The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison

by John Emsley

Book Overview

Was Napoleon killed by the arsenic in his wallpaper? How did Rasputin survive cyanide poisoning? Which chemicals in our environment pose the biggest threat to our health today?
In The Elements of Murder, John Emsley offers a fascinating account of five of the most toxic elements--arsenic, antimony, lead, mercury, and thallium--describing their lethal chemical properties and highlighting their use in some of the most famous murder cases in history...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192805991
• ISBN13: 9780192805997
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 436 Pages
• Weight: 1.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 9.4" x 5.9"

Customer Reviews

History of the discovery of which compounds and elements are a danger to health and which are benefi

Lots of examples through history, especially of deaths of famous people. Both accidental and deliberate. Sometimes a little tedious, but very interesting overall.

Elements of Darkness

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.

Great Reading

Great book for a rainy weekend. Just enough science and chemistry to learn something new and enough creepy murder stories to keep you going. Its a reminder of how far forensic investigation has progressed since the turn of the century. Murder just isn't as easy as it used to be!!!

One of the best true-science books I've ever read!!!

John Emsley made chemistry 101 come alive in this book! I was never good at chemistry but have had a fascination with the mysteries of certain toxic elements that occur in nature. The book weaves lurid, shocking, and even comical tales of the use and abuse of such elements as arsenic, mercury, antimony, and thallium. I couldn't put this book and finished it in a couple of days! It is absolutely great and one that I highly recommend to anyone interested in science and true crime-this book is the perfect blend of both genres. Truly a great read!

Why Can't Chemistry Texts be This Much Fun

This is the way to make chemistry interesting. I'm sure the schools would never go for it, probably too interesting. Then again, do we really want today's kids (or probably yesterday's as well) studying poison? Note the title. This book is on the elements that make the best poisons - arsenic ... really good for your complexion but too much and you have a nice looking corpse, antimony, lead, mercury, and thallium, yes thallium a metal, ... sold in over-the-counter products as a treatment for ringworm in children. It was also used in an Agatha Christie mystery 'The Pale Horse' to remove unwanted relatives. Because it concentrates on the basic elements, it does not go into poisons in general. Nothing here about the blowfish toxin or that kind of this, this is a chemistry book, not biology. Once again, this is a chemistry book. But it's a chemistry book that is hard to put down. Great fun reading in a sort of macabre way.

Lurid Tales of Chemistry

We are mere bundles of chemicals, most of which are shuttled back and forth with astonishing speed, accuracy, and efficiency. It is so fine-tuned a system that it is not hard to find chemicals that will make it all go wrong. Some of these chemicals are so basic as to be the very elements of the universe around us, and in _The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison_ (Oxford University Press), John Emsley has given us a chemistry text dressed in the entertaining garb of famous poisoning cases in history and in popular culture. Chemistry is often presented as neither exciting nor fun, but Emsley (whose most recent book was an entertaining history of phosphorus) knows that even a big book on the big five elements (arsenic, antimony, lead, mercury, and thallium) is going to be attractive reading for many of us, if the elements are connected with lethality. The publisher, staid old Oxford, knows it, too, and has dressed the book with a lurid picture of a fearsome bearded man holding a small bottle with a skull and crossbones on it. Students of the physical sciences: prepare for a bit of morbid fun. The alchemists developed poisons, but mostly set about poisoning themselves. Newton's hair, for instance, has been analyzed, and it had greatly elevated levels of mercury, lead, arsenic, and antimony; he often tried to volatilize compounds of these, and could not help breathing them in. He did live to be 84, and was certainly productive, but he was an unpleasant and paranoid man; to what extent the poisons (especially mercury) addled his brain we will never know. Hatters (as in "mad as a hatter") were famously subject to the derangement mercury brought since they used mercury nitrate to make felt. Another career field that had a surprising danger from mercury: detective work. The dusting powder that used to be used for finding fingerprints would be breathed in by the one doing the dusting; it was only in the 1940s that the elemental culprit for the tremors, irritability, and other symptoms in detectives was identified and the powder formula changed. Emsley gives many anecdotes of deliberate poisonings, often by serial killers like Hélène Jegado, who poisoned an unknown number of people during her career, using arsenic. She was a pious and intelligent servant, who was distressed at each of the funerals she had to attend. "My masters die wherever I go," she sobbed at one funeral, and many sympathized with her bad luck. Her last poisoning occurred in 1851, a time when forensic arsenic levels could be obtained from the stomach contents of her last victim, fingering her positively. She didn't get any financial gain from the deaths, but arsenic was used so consistently that in France it was known as _poudre de succession_ (inheritance powder). Emsley's history covers his elements well, and not just their histories in poisoning. Much of the book is an examination of the history of chemistry itself, from pre-scientific days to the current ones whe