#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

#ask games #thank you for this! This was fun #bluh bluhs #poisoner's handbook #i also reccomend snapdragon by kat leyh it's a teens graphic novel about a retired biker lesbian and a rebellious spunky teen

[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.

#HF gaseous flotation cells makes me mad-scientist laugh every time. Like I actually think you COULD do it. #The insanity stupidity and hubris of it though. Anyway. I feel bad for ignoring bad things sometimes. #I also found a book called Modern Poisons which looks like a spiritual sequel to The Poisoner's Handbook. I just grabbed it at #the library. SO excited.

[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.

#booklr #book blog #deborah blum #the poisoners handbook #radium girls #radium #radioactive #self luminous paint #luminous #book quotes #quotes

[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

#totallyrandomnonfictuesday #nmlRA #nevins memorial library #the poisoner's handbook #deborah blum

[sleepdepravity]

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

#malky reads #the poisoner’s handbook #‘cited his gasping cries that he was suffocating’ #so like what’s that citation like #is the article titled ‘AH HELP IM DYING’

[theres-whump-in-that-nebula]

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

#I found one with “advance uncorrected proofs — not for sale” on the cover by a prolific author #of course I bought it #It’s also signed on the inside #pretty cool #This is the second signed book I’ve found from a friend’s shop #idk if the last one was actually the author’s signature or not; it was scribbled out #But this one definitely is #The only other book I own which is not for sale to the public is a hazardous materials compliance handbook for truckers from 2011 #It’s basically one giant list of poisons acids heavy metals and flammable materials #I love that book

[jamietukpahwriting]

In these gradual poisonings, the first indications were varied: nausea, diarrhea, pain in the legs, tremors, paralysis, “symptoms and signs simulating encephalitis, occasionally with psychotic manifestations such as mental depression or excitation, delirium and dementia, convulsions, coma and death due to paralysis of the central nervous system and respiratory failure.” These symptoms too could be easily mistaken for an infectious disease or sometimes a state of neurosis—and often were. In a famous murder case, a woman in Austria killed two husbands, her son, and a baby daughter with thallium between 1924 and 1934. She was caught only after she started killing lodgers in her rooming house. And that wasn’t because police suspected her; rather, the son of a formerly healthy lodger insisted that his mother’s body be exhumed, leading to an exposure of the murders. Thallium is colorless, odorless, and tasteless. It mixes easily into liquids without the occasional grittiness of arsenic. It can be disguised by almost any beverage—coffee, tea, soda, and cocoa. 

—The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum

#writeblr #bookblr #books #book quotes #quotes #the poisoner's handbook #deborah blum #the poisoner's handbook by deborah blum #the poisoner's handbook quotes #jamietukpahwriting

[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)

#book quotes #deborah blum #the poisoner's handbook: murder and the birth of forensic medicine in jazz age new york #history #crime #theft #journalism #drugs #usa #new york #new york city #chloroform #suicide tw

[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.

#booklr #book review #nonfiction #the poisoner's handbook #book photography #my photos

[spiritofwhitefire]

The United States had hesitated at first to use mustard gas, the military said, because it seemed somehow more akin to torture than other weapons. It might seem peculiar to say that, when men and boys were so routinely blown to bits on the battlefield. But poison seemed a different kind of evil, insidious and cowardly, without the redeeming heroics of combat.

The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum

#the poisoners handbook #deborah blum #quotes #poison

[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.

#also a reminder your library card probably gives you access to hoopla among other things #I’ve just been watching these The Poison Squad and The Poisoners Handbook over and over #perfect convalescence noise and pictures tbh #meche chatters

[ghost-types-and-sweets]

thinking of my experiences with other people as a kid.

#horrible. they were horrible. none of them wanted to be around me. they hated me. #avoided me. maybe it was the fascination with death? the morbid? the ones oh so stereotyped to have to do with death? the way i had looked? #people called me twin-braids. a zorua. a ditto. not just other kids. adults too. i was lonely. all i had were the shuppet for a while. #then all i had was willo and the shuppet. they cared. they loved me. they wanted to be friends. we were friends. #after a while i decided they should avoid me for a real reason. a proper. scary. reason. #i learned about poisons that could just grow out of the earth that holds us. the ones that could kill and the ones that could hurt #i decided instead of a stupid reason to avoid me that they were going to fear me. #“watch out for the girl with the ghosts. she could kill you” instead of something like “watch out. shes a zorua” #i got genuinely interested too. researched more and more. made a little handbook for myself. #then i decided they would fear me more. “watch out- she could kill you. she even ate deadly nightshade and lived!” and so. #i did. only a couple. it was agony. but they tasted oh so sweet... #to think that a berry that could kill you so easily tastes so lovely was... something. a formative experience. #cb blogs! lore #<- reminder that cb blogs! lore is not an in character tag and just for easy finding

[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.

#booklr #book blog #deborah blum #the poisoners handbook #photographer #ruth snyder #execution #new york daily news #book quotes #quotes

[kayatash]

Here's a meme I made only for me

#literally an audience of one but its so funny to me i had to share it #anyway recommend this book its a really fun read that only gets slightly horrifying at times #idek what to tag this as #deborah blum #the poisoner's handbook #my posts

[sleepdepravity]

The downside of getting more attention is that now bots can find me easier. I had been able to thin the herd a while back by blocking egregiously, to the point where I was maybe getting a bot follow about once per week at most, but now it’s ramping up again. Though it’s gonna be hard to be merciless this time…now that I have actual #content that I know people actually want to see…the only reason I was able to block egregiously before was because I could easily be like, “ha whatever these people wouldn’t even miss much.” But now…

#anyways I block people even if they don’t have a hot woman icon #even if they aren’t following me and have only liked some posts #it depends on if something pings me as suspicious #there were two people I blocked based on what I thought was suspicious activity #one of them was because they mass liked and reblogged quite a large series of posts #which included the random liveblogs of me reading the poisoner’s handbook #(liking more personal posts sort of pings suspicious to me unless I’ve seen the person around before) #(reblogging more personal posts makes me immediately on edge) #(MASS REBLOGGING them became definitely a no go) #second one I got suspicious because I had never seen their name before #they liked the most recent chapter post of timeloop fic #I checked their blog and noticed they seemed to have a pattern of. reblogging one post per day. #occasionally two posts per day to spice things up #and I figured i could just sit on it #but then four pornbots liked the very same post and so I decided that was that #(I know correlation doesn’t equal causation) #(but last time I stamped down on suspicious users and activities the bots really did trickle down for me) #anyways if I do decide to try a purge I will be more lenient… #don’t be too anxious about it. activity surrounding the mob psycho posts aren’t going to ping as suspicious as much. #personal malkylife

[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.

#The Young Poisoner's Handbook #Hugh O'Conner #Antony Sher #Ruth Sheen #Roger Lloyd-Pack #Film gesehen #Benjamin Ross