The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison

  • John Emsley
Oxford University Press: 2005. 436 pp. £18.99, $30 0192805991 | ISBN: 0-192-80599-1

The title is a bit of a put-on. In The Elements of Murder, John Emsley, a chemist and science writer, slowly works his way through the periodic table, discussing those elements that are toxic enough to have caused human poisonings, whether accidental, or as emphasized here, deliberate. Rather more amusing is the (unintentional?) quip in the introduction: “Murder by poison may be a dying art...”

The major thrust of this effort centres on what professional toxicologists invariably, but unsatisfactorily, classify as ‘heavy metals’. These are the electropositive natural constituents of the Earth's crust, with a density greater than 5. The classification has always been unsatisfactory because it lumps together some 40 elements of wildly different acute or chronic toxicity, including some that have a very low toxicity, or are toxic but still required in small amounts for normal biological function. No toxicologist, however, would dispute the importance of mercury, arsenic and lead in any work on poisons, and a great deal of attention is lavished on them here, together with antimony and thallium. Because Emsley excludes non-metallic organic compounds, the work is not a general history of poison.

The Elements of Murder is obviously a labour of love, but it is less certain whether a niche readership will emerge that will reciprocate the author's affection for the material. The book is both authoritative and meticulously researched, and I found remarkably little to quarrel with in the factual content. Emsley knows what he is talking about. The book's formidable girth includes an extensive bibliography, a brief appendix, a glossary and a useful index. But the lack of citations in the text will limit the book's use as a primary reference source. On the other hand, it is too technical and comprehensive to be a good beach read.

Emsley gives us much more than the collection of anecdotes about grisly murders that the title and dust-jacket seem to promise. Indeed, even the most ghoulish of readers will grow weary from the sheer number of cases reported. Because homicidal arsenic poisoning has been carried out with regularity since antiquity, there are many more examples for arsenic than for the other elements. One would think that a rather smaller group might have made the point. How many cases can one read about before imagining that one is personally experiencing the symptoms? I was surprised by the intimate details that Emsley has uncovered (and perhaps unfortunately chosen to include) about activities that were supposedly conducted in the greatest of secrecy so many years ago.

The book also includes detailed information on the amounts of the elements found in common foodstuffs, their industrial applications, common chemical reactions, distributions of the element in the body, methods of detection, common forms found in the environment, medical uses, and much more. It's not that this material is irrelevant, just that it is all a little too much. Tucked away into this mass of information are many fascinating tidbits. For example, can it be that thallium is one of the weapons of mass destruction supposedly concealed by Saddam Hussein? The book includes reports on the poisonings, alleged or authentic, occupational or sinister, of many famous people, such as Napoleon, Isaac Newton, Handel, Beethoven, King George III and others.

Toxicological classifications always include a ‘miscellaneous’ category, and the final chapter has such a group. It contains much shorter treatments of a few more heavy metals and some other assorted elements, many of which were never involved in homicides. But there is no mention of iron, which has caused many tragic accidental deaths.

This is a lovely book, but perhaps sitting down and reading it from cover to cover is not the best way to appreciate it.