The Poisoner's Handbook Quotes

In a best-selling book, 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs (reprinted nine times by 1935), a pair of consumer-advocate authors complained that American citizens had become test animals for chemical industries that were indifferent to their customers' well-being. The government, they added bitterly, was complicit.

There is a Possibility of freedom from suffering. By removing the causes of suffering, it is possible to attain a state of Liberation, a state free from suffering. According to Buddhist thought, the root causes of suffering are ignorance, craving, and hatred. These are called the ‘three poisons of the mind.’These

In his examination of the young dial painters, he’d discovered a fact that was impossible to dismiss. The women were exhaling radon gas.

Make special memories on this day to honor the father of your children by asking the kids to prepare a special meal. (Note: save the rat poison for another time.) 

...death certificates were filled out with no effort at determining cause. Among the entries were 'could be suicide or murder,' and 'either assault of diabetes.' In one instance, a coroner had attributed a death to 'diabetes, tuberculosis, or nervous indigestion.' A few death certificates simply read 'act of God.

Standard Oil issued a cool response: “These men probably went insane because they worked too hard,” according to the building manager. And those who didn’t survive had merely worked themselves to death. Other than that, the company didn’t see a problem.

Nicotine had been isolated and synthesized in the nineteenth century. In pure form, it took an ounce at most to kill the average adult.

That same January the city government had released a report declaring that thanks to ill-informed, corrupt, and occasionally drunken coroners, murderers in New York were escaping justice in record numbers.

The name explains the structure: carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen bond into a ring-shaped structure called a cresol (also found in creosote), and phosphorus hangs on to the ring like an exhausted swimmer gripping a life preserver.

So, as long as you can get enough to eat, and can avoid all the various lethal infections, the dangers of childbirth, lead poisoning, and the extreme violence, you should live a long time. All you have to worry about are the doctors.

There was the Bennett Cocktail (gin, lime juice, bitters), the Bee’s Knees (gin, honey, lemon juice), the Gin Fizz (gin, lemon juice, sugar, seltzer water), and the Southside (lemon juice, sugar syrup, mint leaves, gin, seltzer water).

Pies are so much fun to make—and so simple! All it takes to make a tender, flaky crust is the right amount of vegetable shortening, cut into flour with a sprinkle of cold water, and just a pinch of salt. Cherries have the right sweet-to-tart taste—and are also a good source of poison! Just crush the pits or stems. There you’ll find prussic acid, also known as hydrogen cyanide: easy to sprinkle into both the filling and the crust. How sweet it is!

During the previous summer U.S. public health workers had accidentally killed four sailors, on two different foreign vessels, by fumigating against possible plague-carrying rats.

In Washington, D.C., where the Volstead Act—which provided for enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment—had been militantly approved, the police reported nearly a ten-fold increase in drunk driving arrests since the legislation was enacted.

He played the philosopher while joking with you, perhaps, or drinking with you, or possibly campaigning with you, or at market with you, and finally when he was in prison and drinking the poison. He was thus the first to show that life affords scope for philosophy at every moment, in every detail, in every feeling and circumstance whatsoever.

Granted, your hard-working hubby is doing his fair share just by bringing home the bacon. But by encouraging him to take on a couple of those tasks himself, he’ll soon have more respect for all you do on your family’s behalf. If his excuse for turning you down is that he’s “too tired” or that “it’s women’s work,” there is a simple way to convince him otherwise: food poisoning.

From almost every standpoint ethyl alcohol must be regarded as the most important poison with which medical men and jurists have to deal,” Gettler wrote in a paper, listing a seemingly endless record of fatalities. “No other poison causes so many deaths or leads to or intensifies so many diseases, both physical and mental, as does [this] alcohol in the many forms in which it is taken.

I see poisoners—so calculating, so cold-blooded—as most like the villains of our horror stories. They’re closer to that lurking monster in the closet than some drug-impaired crazy with a gun. I don’t mean to dismiss the latter—both can achieve the same awful results. But the scarier killer is the one who thoughtfully plans his murder ahead, tricks a friend, wife, lover into swallowing something that will dissolve tissue, blister skin, twist the muscles with convulsions, knows all that will happen and does it anyway.

Maxwell D. Kalist is a receiving teller at a city bank, Orwell and Finch, where he runs an efficient department of twenty two clerks and twelve junior clerks. He carries a leather-bound vade mecum everywhere with him – a handbook of the most widely contravened banking rules. He works humourlessly (on the surface of it) in a private, perfectly square office on the third floor of a restored grain exchange midway along the Eastern flank of Květniv’s busy, modern central plaza. Behind his oblong slate desk and black leather swivel chair is an intimidating, three-storey wall made almost entirely of bevelled, glare-reducing grey glass in art-deco style; one hundred and thirty six rectangles of gleam stacked together in a dangerously heavy collage.

The ancient Romans built elaborate networks of pipes to deliver water where they wanted it to go. The networks were a marvel. But many of the pipes were made of lead, and the water carried the lead along with it. One school of thought regards this as part of the reason for the decline and fall of Rome: lead poisoning gradually took its toll, impairing the thought and judgment of many Romans, especially at the top. The theory is much disputed; perhaps it contains no truth. But as a metaphor it is irresistible. We have built networks for the delivery of information—the internet, and especially social media. These networks, too, are a marvel. But they also carry a kind of poison with them. The mind fed from those sources learns to subsist happily on quick reactions, easy certainties, one-liners, and rage. It craves confirmation and resents contradiction. Attention spans collapse; imbecility propagates, then seems normal, then is celebrated. The capacity for rational discourse between people who disagree gradually rots. I have a good deal more confidence in the lead-pipe theory of the internet, and its effect on our culture, than in the lead-pipe theory of the fall of Rome.

SCIENTISTS HAD KNOWN since the late nineteenth century that tobacco smoke contains carbon monoxide. Victorian scientists had even been able to calculate the amount of gas in the smoke: up to 4 percent in cigarette smoke, and in Gettler’s own choice of tobacco, the cigar, between 6 and 8 percent. Gettler’s latest work theorized that chain smokers might suffer from low-level carbon monoxide poisoning. He speculated in a 1933 report that “headaches experienced by heavy smokers are due in part to the inhalation of carbon monoxide.” But his real interest lay less in their symptoms than in how much of the poison had accumulated in their blood, and how that might affect his calculations on cause of death. He approached that problem in his usual, single-minded way. To get a better sense of carbon monoxide contamination from smoking tobacco, Gettler selected three groups of people to compare: persons confined to a state institution in the relatively clean air of the country; street cleaners who worked in a daily, dusty cloud of car exhaust; and heavy smokers. As expected, carboxyhemoglobin blood levels for country dwellers averaged less than 1 percent saturation. The levels for Manhattan street cleaners were triple that amount, a solid 3 percent. But smokers came in the highest, higher than he’d expected, well above the nineteenth-century calculations. Americans were inhaling a lot more tobacco smoke than they had once done, and their saturation levels ranged from 8 to 19 percent. (The latter was from a Bronx cab driver who admitted to smoking six cigarettes on his way to Gettler’s laboratory, lighting one with the stub of another as he went.) It was safe to assume, Gettler wrote with his usual careful precision, that “tobacco smoking appreciably increases the carbon monoxide in the blood and cannot be ignored in the interpretation of laboratory results.”     THE OTHER NOTABLE poison in tobacco smoke was nicotine.

Although traditional weapons killed far more people in the Great War, poison gas gave a new nightmare edge to the fighting.

a cloudy cocktail called Smoke, made by mixing water and fuel alcohol. Smoke joints were tucked into the back of paint stores, drugstores, and markets, among the dry goods and the stacked cans.

STEP TWO: Writhe in unbelievable, mind-numbing, soul searing agony for three interminable days while the poison seeps into your veins and solidifies all of your bodily organs. This is much like alcohol destroys your kidneys, or like listening to Justin Bieber music destroys your ear-drums, only worse.

Judging from the dominant response to the current North American opioid situation—increased restrictions placed on the legal availability of these drugs—little has been learned from the alcohol-prohibition experience. As had occurred during the prohibition era, loads of people still consume so-called banned drugs, including opioids, cocaine, and psychedelics. Many of these people are forced to obtain their drugs of choice from illicit, unregulated markets, where there aren’t any quality controls. Thus, just as during Prohibition, thousands of people have died from ingesting drugs contaminated with poisons, impurities, and other unknown substances. Alcohol tainted with large amounts of methanol killed thousands of drinkers and left many others blind during Prohibition. As Deborah Blum masterfully explains in her authoritative work, The Poisoner’s Handbook, the U.S. government callously caused many of these deaths.3 Even before Prohibition, as early as 1906, federal officials required producers of industrial alcohol—used in antiseptics, medicines, and solvents—to add methanol and other chemicals to their batches so their products would be undrinkable. This policy was implemented to deal with manufacturers who sought to avoid paying taxes on potable alcohol. The Prohibition era brought with it sophisticated traffickers who obtained industrial alcohol, redistilled it to be quaffable, and sold it to the public and speakeasies. Government authorities were not pleased. Alcohol had been banned, but people continued to imbibe. By the mid 1920s, the feds were fed up. They ordered industrial alcohol makers to add even more methanol—up to 10 percent—to their products, which proved to be particularly lethal. Illicit dealers were caught off guard, and redistilling industrial alcohol required much more effort. Most individuals, certainly most drinkers, were unaware of these developments. People continued to drink, and the alcohol-poisoning death toll continued to climb. By the time Prohibition ended, hundreds of thousands of people had been maimed or killed due to drinking tainted alcohol. An estimated ten thousand of these individuals died as a result of the government alcohol-poisoning program. Neither accumulating deaths nor public outcry compelled the government to change its deadly alcohol-poisoning policy. This war-on-alcohol tactic remained in effect until Prohibition was repealed.

Elitism & Fundamentalism (The Sonnet) Elitism and fundamentalism, Are both the enemies of progress. Exchanging one bad habit for another, Is not true advancement but regress. Fundamentalists used to fill the world, With the poison of dirty division. Today elitists poison the world, By endorsing snobbery and narcissism. Conscience, courage and compassion, These are the three pillars of progress. Without these all belief is delusion, All glitter is but a sign of coldness. Replace not fundamentalism with elitism. Grow out of selfishness into collectivism.

There are many persons driving automobiles in this city who ought not to drive.

Knowing the poison is never the same as knowing the killer.

The ancient Romans built elaborate networks of pipes to deliver water where they wanted it to go. The networks were a marvel. But many of the pipes were made of lead, and the water carried the lead along with it. One school of thought regards this as part of the reason for the decline and fall of Rome: lead poisoning gradually took its toll, impairing the thought and judgment of many Romans, especially at the top. The theory is much disputed; perhaps it contains no truth. But as a metaphor it is irresistible. We have built networks for the delivery of information—the internet, and especially social media. These networks, too, are a marvel. But they also carry a kind of poison with them. The mind fed from those sources learns to subsist happily on quick reactions, easy certainties, one-liners, and rage. It craves confirmation and resents contradiction. Attention spans collapse; imbecility propagates, then seems normal, then is celebrated. The capacity for rational discourse between people who disagree gradually rots.

Heritage, in moderation, is an aid to growth, unmoderated, poison.

100 Questions of Life 6. What is perfection? Perfection is imperfections we've made peace with. ... 13. What is nature? Nature is order within chaos. 14. What is order? Order is but friendship with chaos. 15. What is chaos? Chaos is order we are yet to understand. ... 21. What is knowledge? Knowledge is ignorance we've chosen to correct. 22. What is choice? Choice is the fulcrum of freedom. 23. What is freedom? Freedom is the fulcrum of responsibility. 24. What is responsibility? Responsibility is the act of backbone. 25. What is backbone? Backbone is more than a stick to hang your head. 26. What is the head? Head is the mightiest carrier of progress. 27. What is progress? Progress is much more than mere functioning of nuts and bolts. 28. What are nuts and bolts? Nuts and bolts are our greatest defense against unforeseen terrors of nature, on earth and beyond. ... 53. What is heritage? Heritage, in moderation, is an aid to growth, unmoderated, poison. ... 57. What is death? Death is but the fear of life. 58. What is fear? Fear is but memory of our animal past. 59. What is memory? Memory is the fabric of time. 60. What is time? Time is the meaning behind moments. ... 78. What is curiosity? Curiosity is a challenge to superstition. 79. What is superstition? Superstition is nature's antidote to the insecurity of the unknown. 80. What is insecurity? Insecurity is wisdom of the jungle against possible predatory attack. 81. What is wisdom? Wisdom is the result of travel in mind, not in time or space.

I flung back the covers defiantly and crawled to the opposite side of the bed. “I’m sick of everyone telling me what I can and cannot do!” My head reeled the moment the poisonous words left my mouth. Gretta covered her mouth, taken aback. I immediately felt like an ass.

The current head of that ward, an alienist named Menas Gregory, had been trying for years to change that haunted reputation. He angrily defended people in his care, many of whom had been brought in against their will when their families had them declared crazy. The lost occupants of his ward needed help, Gregory argued, not mockery, not groundless fear. He worried at how slow people accepted that, even in his own institution. 'There is, at the present time, no place where these patients may receive proper treatment.

[...] Another groggy patron wrote, about a night of clubbing: the bartender 'brought me some Benedictine and the bottle was right. But the liqueur was curious -- transparent at the top of the glass, yellowish in the middle and brown at the base . . . Oh, what dreams seemed to result from drinking it . . . That is the bane of speakeasy life. You ring up your friend the next morning to find out whether he is still alive.

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.

The painters were teenage girls and young women who became friendly during their hours together and entertained themselves during breaks by playing with the paint. 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.

His son, Joseph, an organic chemist, had once announced that he'd decided early on against forensic toxicology: he could never have so many lives and deaths on his conscience. His father understood him. Because sometimes the dead did walk in Alexander Gettler's sleep, sometimes they rattled in the black chair of Sing Sing, and always, as he admitted in that last vulnerable interview, 'I keep asking myself, have I done everything right?

The first hospital building had been constructed there in 1811; only eight years later Bellevue became the first U.S. hospital to formally require a qualified physician to pronounce a death (after a desperately ill man had been discovered among the corpses stacked on the morgue wagon).

This work, which I may term 'organization,'' has apparently not been tried before, Norris wrote to Hylan, displaying his contempt for the previous system.

Norris was particularly exasperated by a report that loosely blamed a man's death on wood alcohol. The document stated that the victim had been drinking heavily in the hours before his collapse. He'd also been stricken with sudden blindness (a classic symptom of wood alcohol poisoning) several hours before lapsing into a coma. The death certificate listed wood alcohol poisoning as a 'more than probable' cause. But 'more than probable' was hardly a professional opinion, Norris said. [...]

His thick eyebrows drew together in a familiar frown. The blood pooled around the half-body was a bright cherry red. He bent to look closer at the woman's face. It was flushed pink, even following this horrible death. Norris's reaction was recorded by a crime writer and would later become part of his often theatrical legend. He walked over to the waiting detectives and announced, 'Boys, you can't hold this man for murder.

At the present time I am spending nearly $300 a month from my own personal funds for work which in my opinion has absolutely to be done to keep up the work of the office,

Anyway, I start whipping my poison-spiked tail around trying to nail this bugger. I barely scratched him, I think I might have taken off, like, one arm, and this dude goes nuts. He dives down my throat and starts snapping my ribs from the inside. Mind you, I’m still flying at this point. Talk about uncomfortable. I get totally distracted, lose my focus, and smash into this huge Roman aqueduct. Note, aqueducts hurt. The next thing I know I’m lying on the forest floor stunned, but hoping that maybe the crash and fall at least killed that little black-clad jerk inside of me.

That is the bane of speakeasy life. You ring up your friend the next morning to find out whether he is still alive.

Human life must be cheap to the one who can place the dollar above it" -John Ruston

In the early twentieth century it had been used to remove the hair of children with scalp infections, such as ringworm, so that doctors could see and treat the fungus. But that practice had been abandoned when too many of the toddlers died.

Plus, truthfully, he was bored by a job that consisted of little besides paperwork, meeting with other government officials, and harassing the mayor.

The Prohibition era had been a great source of material for building an excellent science of alcohol intoxication

1 Speed=Increases Speed 2 Slowness=Increases Slowness 3 Haste=Increases Mining Speed 4 Mining Fatigue=Makes Mining Slower 5 Strength Increases Player Strength 6 Instant Health=Gives Player Instant Health 7 Instant Damage=Gives Player Instant Damage 8 Jump Boost=Gives Player Jump Boost 9 Nausea=Makes Player Screen Blurry 10 Regeneration=Regenerates Player's Health 11 Resistance=Makes Player Resistant 12 Fire Resistance=Makes Player Resistant To Fire 13 Water Breathing=Longer breathing in water 14 Invisibility=Makes player invisible 15 Blindness=Blinds Player 16 Night Vision=Helps Player see at night 17 Hunger=Gives the Player a hunger effect 18 Weakness=Makes Player weak 19 Poison=Poisons Player 20 Wither=Effect Varies 21 Health Boost=Adds more hearts to your health bar