Forensic Toxicology

Paper Summary:

This paper examines how, prior to modern medicine and the advent of forensic toxicological sciences, death from intentional poisoning was often indistinguishable from natural causes and how, consequently, poisoning with toxic substances was a preferred form of murder throughout human history until relatively recently. It looks at how modern toxicology consists of several distinct scientific specialties: Descriptive, mechanical, and regulatory. It discusses how forensic toxicologists examine blood and other fluids extracted from victims of crimes, as well as organs and other viscera removed from cadavers.

From the Paper:

"As the pharmaceutical and chemical industries grew, many more toxic
substances became available to those who would use them for nefarious purposes. These synthetic alkaloids required an entirely different method of identification, such as paper chromatography, based on separation of substances based on their respective molecular size and other chemical properties such as polarity, introduced in the middle of the twentieth century. The final conceptual and technological advance that marked the modern era of forensic toxicology was the subsequent development of gas chromatography and spectrometry , which enable the very precise identification of thousands of different toxic compounds and an accurate measurement of their exact concentrations within organic tissues."

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