Book dossier

Inheritor's Powder

by Sandra Hempel

This is the story of how an infamous murder case led to the birth of modern toxicology. In the 19th century criminal poisoning with arsenic was frighteningly easy. For a few pence and with few questions asked, it was possible to buy enough poison to kill off an entire family, hence arsenic's popular name: the Inheritor's Powder. Yet if poisoning was easy, it was a notoriously difficult crime to prove.