Poisons and the development of Toxicology in the 19th century

A cursory survey of 19^th century publications and press testifies to a morbid fascination with poisons and poisonings. At the time, poisonous substances like arsenic, cyanide and strychnine were ubiquitous in the domestic environment and poisonings were common. Due to the frequency of murder, suicide, and accidental death by poison, the subject became a matter of public interest and public health. Infamous Victorian murder cases involving criminal poisoning scandalised the readers of newspaper columns and challenged the legal profession. At the same time toxicology, as well as a nascent forensic science, were systematically, and at times controversially, decoding poisons and their actions on the body, vastly advancing empirical knowledge. Due to the efforts of scientists and doctors, awareness of poisons and their properties, powerful enough to either cure or kill, entered everyday experience. During this time important shifts were taking place in modern public health, in terms of medical consensus and the circulation and popularization of scientific knowledge.

Above: Pierre Matthieu Joseph Bonaventure Orfila. Lithograph. Wellcome Collection. Public Domain Mark. Source: Wellcome Collection.

The development of scientific toxicology accelerated in the 19^th century with prominent Spanish chemist and scholar Mateu Joseph Bonaventura Orfila i Rotger (1787-1853) who was considered the father of modern toxicology. Mateu Orfila studied and lived in France gaining important positions, eventually becoming Dean of the Faculty of Medicine in Paris. Using laboratory experiments, clinical data, and post-mortem examination, he developed a reliable and systematic method to detect poisonous substances in the human body. He offered the first systematic treatment of the subject in 1813 in his Traité des poisons, also called Toxicologie Générale (English translation: A general system of toxicology: or, a treatise on poisons, found in the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, considered in their relations with physiology, pathology, and medical jurisprudence, London: Printed for E. Cox and Son, 1821, translated by John Augustine Waller). In this treatise, Orfila identifies and analyses poisonous substances, dividing them into six principal classes: the Corrosive, the Astringent, the Acrid, the Narcotic, the Narcotico-acrid, and the Stupifying. His research on the effects of toxins and antidotes was pioneering and established new basic principles in modern medicine and pharmacology. This was due in no small measure to his experimental methods and his testing on corpses as well as animals. His work generated controversy, especially in relation to vivisection, however the significance of his contributions was recognised widely at the time.

Orfila was also a foundational figure for the medico-legal field. He served as an expert in criminal and legal investigations, captivating the courts with his various chemical analyses and tests on corpses, and his testimony was often the decisive factor in the jury’s verdict. He served as an expert and well-known scientific investigator in important legal trials in France involving alleged poisonings with arsenic and other chemical substances. In 1840, he was asked to investigate the notorious case of Charles Lafarge’s death, whose wife had been accused of poisoning his food with arsenic. After four failed chemical analyses, Orfila was finally able to detect arsenic in the victim’s body, leading the court to convict Madame Lafarge.

Above: Paracelsus. Science Museum Group. Image is released under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Licence.

Orfila and his contemporary toxicologists based a lot of their work on Renaissance German-Swiss physician and alchemist Theophrastus Phillipus Auroleus Bombastus von Hohenheim, also known as Paracelsus (1493–1541). Paracelsus is credited as having introduced chemistry to medicine, pioneering a new understanding of pharmaceutical properties. Mixing observation and deduction with philosophy and theology, he argued that all matter, including the human body, consists of three basic substances: sulphur, mercury and salt, which are principles rather than chemical elements as we understand them today. By adjusting their properties, substances become either medicines or poisons since it is the dose that determines toxicity. With this, he provided the first description of the dose-response relationship which is at the heart of modern toxicology. As he writes in his “Third Defense”: “What is there that is not a poison? All things are poison, and nothing is without poison. Solely the dose determines that a thing is not a poison.”

Above: “Common Wolfs Bane” from Essay on Poisons.

With his systematic treatise on toxicology published in 1829 (A treatise on poisons: in relation to medical jurisprudence, physiology, and the practice of physic), the first of its kind in England, Robert Christison (1797-1882), Scottish toxicologist and physician, aimed to establish toxicology as an essential part of the studies of every medical man. Christison studied toxicology under Mathieu Orfila in Paris and became an authority on poisons by undertaking experiments, even going to the lengths of experimenting on himself. Upon his return to Edinburgh, he became professor of medical jurisprudence and eventually medical officer to the Crown in Scotland. His role meant that he was called as an expert witness in many celebrated criminal cases, including the Burke and Hare murders.

Above: “Common Tarantula” from Essay on Poisons.

The work of English chemist Alfred Swaine Taylor continued in the same vein, by referencing extensively the work of Christison. Taylor’s work also developed the science further and was, in its own right, another important contribution to the medico-legal field. As he points out in his book On Poisons, in relation to Medical Jurisprudence and Medicine (1848), the crime of poisoning had been fearfully on the increase: “it seems essential for the proper administration of justice, and for the security of society, to collect and arrange in a convenient form of reference, those important medical facts in relation to death from poison, which while they constitute a safe guide to the barrister and medical practitioner, may prevent the condemnation of the innocent, and insure the conviction of the guilty”.

Above: “Meadow Saffron” from Essay on Poisons.

As already mentioned, toxicologists participated as experts in criminal trials and wrote reports at the request of judges and lawyers. They were expected to provide expert advice to lay audiences including juries, judges and lawyers and, as their conclusions could be decisive in establishing the final verdict, their reports had to be written in a way that was accessible. The court became in this way a bridge between the scientific and public spheres creating a new audience. Magistrates, judges and the public became potential readers of popularised toxicology books. Some of the poisoning trials gained notoriety and were reported in newspapers or reproduced in fiction, thus spreading the interest in toxicology even further.

Above: “Poisonous Agaric” from Essay on Poisons.

From a more practical point of view, popular books on poisons and antidotes were aimed at a general audience because it was widely acknowledged that appropriate first aid could limit the harm in cases of accidental poisoning. As first aid was usually provided by bystanders, physicians wrote practical guides explaining to a lay audience what they should do if someone was poisoned, developing guidelines and basic manuals intended both for the academic community and for the public. A typical example of a more accessible and practical publication from the library holdings is a small, illustrated pocketbook. Titled Essay on Poisons: Embracing Their Symptoms, Treatment, Tests and Morbid Appearances; to which is Added an Appendix, The Means for Treating Cases of Suspended Animation, it is an informative first aid guide on poisonous substances, their symptoms and treatment. This is the 1845 7^th edition of this volume by English medical and botanical writer Thomas Castle (c.1804? – 1840?), with the first publication appearing in 1834. This item appears to have been added to the College Library on 7^th February 1899. It is unclear whether the author lived to see his book’s seventh edition as not a lot of biographical information is known.

Above: “Papaver Somniferum (White Poppy)” from Essay on Poisons.

It is of interest for its portable pocket size, practical advice and beautiful, vividly coloured illustrations of various sources of poisons in nature. It adopts a simpler plan for the arrangement of poisons, based upon the effects which the respective poisons produce, categorising them into three classes: irritants, narcotics and narcotico-acids. It contains 21 coloured plates of colourful images, covering snakes, insects, fungi and other poisonous plants like the deadly nightshade, agaric, and white and black hellebore.

Above: “White Hellebore” from Essay on Poisons.

Castle aims to rationalise, render familiar, and demystify poisons for a wide inexperienced audience by “embracing” their various appearances and offering a first-aid guide for treatment. Throughout the book he repeatedly underlines that outcomes are dependent on quantity and dosing, as well as to speedy counteraction. The book’s aim to provide a first aid guide become clearer with the added appendix on how to treat “suspended animation”, that is the loss of consciousness, “from drowning, hanging, or breathing deleterious airs”.

Above: Atropa belladonna, commonly known as belladonna or deadly nightshade, is a toxic perennial herbaceous plant in the nightshade family Solanaceae. Left image taken from Castle (1845). Right image taken from Traité de médecine légale ..., Matthieu Joseph Bonaventure Orfila (1829). Licence: Public Domain Mark.

In its preface for the 2^nd edition, dated 10 March 1837 and reproduced in the edition in question, the author communicates his satisfaction at the success of the little pocketbook among medical practitioners and how “an attentive perusal of this simple production has been of essential service to gentlemen who have passed their medical examination”. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that the success of the pocketbook owes as much to its visual appeal as to its practical handiness. An aesthetic consideration and a capable artist, contributed to the quality of the illustrations which maintain their vividness to this day. For example, the illustration of the belladonna, or deadly nightshade, from Castle’s book has a more pronounced aesthetic appeal, in comparison to the belladonna illustration from Orfila’s book. The second illustration has a more demonstrative orientation, underlining their different production values.

Above: Preface of Essay on Poisons with the Library accession stamp.

In the present article an attempt has been made to give a brief overview of the development of toxicology in 19^th century Europe. The various publications that appear in this period vary, catering both for the academic community but also towards non-expert readers. The history of poisons, their effects and antidotes, is not only the history of scientific and medical development, but also of its interaction with the public sphere and ongoing discussions on morality, justice, safety and sanction. We see a foreshadowing of the interest that modern toxicology and forensic science enjoy today, in efforts to assist in law enforcement and the safeguarding of society from nature but also from itself and its own shortcomings.

Maria Christodoulou, Information Assistant