What's a Poison Got to Do with It?

At the beginning of the twentieth century it was common to administer poisons to get rid of unwanted people, or simply to ingest poisons by accident. The science of forensic toxicology was not well developed yet, and many death certificates were issued without properly identifying the cause of death. Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer Deborah Blum has created a larger story structured like a set of short stories in which the villains are the poisons and the heroes are Dr. Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler. Norris was New York City’s first medical examiner, and Gettler was his toxicologist. Both men performed innovative lab work, helped advance the science of forensics, and saved numerous lives by establishing the toxicity of previously unknown poisons. The subtitle Murder and Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York seems like a marketing strategy because jazz is rarely mentioned in the book. The book is divided into 11 chapters, an introduction, and an epilogue. Each chapter is named after a poison: chloroform, wood alcohol, cyanides, arsenic, mercury, carbon monoxide (parts I and II), methyl alcohol, ethyl alcohol, and thallium. Each poison is connected with short stories, along with advances in forensic toxicology associated with it.