You just can’t have a good murder mystery without poison. Guns and knives will serve, but then there is the blood, guts, and gore. Real murder requires poison, stealth, and a lot of planning. It is not to be undertaken by the common criminal. Murder by poison has been with us as long as mankind. Death did not exist until Eve gave Adam that poisoned apple, which not only gave him knowledge of good and evil but also entered death into the world.
The earliest recorded use of poison dates to 331 BC in ancient Rome, when 200 women were executed after attempting to poison their husbands. Earlier, in 399 BC, the Greek philosopher, Socrates, died after drinking hemlock, but that was in response to his death sentence for “corrupting the youth”. So his death was really suicide. Many ancient kings and potentates employed a “food taster” who would eat a portion of the meal before it was served. If he lived, the king ate the food.
In the Middle Ages, and even into the early 1900s, the poisoner reigned supreme. There were few reliable tests to detect poison in a corpse. The only tests available were long, complicated, and often produced mixed results, nothing that would be taken to a jury. The poison of choice was commonly arsenic, which was readily available. It was frequently used to speed the death of wealthy parents who were staying alive too long. The French referred to arsenic as “the inheritance powder”. When administered properly, the elderly, sick victim usually just seemed to waste away, and the death would provoke no suspicion. Today, murder by poison is rare, as poison can be quickly and reliably detected by such equipment as the gas chromatograph and the mass spectrometer. The coroner has finally won over the poisoner.
In wartime, murder is legal. We can kill the enemy any way we like. Although today there are some restrictions. In WWI, four nations used poison gas. The French were the first in 1914. They were followed by the Germans, the English, and the Americans. The three most used gases were chlorine (suffocation), mustard (blistering), and phosgene (choking/suffocation). The use of poison gas was problematic, as often the wind changed, blowing the gas back on the attacker. The most feared was mustard gas. It was heavier than air. It settled on the battlefield and rolled into the underground trenches. The early gas masks were ineffective. The U.S. entered the war in 1917 and used phosgene and mustard gas in artillery shells supplied by the British and French. Some were fired by U.S. Army artillery officer, Harry S. Truman. The use of poison gas had actually been outlawed by the Hague Declarations of 1899 and 1907. It is estimated that gas caused 500,000 casualties, with 100,000 of them dying, and many of the others disfigured and crippled for life.
WWII saw the Germans use Zyklon B, a cyanide-based insecticide, to kill millions in concentration camps. Most recently, sarin gas was used by the leaders of Iraq in 1988 and Syria in 2013 to kill dissidents. Sarin, a nerve gas, was used by Japanese terrorists in an attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, injuring 5000 and killing 12. Sarin is noted to be 26 times more deadly than cyanide.
Anthrax is common in soil and not a hazard except in concentrated form. When powdered, concentrated, and inhaled, it has a fatality rate of 90 percent. In 2001, a U.S. Army bio-defense researcher, Doctor Bruce Ivins, sent powdered anthrax to victims through the U.S. mail. Twenty-two people were infected, and five died. Ivins committed suicide before he was charged.
Many of our household chemicals are poisonous when not properly used, insecticides and herbicides among them. Even household cleaning liquids. Some poisons kill quickly, while others take years of accumulation. Two good examples are nicotine and caffeine. If one ounce of pure nicotine, extracted from tobacco, is swallowed at one time it will be fatal. One ounce of pure caffeine,extracted from coffee beans, will be equally fatal. These two chemicals are normally consumed in only very small amounts over a very long period of time. The cumulative effects are not seen until later in life, when they are often irreversible. A coroner can easily identify the smokers and heavy coffee drinkers by the condition of their internal organs.
Mankind has invented and used many poisons. Some were used in murders, and others were fatal through misuse or ignorance. The list includes: chloroform, rubbing alcohol, drinking alcohol, cyanide, arsenic, mercury, carbon monoxide, radium, and thallium.
“Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions: the surest poison is time”. -Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1862
By Paul Warrick: April 7, 2026 – Great Falls, Mt
Author: Staff
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