![]() These developments were more important than ever during a time when poisonous substances were everywhere. When they started scientific evidence in court cases were a footnote that most felt could be safely ignored, but after years of hard work Norris and Gettler established the importance of forensic science to determining an individual’s cause of death. Norris tirelessly worked to create a state-of-the-art forensic program (often funding his lab out of his own pocket), and Gettler was constantly devising new experiments to parse the mysteries of death by poison. The Poisoner’s Handbook centers around the careers of two scientists working out of New York’s Bellevue hospital: medical examiner Charles Norris and toxicologist Alexander Gettler. What might seem to be an accident might truly be murder, and, as Deborah Blum illustrates in her new book The Poisoner’s Handbook, a new science was needed to tell the difference. Accidental poisonings were not uncommon, but with the availability of so many lethal substances it was easy for some to use them for their own nefarious purposes. Cyanide, arsenic, lead, carbon monoxide, radium, mercury, methyl alcohol and more these materials were part of everyday life, especially bootlegged alcohol in the “dry” era when the only stiff drinks commonly available had to be distilled from more dangerous liquids. ![]() ![]() ![]() During the 1920’s, poisons could be found in abundance in almost any New York apartment. ![]()
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