The Poisoner’s Handbook Ch 3-4

“All of it reminded them only of mistakes that they intended not to make again” – 74, The Poisoner’s Handbook

Chapters three and four dealt with Cyanides and Arsenic respectively. The way the book works is that at the beginning of the chapter a crime is introduced where someone is killed by an unknown poison. Then Alexander Gettler is called, who goes through autopsies to discover new poisons. By the end of the chapter, the crime is solved, but usually there is not enough evidence to convict the person who committed the crime, so they are free. After this, Gettler performs more tests with the poison so next time the person can be properly convicted.

A few more connections to Murder of the Century popped up in this chapter. The book mentioned sending someone to Sing Sing, a correctional facility in New York that used to be used for death sentences. The Poisoner’s Handbook and Murder of the Century have a ton in common; they are both murder books that deal with tricky murderers that get sent to a trial where there usually isn’t enough evidence to convict them, so then the books take you back to the murders to find more clues. This brings up a question: Why is this type of novel at this time period so popular? This book also reminds me of Murder of the Century because there are some veery interesting parts and then some very boring parts.

The most exciting part of the Cyanide chapter is when it talked about all the lowkey speakeasy’s that popped up during the prohibition. There were a pair of cops that would bust the speakeasy’s in very creative ways. For example, they would pretend to be famous opera singers, sing for the bar, and then arrest them and close down the place. They took their job and had a ton of fun with it.

Poisons were so popular during this time period because there had not been enough research about them, so it wasn’t completely known how they worked. Also, they were found in everyday products, so they were easy to acquire. One problem in the Arsenic chapter was that there is a small amount of Arsenic in our body already, so it was hard for the attorney to prove that the arsenic found in the autopsy was from an outside source.

The quote at the top describes the circle of each chapter. A murderer uses a new poison and they figure everything out too late. In the Cyanide chapter, someone got away with putting cyanide in a restaurant’s blueberry pie, causing everyone that ordered it to get sick or die. Because it is a delayed effect, the murderer had time to leave the scene and not get caught. To me, the most interesting parts of each chapter are the motives that the murderers have as well as how they find out who to convict. Usually the motives deal with getting rid of annoying people. In one case, a girl kills her sisters and parents so she can have all the inheritance from her parents.

Hopefully no one is annoying so I won’t have to use any techniques I’ve learned from reading this book… Just remember, if you are eating something and it tastes funny, you probably should stop eating it. That advice would have saved many people from the white Arsenic powder from Chapter 4.

 

The Poisoner’s Handbook: Ch 1-2

“No one knew how to fix it because no one was sure why it happened.” – 10, The Poisoner’s Handbook

Each chapter in The Poisoner’s Handbook is about a type of poison and how it came to use. When all of these poisons are put together in a book, it’s a poisoner’s handbook, hence the title. So far, the book has covered Chloroform and Wood Alcohol. To keep the book interesting, the novel includes an interesting story about how each poison became popular and a case where it was used. The first two chapters are set back in the 1910s, when poisons first became popular. They were easy to use without leaving a huge trace, so they were involved in many murders. This book combines anecdotes with science to create an interesting blend of fiction and science.

The Chloroform chapter talks about how the poison was used to kill people in the hospital, to “speed up” their death. An Austrian coroner, Frederic Mors, self-reported himself to have killed many people in the hospital using poison. The chapter discusses the difficulty of getting sufficient evidence to prove him guilty, along with small anecdotes of how he found the correct dosage.

The Wood Alcohol chapter is dated slightly after the first chapter, and discusses life during the Prohibition & Temperance Movement. A smart pathologist, Alexander Gettler, predicted that when Prohibition was implemented, the number of deaths caused by wood alcohol would increase, due to its cheap cost. People would try to make their own types of alcohol and would poison themselves.

These two chapters reminded me of the last book I read for this class, Murder of the Century. The two books are both dated at the turn of the 20th century and take place in New York. They both involve crimes, so Tammany Hall is part of both books. Each book contains mystery murders and lead the reader through the journey to find out who committed the crimes. I am interested to read more of The Poisoner’s Handbook to see if there are more similarities between the two.

So far, this book is somewhat interesting, but I hope it picks up a little more. The most interesting parts so far have been the murders and how they were done so professionally in places like the hospital. I predict that as the book goes on, the poisons will begin to get more complex, which will lead to more complex murders. So far, the chemicals have been pretty basic, and the murders are basic as well, like putting a cloth of chloroform over a patient. But as the book progresses, it will become more complex.

Chloroform in the Civil War                                                                                                                    The book also discussed using poison during WWI, and how the Germans used it first and the United States held back, feeling that it was unfair. Then, realizing all the people being killed in combat, the U.S. decided to turn to poison as well. This link discusses poison in the Civil War.

Wood Alcohol during Prohibition                                                                                                          The book refers to WWI as the chemist’s war, as does this article. This article also discusses how Prohibition led to an increase in deaths by wood alcohol, and it is interesting because it blames this on the government. I believe that the author would agree with the statement that the government caused the rise of wood alcohol in the early 1900s by making alcohol illegal. This would cause people to turn to cheap and illegal ways to get alcohol, which makes it more likely that they will drink something bad and accidentally poison themselves.