Summary of Dr. Neil Bradbury's A Taste for Poison

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Poisoning is the act of administering a poison to another person. It is a very morbid fascination, and the methods of poisoning are varied and strange. The words poison and toxin are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing.
#2 The four routes of poison delivery are ingestion, respiration, absorption, and injection. The actions of poisons reveal a lot about human biology. Many poisons attack the nervous system, disrupting the highly sophisticated electrical signaling that controls the normal functions of the body.
#3 The same chemicals that are used to treat diseases are also used to tease apart the inner molecular and cellular mechanisms of cells and organs, which is then used to develop new drugs that treat and cure a wide range of diseases.
#4 The chemical in question is insulin, and its absence, or an inability of the body to respond to it properly, leads to the disease diabetes mellitus. Before the widespread availability of insulin, a diagnosis of diabetes was akin to a death sentence.

Sujets

• Général

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 23 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669358428
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Dr. Neil Bradbury's A Taste for Poison
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Poisoning is the act of administering a poison to another person. It is a very morbid fascination, and the methods of poisoning are varied and strange. The words poison and toxin are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing.

#2

The four routes of poison delivery are ingestion, respiration, absorption, and injection. The actions of poisons reveal a lot about human biology. Many poisons attack the nervous system, disrupting the highly sophisticated electrical signaling that controls the normal functions of the body.

#3

The same chemicals that are used to treat diseases are also used to tease apart the inner molecular and cellular mechanisms of cells and organs, which is then used to develop new drugs that treat and cure a wide range of diseases.

#4

The chemical in question is insulin, and its absence, or an inability of the body to respond to it properly, leads to the disease diabetes mellitus. Before the widespread availability of insulin, a diagnosis of diabetes was akin to a death sentence.

#5

In 1957, Elizabeth Betty Barlow was married to Kenneth, and they seemed extremely happy together. However, neighbors heard faint sobbing from the couple’s house on Saturday morning, and found Elizabeth dead in the bathtub, naked and dead.

#6

On August 8, 2016, Kenneth Smith and his wife, Elizabeth, were watching television in the family room. At 6:30 p. m. , Elizabeth asked her husband to come get her in an hour. At 11:20 p. , Kenneth found his wife submerged in the bathtub and not moving. He tried to resuscitate her, but he needed help.

#7

The death of Elizabeth Barlow was ruled natural, but the doctor could not explain her dilated pupils. She had died of heatstroke, but her decision to take a bath that night was pivotal. Had she stayed in bed, her death would have been ruled natural.

#8

The body regulates the amount of sugar in the blood through a hormone called insulin. If blood glucose levels fall too much or too rapidly, the body can become hypoglycemic, meaning not enough glucose is in the blood, and can lead to coma and even death.

#9

The pancreas produces insulin, which helps the body store and use glucose. When a meal containing carbohydrates is digested, the levels of glucose in the blood rise, which triggers the pancreas to release insulin into the bloodstream.

#10

In the 1920s, a doctor named Manfred Joshua Sakel treated a patient with schizophrenia who had diabetes. He gave the patient an overdose of insulin, and was surprised to find that the patient’s schizophrenia appeared to have gone into remission.

#11

In the 1950s, a paper was published that showed the validity of insulin coma therapy was dubious. It was another five years before a carefully controlled study on insulin coma therapy was published, which clearly showed that insulin coma therapy was a sham.

#12

On May 4, 1957, Dr. David Price, the Home Office forensic pathologist, began an examination of Elizabeth’s body. He found two hypodermic injection sites in each of her buttocks. The police questioned Kenneth, who confessed to injecting Elizabeth with her consent, but said it was not insulin, but rather ergometrine, a drug used in obstetrics to prevent heavy bleeding after childbirth.

#13

The police were convinced that Kenneth had murdered his wife by injecting her with a massive dose of insulin, sending her into an insulin-induced coma from which she would never recover. They needed to prove that Elizabeth had high levels of insulin in her body, but no one had ever measured insulin in human tissue before.

#14

The police turned to the manufacturers of insulin to help them prove that Elizabeth had been murdered. The pathologists had ruled out the presence of ergometrine in Elizabeth’s blood, but they still hadn’t proven the presence of large quantities of insulin in her system.

#15

The prosecution brought forward two witnesses who had conversations with Barlow three years earlier, and their recollections were damning. Harry Stork had worked with Barlow in a sanatorium where diabetic patients received insulin injections. Barlow told Stork that he could commit a perfect murder with insulin, as it could not be traced.

#16

The prosecution argued that Barlow had the motive to commit murder, not wanting to bring up another child to stretch the family’s finances. The defense argued that Barlow was innocent, and that his wife’s death was caused by a telephone call that prompted the police to stop her funeral and order a postmortem.

#17

Insulin is a popular murder weapon, but it is neither efficient nor undetectable. It takes a lot of insulin to kill someone, and the symptoms of hypoglycemia are easy to diagnose and cure.

#18

The Solanaceae family, which includes potatoes, eggplants, chili peppers, and tomatoes, is eaten daily in homes across the country. However, members of this family were initially treated with suspicion and fear. They are poisonous, and ingestion of their berries can be deadly.

#19