Blum - The Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

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Table of Contents

Praise for Deborah Blums The Poisoners Handbook

Blums combination of chemistry and crime fiction creates a vicious, page-turning story that reads more like Raymond Chandler than Madame Curie.

The New York Observer

Blums brilliant book is many things at once: a science lesson, peppered with historical anecdotes, tucked inside a compelling narrative that, in the end, is perfectly pitched and compulsively readable.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Reads like science fiction, complete with suspense, mystery, and foolhardy guys in lab coats tipping test tubes of mysterious chemicals into their own mouths.

NPR, What Were Reading

One thinks of Erik Larsons Devil in the White City ... a book that gave splendiferously disgusting descriptions of horrible murders and did it so dextrously and intelligently that even readers who wouldnt normally read a true crime book were happily sucked in. Deborah Blums The Poisoners Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York is that kind of book.

New Haven Advocate

The Poisoners Handbook is an inventive history that, like arsenic mixed into blackberry pie, goes down with ease.

The New York Times Book Review

Blums book is heavy on science, especially chemistry, but its also an excellent look at the lackluster state of public health in the Jazz Age.

Chuck Leddy, The Boston Globe

In this bubbling beaker of a book, [Blum] mixes up a heady potion of forensic toxicology, history, and true crime. Her account of the ongoing battle between scientists and killers in Jazz Age New York is more startling than any CSI: NY script.

The Dallas Morning News

The Poisoners Handbook is that rare nonfiction book that has something for everyone, whether you are a true-crime aficionado, a political history buff, a science geek, or simply a fan of well-written narrative suspense.

BookPage

Her book is sure to appeal to mystery lovers, science nerds, and history buffs drawn to a captivating story of two men whose skill and dedication helped transform the criminal justice system.

Associated Press

The pacing and rich characterization of a first-rate suspense novelist.

Publishers Weekly

Caviar for true crime fans and science buffs alike.

Kirkus Reviews

Blum has cooked up a delicious, addictive brew: murder, forensic toxicology, New York City in the twenties, the biochemistry of poison. I loved this book. I knocked it back in one go and now I want more!

Mary Roach, author of Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

The Poisoners Handbook opens one riveting murder case after another in this chronicle of Jazz Age chemical crimes where the real-life twists and turns are as startling as anything in fiction. Deborah Blum turns us all into forensic detectives by the end of this expertly written, dramatic page-turner that will transform the way you think about the power of science to threaten and save our lives.

Matthew Pearl, author of The Last Dickens and The Dante Club

The Poisoners Handbook is a wonderfully compelling hybrid of history and science built around eccentric characters. One scene reads like Patricia Cornwell and the next like Oliver Sacks. From movie stars and aristocrats to homicidal grandmothers and entrepreneurial gangsters, from the governments poisoning of alcohol during Prohibition to the dangers of radiation and automobile pollution, Blum follows an amazing array of poignant tragedies through the laboratory of these crusading public servants.

Michael Sims, author of Apollos Fire and Adams Navel

PENGUIN BOOKS

THE POISONERS HANDBOOK

Pulitzer Prize winner Deborah Blum is a professor of science journalism at the University of Wisconsin. She worked as a newspaper science writer for twenty years, winning the Pulitzer in 1992 for her writing about primate research. She is the author of Ghost Hunters , coeditor of A Field Guide for Science Writers, and has written about scientific research for the Los Angeles Times , The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , Slate , Psychology Today , and Mother Jones . She is the president-elect of the National Association of Science Writers and serves on advisory boards for both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Sciences.

PENGUIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada),
90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R oRL, England Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2,
Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria
3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community
Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale,
North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) Penguin Books
(South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R oRL, England

First published in the United States of America by The Penguin Press,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2010
Published in Penguin Books 2011

Copyright Deborah Blum, 2010
All rights reserved

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

eISBN : 978-1-101-52489-3

1. PoisoningNew York (State)History. 2. Forensic toxicologyNew York (State)History.
3. Forensic scienceNew York (State)History. I. Title.
HV6555.U52N373 2010
614. 1309747109041dc22
2009026461

The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the authors rights is appreciated.

http://us.penguingroup.com

To the Haugen familyDave, Helen, Peter (always),

Treakaand in loving memory of Pamela.

PROLOGUE

THE POISON GAME

U NTIL THE EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY few tools existed to detect a toxic substance in a corpse. Sometimes investigators deduced poison from the violent sickness that preceded death, or built a case by feeding animals a victims last meal, but more often than not poisoners walked free. As a result murder by poison flourished. It became so common in eliminating perceived difficulties, such as a wealthy parent who stayed alive too long, that the French nicknamed the metallic element arsenic poudre de succession, the inheritance powder.

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