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

Prohibition refers to the 18th Amendment to the US constitution, which prohibited the sale of any alcoholic beverage throughout the United States. The charge for the bill was led by temperance advocates, who believed that liquor and public drunkenness were becoming a national crisis and that liquor needed to be completely banned. As Blum charts throughout The Poisoner’s Handbook, Prohibition had the opposite of its intended effect, driving individuals to consume hard liquor that was often derived from poisonous industrial alcohol. By the 1930s, American attitudes on Prohibition had changed, and they saw the act as having “contributed to the economy’s collapse…[and] increasing drunkenness” (222). In 1933, such changing support led to the 21st Amendment, which reversed the 18th and again made liquor legal. 

Methyl alcohol is the scientific name for a form of alcohol derived from lumber and is commonly referred to as wood alcohol. Though methyl alcohol has a similar chemical structure to safe-to-drink ethyl alcohol, methyl alcohol is incredibly poisonous to the human body and often caused blindness or death. Methyl alcohol’s toxicity stems from the fact that it produces formaldehyde and formic acid inside of the human body, two highly toxic chemicals that wreak havoc on inner organs. Following the enactment of Prohibition, many bootleggers sought to transform toxic methyl alcohol into drinkable liquor. Their products often contained lingering traces of the toxic alcohol, causing the deaths of numerous drinkers. 

After its discovery in the 19th century by the doctor James Young Simpson, chloroform became a widely used surgical anesthetic. However, while the chemical is an effective means for knocking a patient out, it also frequently caused patients’ deaths. Blum discusses the case of Frederick Mors, an Austrian immigrant who confessed to using chloroform to poison a number of patients in the senior home where he worked. As chloroform was poorly understood, the police were unable to gather enough evidence to prosecute Mors. 

Ethyl alcohol is the form of alcohol present in alcoholic drinks and is typically safe when consumed in moderate amounts. However, when consumed excessively, the alcohol can poison one’s brain and lead to death. The Poisoner’s Handbook describes how Alexander Gettler undertook a systematic analysis of ethyl alcohol’s effects on the body, comparing the brains of known drinkers with the brains of those who had died of natural causes. Gettler’s studies resulted in one of the first scales for measuring alcoholic intoxication. 

Arsenic is a metallic poison that has been used throughout history as a poison. As a metallic poison, arsenic “breaks down extremely slowly” (81), meaning that the poison is easily detected in autopsies. Though arsenic has a harsh and bitter flavor by itself, its flavor is easily masked when placed in foodstuffs in small doses. In 1922, an unknown poisoner laced the Shelbourne Restaurant’s pie dough with arsenic, poisoning 60 customers. 

Carbon monoxide is a deadly gas that was widely found in a number of products in the 1920s. When a human breathes in carbon monoxide, the gas attaches to blood cells and creates carboxyhemoglobin, causing what Blum describes as “chemical suffocation.” Carbon monoxide was often a by-product of car engines and could also be found as an active ingredient in illuminating gas. Its presence in the 1920s led to a number of accidental deaths, and it was also used by killers who hoped to make their murders appear accidental. 

Cyanide is a poisonous chemical that naturally occurs in plants. Scientists discovered methods to derive cyanide gas and salts (hydrogen cyanide, potassium cyanide, and sodium cyanide) from the pigment Prussian blue. Such cyanides had a range of industrial applications and were frequent ingredients in products ranging from polish to pesticides. However, cyanides are highly toxic, as once ingested they “shut down the body’s ability to carry or absorb oxygen” (58). In The Poisoner’s Handbook, cyanide appears in relation to the deaths of Fremont and Annie Jackson, who were killed by accidental exposure to fumigation gas. 

Mercury is a metallic element that in its “pure” form is not “easily absorbed by the [human] body” (105). However, in a transformed form, such as the salt bichloride of mercury, the poison is quickly metabolized into the body, where its corrosive qualities mean it severely eats away at tissues and organs. In the 1920s, bichloride of mercury was often an ingredient in a number of medications. Its toxic qualities became well-known after the film star Olive Thomas died from accidentally drinking her husband’s syphilis medicine, which contained bichloride of mercury as an ingredient.  

Radium is a chemical element discovered in the late 1800s by Pierre and Marie Curie. Radium is significant for its radioactive properties and was initially believed by doctors to have “miraculous” medicinal properties (179). The chemical was also used as an ingredient to create glow-in-the-dark paint. In The Poisoner’s Handbook, radium is largely discussed in Chapter 8, where Blum describes the plight of workers at the US Radium Corporation factory in Orange, New Jersey. Medical examiner Harrison Stanford Martland began to investigate radium after numerous factory workers experienced severe medical problems. Martland discovered that radium was highly dangerous when ingested in the human body, emitting alpha particles that caused bones to slowly corrode and crumble.