The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison

Review of The elements of murder: A history of poison by John EmsleyCITATION: Emsley, J. (2005). The elements of murder: A history of poison. Oxford: Oxford University Press,Reviewer: Dr W. P. PalmerThe elements of murder: A history of poison is a book of 418 pages, full of detail, full of chemistry, but in small print and lacking illustration. Emsley concentrates on just five elements, mercury, arsenic, antimony, lead and thallium, the compounds of which are poisonous, There is a final section on other poisonous elements. The main emphasis of the book is on the murders and the trials that relate to these murders where the cause of death is one of the five elements, mercury, arsenic, antimony, lead and thallium. There is also considerable interest in the historic human and environmental damage caused by these elements.The book contains much interesting chemistry, but there is a pattern of such ‘an element of sameness’ between the murders that the book becomes rather dull at times. Emsley’s introduction contains the words ‘Murder by poison may be a dying art...’ which is a bad pun with which to start a book.The first chapter provides some stories of alchemists and alchemy. Emsley points out the important place that mercury played an important part in alchemy and many alchemists spent a great deal of time heating mercury without ventilation, which would account for many early deaths. Many alchemists are mentioned, with some space given to Isaac Newton’s interest in alchemy and his apparent madness in 1693 which could have been caused by a number of chemicals that he had been using. Throughout the book possibilities are raised, but in the end, conclusions cannot be reached. Here Emsley states ‘It is not easy to say to what extent Newton’s paranoid behaviour was due to mercury poisoning. The next story in the chapter is the strange death of Charles II (of Britain), which could have been caused by a poison such as mercury as he was greatly interested in practical chemistry.After a general introduction of the poisonous elements using alchemy as the key idea, Emsley now introduces the poisonous elements one by one starting with three chapters providing instances of mercury poisoning people. Where there are social issues relating to any of the five elements causing harm to people, Emsley offers a balanced perspective. In the case of mercury, he presents issues of mercury in dental amalgam and whether it causes harm to individuals with many fillings and he even considers the mercury vapour emitted to the atmosphere when the dead are cremated. Other issues discussed are mercury compounds used in medicine, a historical case where a British man-of war captured a Spanish vessel laden with mercury with terrible effects on the British crew, hat-makers exposure to mercury leading to the expression of mad-hatter and the problems, and the Minamata Bay disaster in Japan caused by high mercury levels in fish eaten by the local population. The last chapter in the section on mercury provides details of two murders where mercury compounds were used to poison the victims. If mercury compounds were never much used as a means for murder, arsenic compounds certainly were a major method of murder.Emsley provides multicultural evidence of this citing Chinese, Indian and Roman knowledge of the use of arsenic as a poison and quotes some lines of poetry from Chaucer and Basil Valentine to indicate its deadly properties. There does not appear to be evidence that arsenic is essential for the human body, but some people are able to eat small quantities on a regular basis. In medicine, arsenic was used as an ingredient of Dr Fowler’s solution, which was regarded as a cure-all in Victorian times and some of Charles Darwin’s illnesses may have been caused by him overdosing himself with the solution. Early in the twentieth century Paul Ehrlich used arsenic as an ingredient in his discovery of Salvarsan as a cure for syphilis. The place of arsenic as a cause of cancer is uncertain and Emsley concludes that it can be a cause of cancer but can also be used in its treatment. Lewisite can be made by reacting acetylene gas with arsenic trichloride and was ready for possible use near the end of World War 1, but was not used. Saddam Hussein is said to have used it in the Iran-Iraq war and he also provided it to Sudan who used it against rebels in the south of Sudan.There is the arsenic in wallpaper story where wallpaper was manufactured using the arsenic based Scheele’s green. Two detailed stories relate to arsenic poisoning; one story is an old one of Napoleon dying in exile on St Helena. The other story is of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, where Morris had a financial interest in the production of arsenic and also favoured the use of Scheele’s green in the wallpapers that he designed at a time when scientific evidence was mounting about the dangers of this wallpaper.Arsenic is the most common poison used by those wishing to commit murder by poisoning. Chapter seven contains the details of the trials of eleven murderers. Chapter eight concentrates on the Florence Maybrick case where Florence Maybrick murdered her husband, James Maybrick. The author goes into considerable detail about how the poison was obtained, administered and the amount of arsenic needed for a fatal dose. There is also information about the progress in methods of analysis used to detect arsenic poisoning.Antimony has not been often been used as a poison of choice for murder, but Emsley has found a number of instances of its use as a murder weapon. Antimony compounds have a long history of use in medicine, most of which are no longer used, but a few uses for medicinal antimony remain. There was a theory that implicated antimony in cot deaths, but on careful examination of the evidence it was concluded that the evidence did not support this theory. InChapter ten, Emsley discusses several murders which used antimony compounds (often antimony potassium tartrate) as the means of poisoning the victim. The problem with using antimony is that it is also an emetic, so it causes the intended victim to vomit, which removes most of the poison. Thus small amounts of antimony must be used over an extended period. Also there is a considerable individual variation in their sensitivity to antimony. The cases cited show some of the difficulties that using antimony as a poison presents to the prospective murderer. The first and perhaps most interesting case is the death of Mozart, which is now considered by a majority of physicians to have been due to antimony poisoning, with the likelihood that Mozart took an excess of a medicine containing antimony that his doctors had prescribed for him. There can be no certainty for this conclusion.Another of the cases considered is that of Dr William Palmer (1824-1856). Palmer may well have murdered up to eight people using antimony as the main means of death. In Chapter eleven, Emsley describes the murders of Severivn Klowoski (alias George Chapman), who was at one time suspected of being Jack the Ripper. George Chapman separated from his first wife, Lucy, and then married three times and in each case murdered his wife using antimony as the poison. He was eventually found guilty of three murders and executed on 7 April, 1903.The element lead and its compounds has caused much illness and death. It is extremely unusual for murderers to use lead as a poison, but Emsley found three cases where a lead compound had been used (two instances using lead acetate and one using white lead). Additionally, Emsley speculates that Pope Clement II was murdered using an unknown lead compound.The elements of murder: A history of poison is an excellent book, which is accurate and well-written even though its context is undeniably gruesome. A recommended read!BILL PALMER

Me gustó mucho, primero habla del veneno, su origen, un poco de historia, después para q se usa el metal, cómo funciona, etc. Al final nos cuenta sobre casos reales de envenenamiento y envenenadores. Entiendo q el autor ha escrito un segundo libro, seguramente lo voy a leer.

The poisonous elements spotlighted in this book--mercury, arsenic, antimony, lead, and thallium--also served as medications for most of recorded history. It is amazing what people would concoct and swallow to cure constipation, including mercury laxatives and antimony `perpetual pills' that passed through the gut and irritated it into expelling its contents. These pills could be washed off and recycled. In fact, "there are reports that such pills were highly effective and passed from generation to generation.""The Elements of Murder" makes it clear that it was sometimes impossible to determine whether a victim was poisoned by his enemies or his doctors.The author, John Emsley is both a chemist and an award-winning science writer. He chronicles the characteristics of each element with a magisterial British presence that eludes many American science writers, who sometimes place a heavy reliance on adjectives. Emsley goes for the telling anecdote. The insanity of men slowly poisoned by lead is revealed in a list of items they stored in a lifeboat: "button polish, silk handkerchiefs, curtain rods, and a portable writing desk." The largest mass poisoning by arsenic was actually funded by UNICEF in an effort to provide clean drinking water to the people of West Bengal, India and Bangladesh.Although the stories of individual poisoners and their victims are interesting, the author's investigations into the wholesale slaughter of people by insidious, omnipresent elements in their environment are equally compelling. Were both the Roman AND British Empires brought low by lead?Read "The Elements of Murder" and decide for yourself.

From the title of my review a portion of the reading audience may be turned off; a combination of CHEMISTRY and HISTORY - not everyones favorite subjects in high school! However, if you enjoyed these subjects then John Emsley has written the book for you! We are acquainted with several "Elements" (although they are all examined as compounds - something I found to be a little misleading - Arsenic Trioxide, Lead Oxide, Antimony Sulphide, Metheyl Mercury are the compounds and not singular elements) and how they can do us harm. We are told of each elements colourful history, its discovery and how it had been used in some very bad deeds. This is clearly the most entertaining part - Emsley wirtes as if he was a Jr. version of Sherlock Holmes in exploring the facts of the case. Each murder is fully detailed with the fate of the poisoner given as the concluion. I was a little hesitant about giving 5 stars - for a book on murder by poison I had hoped that cyanide would be covered. However, under the context of "The ELEMENTS of murder" cyanide is never mentioned. I am puzzled because every murder described is not by the raw element, but by a compound of the element. Regardless, to cyanides exclusion, I can still highly recommend "The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison to all history and chemistry fans.

This was, it has to be said, a bit of a struggle. It's advertised as the elements used as poisons, and it does sort of do that.It starts off with a brief lesson on early chemistry, or alchemy as it was then, it’s from there onwards that it starts to get bogged down. It has to be said though that almost half the book is taken up with two elements, Arsenic and Mercury. That's one of my main issues. There's a lot of virtually identical stories about particular poisoning cases, which could easily have been cut down. The amount of historical detail is far more than is required.The other half of the book is divided in Antimony, Lead and Thallium, with a final chapter on everything else. It's unfortunate that this came out the year before the Polonium poisoning in London, as that element is not mentioned. The second half is better with fewer stories, and less historical detail and is stronger for it.There's an interesting book in here, but it's buried under the weight of detail. A good editor would have made a lot of difference.One final point. The book was obviously laid out for the paper versions. The lay out has not been amended for the kindle version, which leaves the multiple footnotes in interesting places. Where in the paper version, the footnote would be at the bottom of the physical page, this means that in some cases the footnotes appear half way through a paragraph. Again, something a good editor would have sorted.

I enjoyed this book very much.The poisons are limited and I wish Strychnine and many others were added.Tin, copper and lead are not that interesting !The printing is small and can be annoying if you wear glasses. It is a long book and with perseverance, I managed to finish it in three days.

A highly enjoyable and vividly written, at the same time mewticulously researched text. An excellent background text for courses in "metals in medicine and toxic metals" and other courses in the chemistry of metals in biological systems. The front cover is unfortunately a complete flop and should be replaced by something serious the sooner the better..

An excellent look at different metallic poisons,which also has some interesting insights into historical situations and people.

Detailed and interesting study of famous poisoners in history.