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

The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York is a 2010 non-fiction book by science writer Deborah Blum. This guide follows the first edition of the book. In The Poisoner’s Handbook, Blum explores how Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler laid the foundations for the modern field of forensic science in New York in the 1920s. Through Norris and Gettler’s stories, Blum also narrates a number of important social and historical events, such as Prohibition and the proliferation of industrial chemicals in consumer products.

The Poisoner’s Handbook is structured such that each chapter focuses on a different type of chemical, exploring the chemical’s properties and its various uses, whether as a commercial product or as a poison. In the Prologue and Chapter 1, Blum discusses the history of chemistry as it pertains to identifying poisons. For centuries, poisons were a popular means of committing murder due to the inability to detect them in a corpse. After chemists discover chemical elements in the 19th century, scientists begin to devise methods for identifying the presence of poisons. However, this science remained poorly understood for decades, with little systematic understanding of how poisons affected a human body.