dblum
Posts by this author
February 1, 2010
On Friday, a 41-year-old Missouri woman was charged with poisoning her granddaughter with an anti-clotting medication. The reason: she wanted to scare the one-year-old's parents into uniting over the child's illness and giving up their divorce plans.
The poisoning was discovered when the little…
January 29, 2010
In 1854, the essayist Henry David Thoreau published an ode to a morning fire: "Light-winged Smoke, Icarian bird... Lark without song, and messenger of dawn." Scientists, of course, saw the hazing blue of wood smoke - or any smoke derived from burning plant material - as something less poetic. In…
January 27, 2010
Late last summer, six researchers at Harvard University's medical school fell into a poisoner's trap. Each poured a cup of coffee from a communal coffee maker in the school's pathology department. All of them ended up in the hospital; some had fainted, others were dizzy and nauseated, most couldn't…
January 25, 2010
Speakeasy bar, 1933
I love the cocktails of the 1920s, invented by Prohibition-era mixologists trying to cover up the taste of bathtub gin. The Bee's Knees, which stirs lemon juice and honey in with the liquor; the Sidecar (personal favorite) which blends lemon juice and orange-infused liqueurs…
January 13, 2010
My new book - The Poisoner's Handbook - will be published next month (February 18). But it's already having this effect on my life: my husband has developed a nervous habit of moving his coffee cup out of my reach. When the Wall Street Journal published an excerpt of the book (see link below) I…