The forensic pharmacology of some inorganic substances

摘要

The toxicology of" inorganic substances has its basis in far antiquity when its secrets were arcane and guarded jealously by the rich and powerful. From the middle ages onwards the use of poisons became accessible to the common people because of improved commerce and the increasingly industrialised developments in chemistry. The cheapest and most powerful were mainly inorganic substances, in particular arsenic, sold as rat poison but which were used most commonly against victims known to the poisoner. Frequently these were spouses, lovers or spouses of lovers but in a majority of cases they were children. Since about 1850 increasing governmental regulation of the accessibility of poisons and the escalating improvements in both medicine and analytical toxicology have limited access to poisons and have led to the almost inevitable detection of malfeasance. Only in spectacularly unconventional cases has poisoning been an issue in the recent half century.