{"id":11128,"date":"2024-08-20T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-20T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11128"},"modified":"2024-08-19T21:45:03","modified_gmt":"2024-08-20T01:45:03","slug":"name-your-poison-actually-no-dont","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=11128","title":{"rendered":"Name Your Poison (actually, no, don’t)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A thought-provoking presentation on poisons at last month\u2019s conference of the Public Safety Writers Association reminded me of a blog post I\u2019d written a while ago. Such a relief for a crime writer to get away from guns for a while\u2014and don\u2019t even talk about knives! The tagteam presentation by Janet Gregor and Gloria Casale prompted me to update my earlier post. Plus, it gives me a chance to use this painting of \u201cCleopatra Testing Poisons on Condemned Prisoners,\u201d showing she didn\u2019t let an opportunity to conduct scientific research go to waste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A PBS documentary<\/a> on poisonings begins: In 1922, 101 New Yorkers hanged themselves, 444 died in car accidents, 20 were crushed in elevators. There were 237 fatal shootings, and 34 stabbings. And that year, 997 New Yorkers died of poisoning<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not all those deaths were intentional, it turns out. A century ago, life was full of poisoning hazards at work and at home. You may remember the below-stairs tour of cleaning products, rat poisons, polishes, and \u201cremedies\u201d in the movie Gosford Park<\/em>, each one of which looked mighty suspicious when the master was murdered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A major cause of death was carbon monoxide (CO), an odorless, tasteless gas that got into the air thanks to leaky stoves and gaslights piping. Even today, when houses are shut up tight for winter, we still hear about deaths from malfunctioning space heaters or, difficult to believe though this is, charcoal grills people roll inside to heat up the house. You may remember when seven members of a Minnesota family died of accidental CO poisoning in December 2021.The culprit? A faulty furnace.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Still, poisonings are much rarer today than they used to be because in 1917 New York City hired Dr. Charles Norris to be the city\u2019s (and the nation\u2019s) first chief medical examiner. Norris, born into a wealthy family, was one of those larger-than-life characters who create their own weather. Norris, in turn, hired Alexander Gettler to head the City\u2019s first toxicology laboratory. Gettler and his staff built the field of toxicology from scratch, and he and Norris created modern forensic science. CSI <\/em>fans are grateful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As they brought science to the analysis of murder victims, murder by poison became less and less feasible. A fun (!) read is The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome\u2019s Deadliest Enemy<\/a><\/em>. During his lifetime (120-63 BCE), Mithradates Eupator fought some of the most famous Roman generals, mostly successfully. At the height of his career, he governed 22 nations around the Black Sea and could speak all of their languages. And, he was an infamous poisoner. He believed that was how his mother murdered his father, so, to protect himself, he learned as much as he could about them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One protection he engaged in was to take small doses of certain poisons every day to build up his tolerance. As a result, when Mithradates\u2019 enemies gave him a lethal dose of something, it had no effect, which didn\u2019t hurt his reputation for invincibility. He also developed a \u201cuniversal antidote\u201d to poison, still of scholarly interest<\/a>. When the Romans finally captured Mithradates, he tried to commit suicide by poison, but his protection worked too well, and he was ultimately stabbed to death. Gardeners may recognize the King\u2019s name: Eupatorium<\/em> is a genus of flowering plant with several hundred species, including (and in my garden) Joe-Pye Weed. One of its species is, of course, poisonous to humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much as Americans complain about \u201cgovernment regulations,\u201d before the Food and Drug Administration took dangerous patent medicines off the drug store shelves in the 1920\u2019s, and before there was a Consumer Product Safety Commission, and before the workplace safety rules that protect people like the poor young women who worked as radium dial-painters and died horribly of jaw and bone cancer, everyday life was full of deadly hazards, and mystery writers had one more handy tool in their store of potential mayhem-makers.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Want more?<\/strong>
12 Toxic Tales<\/a> from National Geographic<\/em>
The Poisoner\u2019s Handbook<\/a><\/em> by Deborah Blum
The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome\u2019s Deadliest Enemy<\/a><\/em> by Adrienne Mayor\u2014fascinating!!
The Poison Artist<\/a><\/em> fiction by Jonathan Moore \u2013 great use of the weapon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A thought-provoking presentation on poisons at last month\u2019s conference of the Public Safety Writers Association reminded me of a blog post I\u2019d written a while ago. Such a relief for a crime writer to get away from guns for a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The long history of poisoning hasn't ended yet. But it was a bit impetus for to the development of modern forensic science.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,174,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-first-draft-blog","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Tu","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11128"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11128\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11131,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11128\/revisions\/11131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}