Free The Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum

preparation for the expected deluge of poisoning cases, Gettler—already showing his perfectionist nature—had evaluated fifty-eight different methods for identifying wood alcohol, both in tissue and in the so-called whiskey itself.
    He compared the tests’ effectiveness on “eight typical good grain whiskies,” then on alcoholic cider and five confiscated samples of wood alcohol. He tested them on another five cocktails made by mixing wood alcohol with water: each time he increased the amount of water, diluting the alcohol and making it more difficult to detect.
    He then evaluated methods of detecting wood alcohol in human organs. His favorite method involved grinding up a chunk of tissue—500 grams, about the size and weight of a roll of nickels—and putting the pinkish ooze into a flask with a drop of mineral oil (to prevent frothing). He then steamed his ooze by putting the flask in a boiling water bath, which turned it into a dark sludge. He mixed the sludge with acid and allowed it to cool. If he then stirred an unstable, reactive oxygen compound into the sludge—say, a fizzy salt like potassium dichromate—and reheated the flask, the ever-active oxygen triggered a further breakdown of the alcohol inside. Formaldehyde would come bubbling out. Most alcohols produced only a trace of formaldehyde, but wood alcohol released an overpowering amount—stinging, poisonous, and unmistakable.
    Testing a bottle of spirits involved a similarly elaborate process of distillation and oxidation. But Gettler recognized that for inspectors in the field, who needed to do a quick test in a saloon, lugging around a distillation apparatus was awkward, not to say impossible. The on-the-road alternative was to heat a copper coil to red hot and plunge the glowing metal into the alcohol. The heated metal would cause wood alcohol to interact with oxygen in the air—a different kind of oxidation—and release a nose-stinging whiff of formaldehyde.
    An inspector had to be willing to risk numbing his sense of smell to conduct the portable test, and the copper wire results were reliable only if the bottle contained a high percentage of wood alcohol, a good 40 proof (i.e., 20 percent) or more. If the wood alcohol was dilute, perhaps used just to spice up other ingredients, “it is extremely difficult, even impossible, for many people to detect the presence of methyl [wood] alcohol,” Gettler wrote. “I have tried this experiment on many individuals, using the same liquor, and found that some said methyl alcohol was present, others believed it to be absent, and still others were undecided.”
    Gettler wasn’t fazed by that challenge. When had the detection of poison ever been easy?
     
     
    THE BLOODY, poisonous, horrible war was finally over—an armistice was signed in 1918, and the official treaty of surrender was concluded at Versailles in 1919. Parades, celebrations, and parties reigned in New York as the troops came spilling off ships.
    But Mayor Hylan was not in a celebratory mood. He wrote to Norris and other department heads that diligent city employees should not become overly festive: “My attention has been called to the fact that when transports with returning troops are passing up the river, great quantities of torn papers are thrown . . . City employees should be sufficiently well informed to know that such acts are in violation of the ordinances, and cause additional work and expense to the City, not only in the cleaning up of this illegal litter, but in the waste of paper. Will you kindly issue instructions forbidding this practice?”
    And by the way, department heads should stop asking for money to improve their departments. Norris, he’d found, was a particular pest. As Hylan informed his medical examiner, “It is impossible for an official to do any constructive work if he is to be constantly annoyed in this manner.”
    Norris ignored his complaints. In December, Hylan wrote again to Norris, begging him to stop