Book by journalism professor traces birth of forensic science in Jazz Age New York

Deborah Blum‘s husband is a little wary when she gets too close to his coffee cup.

Blum, a professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, believes he thinks she’s learned too much about poison and chemicals while writing “The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York.”

“There are mornings…when I start talking about a poison in my book, revealing my own dangerous expertise, and as I do, I watch my husband quietly, not really thinking about it, slide his cup out of my reach,” Blum writes.

During the first part of the 20th century, stealthy killers who banked on police not understanding the effects of their silent weapons used poison. But much of that changed because of New York’s chief medical examiner, Charles Norris, and toxicologist Alexander Gettler, whose work Blum traces in “The Poisoner’s Handbook.” The duo pioneered forensic science and addressed a range of public health issues posed by everyday — and often deadly — exposure to chemicals, she writes.

As Norris and Gettler crafted modern techniques for testing for the presence of chemicals in human tissue — which led to the “CSI” culture that fascinates us today — the duo investigated a slew of mysteries and developed our modern understanding of how our bodies interact with the chemicals around us, as well as how science can be used to convict and exonerate those accused of crimes. By the time Norris died in 1935, he and Gettler had elevated forensic chemistry to a formidable science, she says, and their methods were widely accepted by police, prosecutors and juries.

“Trailblazing scientific detectives, they earned a respected place in the courtroom, crusaded against compounds dangerous to public health and stopped a great many Jazz Age poisoners in their tracks,” Blum writes in the book. “As they determinedly countered the obstacles faced in each new case they developed innovative laboratory methods for teasing toxins from human tissue.”

Blum calls the era in science a “paradigm shift.”

“There’s this forgotten moment when forensic science is really invented in United States,” Blum says. “This is when they’re getting a grip on blood typing and fingerprinting…we’ve learned it and we take ‘CSI’ and all the forensics we see on ‘Law & Order’ completely for granted. (Before that), it wasn’t there and no one trusted it.”

Although the science has changed from Norris and Gettler’s time, attitudes toward chemicals and the dangers they pose haven’t, Blum says. Some children’s jewelry was recently recalled because it contained unhealthy levels of cadmium, and federal officials are working to address the danger of the plastic bisphenol A, or BPA, which has been found in baby bottles, she notes.

“It’s not so different from the 1920s,” she says of the ongoing discoveries. Blum addresses some of these modern problems with chemicals in her blog, “Speakeasy Science: A blog about culture and chemistry,” at http://blog.deborahblum.com. “We’re still living in this industrial chemical world, we’re still careless about poisons, and they’re still in our everyday life.”

“The Poisoner’s Handbook,” which will be released on Thursday, Feb. 18, has received strong early reviews. Publisher’s Weekly says it has the pacing and characterization of a suspense novel, and that Blum “makes science accessible and fascinating,” while Kirkus Reviews calls it “caviar for true-crime fans and science buffs alike.”

In her book, Blum weaves the puzzles — factory workers whose bones crumbled from within; a restaurant unknowingly serving deadly pies; men and women accused of murdering loved ones — with stories of how Norris and Gettler created ways to test for the presence of chemicals, as well as descriptions of the properties of the chemicals themselves.

“The Poisoner’s Handbook” also contributes to the history of the nation’s experiment with Prohibition. New York City in the Jazz Age was the hotbed of the “wet” movement that refused to acknowledge the nation’s laws against alcohol use. Blum traces the dangers found in speakeasies from potent “bathtub gin,” as well as the U.S. government’s decision to infuse alcohols with deadly chemicals to deter consumption. Both contributed to a steady stream of alcohol-related deaths until Prohibition was repealed, the book notes.

Blum, a self-professed “geek” with an affinity for chemistry, has been a professor of journalism at UW–Madison since 1997. While working as a science writer for the Sacramento Bee, she won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for “Monkey Wars,” a series on the ethical issues and dilemmas of primate research, which was later expanded into a book.

Blum says she grew up fascinated by the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer, which often featured sinister poison killings, and has always wanted to write about poison.

“One of the things I wanted to get at is that poisoners are so scary,” she says. “They’re always premeditated, they’re always plotting things out.”