A IS FOR ARSENIC: THE POISONS OF AGATHA CHRISTIE By Kathryn Harkup, Bloomsbury, £12.99
It is certainly a matter of dosage. Paracelsus (1493-1541), a Swiss-German physician and the founder of toxicology, was of the opinion that poison can be found in everything, and that it is the dosage that separates poison from cure. Agatha Christie - apart from being an illustrious crime writer, she had also taught herself the skills of an apothecary's assistant - too shared a fascination for the grey world of venom. For some poisons, Kathryn Harkup shows us in this enjoyable book, can kill as well as save lives.
It is only natural that Christie's interest and her use of poison in real and imagined spheres would make Harkup curious. For she is not only a gifted writer but also a trained chemist. The result of her engagement is this book which traces, in alphabetical order, 14 poisons mentioned in Christie's works, and mentions, among other things, their natural sources, social histories, chemical properties, antidotes as well as case-studies based on their criminal use. The chronology of each of Harkup's investigations into specific poisons - from arsenic to the less-familiar veronal - proceeds on a predictable pattern. But the reader is unlikely to be miffed by the employment of a narrative technique that becomes all-too-familiar too soon. This can be attributed to Harkup's ability to reproduce even the seemingly unfathomable and complicated chemical reactions induced by poisons in a language that is shorn of technicality and jargon. This is of particular significance, given the fact that a lot of what she describes falls in the realm of serious scientific research. Harkup's analysis of how cyanide kills - the process by which it gets absorbed in the blood stream and is then transported to the other sites - is a perfect example of her lucid style.
Harkup's other, evident, strength is her grasp on social history. She provides telling evidence of the centrality of poison to social - usually royal - imagination and practice. For instance, arsenic-poisoning was quite popular in Renaissance Europe, and, by the 17th century, the French royal court had succumbed to its charms. So much so that a special court had to be constituted to prosecute the guilty. Harkup contextualizes poisons within specific socio-historical conditions, thereby making the book a rich ethnographic account. The case- studies are of special significance because they connect the use of poison to the larger issues of social transformations and their resultant, subterranean tensions. Consider the case of George Henry Lamson. In 1881, Lamson, whose medical practice in England had begun to flounder on account of his addiction to morphine, plotted to end his financial troubles by poisoning his wife's crippled brother. The victim's death, Lamson had hoped, would provide him with a source of inheritance. The motive of Lamson's criminal act cannot be understood without a deeper appreciation of the contemporary social conditions - the decadence of the bourgeoisie, the threat of financial ruin to the landed gentry with the inception of industrialization, and, most revealingly, the prevailing psychological attitudes towards honour, penury, crime and disgrace.
Harkup's idol was bound by the demands of her intricate plots. Consequently, even though Christie's knowledge of poisons was formidable and accurate, she seldom had the opportunity to let her readers know that some of the lethal compounds are held valuable not just in the field of medicine but also as antidotes to other venomous substances. Harkup is free from such constraints. Hence, she delights us by blurring the line between the uses and abuses of poison. Fowler's solution, a tonic that was prescribed to treat malaria, asthma and skin conditions by physicians in the 19th century, comprised arsenic as its key ingredient, the poison that could have taken Napoleon's life. Again, atropine - a plant alkaloid belonging to the Solanaceae family, which includes such species as mandrake, datura and belladonna -is a known antidote for muscarin and pilocarpine poisoning.
Harkup's research on the etymological roots of the names of some of these substances reveals that poisons serve as a bridge between myth and science. Atropa belladonna, the scientific term of 'deadly nightshade', derives its name from Atropos, one of three goddesses of Fate mentioned in Greek mythology, the one who cuts the thread of human life that is spun and measured by her two other siblings, respectively. Neither does Harkup neglect developments in toxicology and law, two other spheres that are relevant to poisons. This makes her research and arguments well-rounded. Given arsenic's many uses, finding the poison in a Victorian corpse, Harkup argues, was not uncommon. The challenge, for the law and the fledgling forensic sciences, was to find out whether the death had been deliberate or incidental.
There is never a dull moment here, and the credit goes to Harkup's anecdotes. Women of Styria, she writes, were once known to eat arsenic, in dangerous quantities and without any obvious detriment to their health, in the hope of possessing curvaceous figures and a peaches and cream complexion.
