杏吧原创

鈥淣ICE woman,鈥� toxicologist Alexander Gettler commented to reporters at the trial of Ruth Snyder, New York鈥檚 infamous 鈥淒ouble Indemnity鈥� murderer. In 1927 Snyder (pictured) and her lover killed Snyder鈥檚 husband with alcohol, chloroform, garrote wire and a bash to the skull with an iron sash weight. It was bloody overkill but, as Gettler testified, it was the chloroform that killed him.

In Deborah Blum鈥檚 The Poisoner鈥檚 Handbook, we see Gettler and his colleague, chief medical examiner Charles Norris, wield Bunsen burners and flasks against the 鈥渘ice鈥� denizens of jazz-age Manhattan. Here are the ladies who spiked cocoa with thallium, cooks who dosed huckleberry pies with arsenic and kindly grannies who poisoned figs. Incompetent medical examiners ensured that these murderers all too often got away with their crimes. But Norris and Gettler belonged to a new generation of forensic scientists who recognised the signs of poison 鈥� the cherry-red arterial blood of carbon monoxide, the blue mottled skin of cyanide, and the green 鈥渆vil dazzle鈥� thallium made under the spectroscope.

Pick your poison: divided by dastardly substance, Blum鈥檚 Handbook is a fascinating rogues鈥� dispensary that also includes arsenic, radium and mercury. Blum fleshes out the toxicology and method of detection for each with stories from Norris and Gettler鈥檚 files. It was through their work, for instance, that millionaire industrialist Eben Myers鈥檚 skeletal disintegration was traced to his fondness for the radium tonic Radithor. They didn鈥檛 always catch their killers: one arsenic poisoner Gettler missed went on to serve her neighbour eggnog laced with Rough On Rats powder.

, a Pulitzer prizewinning reporter and journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison is especially compelling when she traces how Gettler and Norris found their most galling foe in wood alcohol (methanol), a cheap but dangerous high during the years of Prohibition. Norris had split the sternums of too many party goers to support enforced temperance: 鈥淧rohibition is a joke,鈥� he declared. He was appalled that the government backed the addition of methanol to household products to deter tippling, a move he labelled 鈥淥ur Experiment in Extermination鈥�.

For all the seductive horror of coldly deliberate killing 鈥� 鈥渉omicidal poisoning shows us at our amoral worst,鈥� maintains Blum 鈥� many dangers also lay in plain sight. Gettler and Norris traced deaths to a baby bottle washed with Lysol and a tureen buffed to a shine with arsenic metal polish. And it remains sobering that one complication the duo faced in carbon monoxide poisonings was that many victims already had it in their blood from smoking. Alas, sometimes the poisoners we seek are ourselves.