman should be vetted by a committee of ten members randomly chosen from the American Chemical Society, before it is let loose on the unsuspecting public. Why shouldn't popular science writings be subject to the same peer review that professional writings are?

If Blum had left out the chemistry or else got it right, this would be a four-star book; as it is, it's a one.

While it's clear she took painstaking work to uncover the history of the period, her science (medical and toxicological) is appalling. Since the subject matter was so interesting, I read this with fond anticipation. Unfortunately, I found myself either rolling my eyes or laughing in derision whenever she pretended to speak as an authority on matters chemical.

She describes cyanide's [p. 58] poisonous action as due to cyanide preferentially attaching to hemoglobin over oxygen. That's wrong; cyanide kills by inhibiting mitochondrial cytochrome C oxidase. What she describes is carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning. And cyanide does not leave cyanotic corpses; cyanide poisoning results in pink coloring of the skin in its victims, just as does CO.

She is not even consistent from page to page. Regarding the murder weapon used to kill Albert Snyder [p. 164] she refers
to it as "a lead sash weght", yet 3 pages later she refers to it as "an iron sash weight".

Some of her comments are frankly incomprehensible. E.g. [p. 184], "Radium also emits, to a lesser degree or positrons, two other kinds of radiation: beta radiation, which consists of electrons, and gamma radiation, which contains a dangerous mix of X-rays and other subatomic materials."

Yes, beta radiation can be in the form of electrons or positrons (postively charged electron-like particles). But gamma rays
are gamma rays, electromagnetic wave packets within a certain range of frequencies. X-rays are of a different range of frequencies; she does not specify what "other subatomic materials" she posits to be part of gamma radiation.

(There are others I could cite, such as her alleging that sodium carbonate [washing soda] is a weak acid, when in fact it is a weak alkali.)

This is a sloppily written book, in part because apparently no one consulted a real toxicologist or forensic pathologist to fact-check the text. Do not expect to learn any reliable science from this book.

Alexander Gettler "positively hated the idea that some poisoner off the street could outwit him." No other city in the United States in the early 1900's had a toxicology lab. Gettler was hired to design the lab and invent the methods for analyzing poisons. He was the perfect man for the job.

"If research methods didn't exist, he would develop them himself. If a new poison or drug came on the market, he went off to a butcher shop, just around the corner from his Brooklyn home, and bought three pounds of liver."

Poisoners during this time were hard to catch and even harder to convict in a court of law. The science of toxicology was so new that it seemed to many jurors to be nothing more than conjecture so a person guilty of poisoning could easily walk free.

Gettler worked tirelessly at his work and his paper, "The Toxicology of Cyanide," was so thorough and accurate that it was referenced into the 21st century.

Deborah Blum writes thoroughly about a fascinating subject. Her writing remains interesting while still including the more technical chemistry involved in toxicology.

Blum recounts some of the more notorious cases like Typhoid Mary and introduces us to America's Lucretia Borgia, Mary Fanny Creighton, who continued to haunt Gettler for twelve years after her 'not guilty' verdict in the murder of her brother and mother-in-law.

Or Eben M. Byers, a fifty-two year old millionaire, industrialist, athlete and social elitist, who enjoyed his health drink, Radithor while his bones were mysteriously splintering, his skin was yellowing and his kidneys failing. He drank over a thousand bottles of his health drink never imagining that the radium-based drink was his killer.

"This is a poison. Warn Everyone." Gettler's message to doctors after realizing wood alcohol was responsible for the severe weakness and abdominal pains, vomiting, blindness, heart failure and death. Used as a substitute during Prohibition, wood alcohol often caused blindness and death.

Wood Alcohol, radium, arsenic, mercury, carbon monoxide, ethyl alcolhol... it's a wonder anyone lived a long life with these poisons freely available and often freely dispensed.

This is a very captivating book for the reader with an interest in science and history.

On seeing the description of this well written, extensively researched history of forensic chemistry by a Pulitzer Prize winning science journalist I was hoping that I could exercise the well-worn expression "reads like the best fiction"; instead this is a book of historical vignettes of developments in toxicology and forensic chemistry that is exquisitely researched, clearly described and placed in interesting and accurate contexts; but, in my inexpert opinion it lacks the fiction-like attributes of a scientific history like Jennet Conant's "Tuxedo Park". The writing is lucid, non-technical and interesting, and great effort has been placed in developing its scientific and historical accuracy, but the case studies and the criminal incidents which it describes in developing the context of toxicological breakthroughs do not read like mini-mysteries. I would certainly have been pleased with this excellent work if I were looking for a history of forensic chemistry describing the development of particular techniques organized around the assays developed to detect particular compounds and poisons; as I was also looking for well-developed short mysteries based around these historical developments I was slightly disappointed with this otherwise masterful work of science journalism.

--Ira Laefsky

Until reading this book I had never given any thought to how forensic medicine started. I had no idea that in the early 1900's our country was not as advanced as European countries in it's efforts to use science to make definitive determinations of the causes of deaths. The author begins the book by explaining that medical examiners were elected in NYC at the turn of the century, and the Tammany Hall system resulted in incompetent and corrupt medical examiners holding the office. A reform movement resulted in the establishment of an ME's office that not only operated respectably, but that undertook cutting edge research in order to come up with methods to determine if people had been poisoned. The book is arranged in chapters for the major types of poisoning of the early 1900's.

This book does NOT read like a textbook. The author provides you with the political and social picture, and also the personalities of the various doctors who developed the tests to determine poisons as well as the vicitms and the perpetrators. One historical point I had been totally unware of was that doctors pushed for repeal of Prohibition. During prohibition there was a dramatic increase in the number of people dying due to deadly concoctions sold by bootleggers. In addition, the U.S. government required manufacturers to add some horrific chemicals to products that had alcohol in them but were not meant for drinking in an attempt to prevent people from drinking them. Alcoholics drank those products anyway, with terrrible consequences.

One of the saddest chapters was about radium. In WW1 soldiers needed watch faces that could be read in dim light or darkness. It was discovered that radium glowed and was good for this purpose. Women in a factory in New Jersey used their mouths to wet paintbrushes they dipped into radium for painting those numbers. In addition, the factory air had a dangerously high level of radium in it. As a result, these women had heavy exposure to radium. Radiation poisoning sickened and ultimately killed them and some sued and won a settlement from their employer. There were also companies selling water containing radium as a health drink. Sadly, it wasn't until a well known and wealthy NYC man died (from consumption of radium drinks) that any effort was made to outlaw products containing this deadly substance and force companies to protect their workers from it.

The author obviously did a lot of research for this book, and did an excellent job in providing simple but full explanations of the science. I don't give a lot of books 5 stars, but this one absolutely deserves it.

The Poisoners Handbook is not just a history of forensic medicine/science in the USA but a catalog of regulatory failure concerning the quality of the food and, particularly, drink. The wowsers (or moralists), who installed Prohibition, killed more people through bootleg liquor than they ever saved through enforced abstinence. Curiously this issue is a hot topic in Europe and Australia today with the current epidemic of binge drinking and its consequent anti-social behaviour by the young prompting the politicians to discuss how to bring this under control. Only by reading this book did I realise how easy it was to dispose of rivals (for either love or property) nearly a century ago. Professor Blum discusses not just the poisons used to attack individuals but also industrial chemicals such as radium and tetra-ethyllead (the anti-knock additive for gasoline which was responsible for the deaths of many workers involved in manufacture of radium phosphors and anti-knock. One is staggered how the industry concerned held out against change despite overwhelming evidence that industrial exposure was responsible. I have changed my perspective on Thomas Midgley.

It's not clear to me that the explanations of the chemical structure of the various poisons deployed adds anything for the average reader. There are some errors, the most egregious (if you're a prospective poisoner) being when 50 mg of cyanide is converted to US units as nearly 2 ounces when it is only one thousandth of that amount.

I greatly enjoyed the book.

Blum writes an intriguing history of the New York City medical examiner's office and fascinating accounts of crimes involving poisons.
Unfortunately the discussion of the science involved in the crimes and their detection ranges from simplistic to inaccurate. To give just one example out of many, radon is described as "...a gas created by an interaction of radium and water." Radon is, indeed, derived from radium, but as a result of radioactive decay, not a chemical reaction involving water. The author mentions several scientists in her "Gratitudes" chapter but none is listed among those who read the manuscript, and that is most unfortunate.