#poisoner's handbook

[xiulric]

1, 15, and/or 20 for the book ask?

gyack i havent received asks in so long i missed this, sorry!

book you've reread the most? Howl's Moving Castle or Percy Jackson! Comfort series that bring me warmth.

15. recommend and review a book. HO BOY with pleasure!

I love the 1920's, for all the wrong reasons. The book Poisoner's Handbook is guilty for this, it's a close insight into how forensics were established during prohibition in the USA, as well as a case study of various victims who suffered at the hands of poisons at the time. (Many were murders, some were unfortunate accidents due to a mix of specific chemicals.)

Now, we all know Prohibition was a terrible idea, but this book really shows the depths of why it was so bad, as well as how corrupt politicians were. It's a trainwreck and you can't avert your eyes.

Leave it to this author to make such a heavy topic be fun and alluring! She has a magic touch for dark humour and explaining truly complex terms in easily digestible words. You fall in love with the man who revolutionized forensics too, he was a one-man army. Phenomenal stuff.

20. things i look for in books? Hmm. I tend to gravitate to books that are recommended to me by friends with similar tastes to me? Sometimes I want fantasy, happy-go-lucky books, while other days I crave something darker, gorier and edgier.

book ask game

[trustymikh]

there are many benefits to being a ground-type pokemon trainer

[iamthepulta]

I feel like being on Twitter or Tiktok or Insta would put me in an early grave. I just want to post about OCs and metallurgy and fandom. Even if I were The Geology Person over there, which would be fun, I'd probably have to Be More Cognizant of cultural stuff... I already feel bad enough for not reblogging a lot of important things that cross my dash... Idk... Tumblr is my place to escape from a lot of that. I like being aware, but I don't want to scroll back on my blog and be reminded.

(random metallurgy rant under the cut)

I want to remember shit like- omg, teflon is the coolest fucking thing. It's the most hydrophobic man-made material we have, which is why it coats our pans. But BUT because it's a H-F compound and so hydrophobic it can fuck up your system by BEING that hydrophobic. Remember that our blood is basically salt water? Yeah, so hydrophobic things in water don't WANT to be in water, so they'll cling to anything else. Which is why you can get fat buildup in your arteries: fatty acids are hydrophobic compounds. If one gets stuck, you gradually build up an accumulation.

Anyway, I think we should build gaseous copper flotation cells with hydrofluoric acid and teflon which will give us the best copper recovery in the history of the world and cause innumerable deaths and destruction.

[midnights-wish]

They sprinkled the luminous liquid in their hair to make their curls twinkle in the dark. They brightened their fingernails with it. One girl covered her teeth to give herself a Cheshire cat smile when she went home at night. None of them considered this behavior risky."

Deborah Blum, 'The Poisoner's Handbook' - about what some of the Radium Girls did with the self-luminous paint they worked with, as they didn't know what effect radium would have on them.

[nevinslibrary]

Totally Random Non-Fiction Tuesday

Apparently poisons were big in New York in the early 20th Century, until Charles Norris became the Chief Medical Examiner. And, he, as well as Alexander Gettle, a toxicologist, changed the game, basically forever.

A lot of it is about Dr. Gettler, who would literally go through a deceased person’s organs a little at a time to find the answer to something. He’d prove the innocence of a husband suspected of poisoning his wife (it was mercury in the calomel prescribed by the doctor), or that the Standard Oil workers didn’t just die from ‘working too hard’, but, instead because of the tetraethyl lead they were working with. Oh, and he even proved that radium caused the deaths of the Radium Girls (the women who painted dials on watches).

It was such an interesting look at these cases, and these poisons, and the men, especially Gettler who was definitely an interesting character, that changed much of forensic science so much.

You may like this book If you Liked: Forensics by Val McDermid, The Inheritor's Powder by Sandra Hempel, or American Sherlock by Kate Winkler Dawson

The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum

[dragons-and-yellow-roses]

I'm watching Adventuring Academy and Brennan and Murph are talking about when you become a DM, be prepared to only DM and never get to be a player and then he said "If you want to DM for me, hit me up in the comments," Brennan I've never been a DM but its my dream to learn, you don't know the lengths I would go to to DM for you PLEASE

[sleepdepravity]

Can you imagine that guy submitting this experiment in a medical journal.

[jamietukpahwriting]

Mustard gas derives from a thick, oily liquid that takes its color from the sulfur it contains. Mixed with an explosive variety of other chemicals, the liquid—called sulfur mustard—fragments into a brownish-yellow aerosol mist. The “mustard” itself is the point, though; the concentrated sulfur it contains mixes with other ingredients to become a ferocious form of sulfuric acid. Known technically as a vesicant, or blistering agent, it burns on contact, through uniforms, through leather, and through skin, raising a thick layer of oozing yellow blisters, searing the eyes into crusted blindness. If inhaled, mustard gas plasters bloody blisters across the lining of the lungs, making breathing a rasping, painful misery. German military strategists considered it a disabling agent rather than a killer. It was rarely instantly lethal (although scientists would later find it to be a potent carcinogen) but always excruciatingly painful. Medical personnel, as well as soldiers in their letters home, described the effects of poison gases. “I wish people who talk about going on with this war whatever the cost could see the soldiers suffering from mustard gas poisoning,” wrote one nurse, who told of teenage boys strapped down to their beds, fighting for breath, their voices burned away to a hoarse whisper, praying to die.

—The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

Go to your local friend’s of the library shop. You can and will find weird books.

[quotesfrommyreading]

Since the turn of the twentieth century, this practice had been increasingly popular. Robbers would knock on an apartment door, force a chloroform-soaked rag over the face of whoever answered, and take what they wanted while their victim remained unconscious. “Burglar uses Chloroform: Attacks a Woman in a Flat, Robs Her and Cuts off her Hair,” read one New York Time headline in March 1900. Beautiful hair for wigs was as valuable as some jewelry, the newspaper pointed out. And there were the burglars who “put an entire family under anesthetic” in 1907 before emptying their house; the train robbers who drugged a Pullman car full of passengers and emptied pockets and purses; the party host who put chloroform into his guests' drinks, then went through their wallets and disappeared with $3,000; and the robbers who chloroformed an attorney on a busy Manhattan street in 1910, yanked off his heavy gold and diamond ring, and disappeared into the crowd. Occasionally chloroform played a role in real tragedy; a Long Island father, in 1911, killed his son and two daughters with chloroform and then, leaving a suicide note, walked away into the gray Atlantic.

  —  The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (Deborah Blum)

[elenajohansenreads]

Books I Read in 2023

#21 - The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York, by Deborah Blum

Rating: 2/5 stars

I often dislike nonfiction that attempts to do too many things at once. All at the same time, this book was trying to be a history of forensic science, a history of Prohibition, and a basic primer on common poisons: three related things I can see fitting together in the narrative of a single work. However, it also dabbled in character study, speaking at length of the lives of the two scientists most heavily involved in the development of forensic science, and also tabloid-style sensationalism, because apparently the execution by electric chair of every convicted poisoner we're introduced to has to be lavishly described on the page.

But did we really need those? As much as the fates of the actual murderers figure into the story, can't we just be told they were convicted and executed and move on?

The "ick" factor wasn't limited to executions, either. I understand it's worth mentioning that testing for these poisons used to involve grinding up large quantities of human tissue in order to subject the sample to various chemical processes, but the author indulged in extensive description of how disgusting it was pretty much every time the subject came up. It's unnecessarily gross, and even for those readers with stronger stomachs or more patience, it's simply repetitive.

The overall structure seemed clever at first--organizing both by time line and by a type of poison, as each one was able to be isolated--but as the book continues, the organization breaks down, because both poisons and poisoners make reappearances in later, unrelated chapters in order to keep events roughly linear, which fouls the conceit of poison-based chapters.

I didn't hate it, and I did learn something from it. But as interesting as I thought the subject was, I think it deserved better packaging.

[bzedan]

Hot tip for fans of The Sea, Hoopla has a load of American Experience episodes including Sealab and Into the Deep: America, Whaling & the World.

[ghost-types-and-sweets]

thinking of my experiences with other people as a kid.

[kayatash]

Here's a meme I made only for me

[midnights-wish]

"The photographer had a camera strapped around one leg, attached to a cable that ran up his trouser leg and into a pocket. He could squeeze a bulb in his pocket to take one picture which would be unnoticed in the glare of sparks and the horror generated by the chair."

Deborah Blum, 'The Poisoner's Handbook' - how a photographer secretly took a picture of Ruth Snyder's execution.

[ulrichgebert]

Der putzige psychopathische Serienmörder Graham Young vergiftet seine Familie und Freunde aus wissenschaftlichem Interesse, schreibt ein Handbuch für junge Giftmischer und wird aufgrund seiner überragenden Intelligenz nach einem Aufenthalt in der Psychiatrie als geheilt entlassen, um unbeirrt mit seinen Kollegen weiterzumachen. Dafür wie eigentlich nicht lustig das ist, ist es recht lustig.