by Christina Baum

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Each month, NACCHO brings you a new public health book, read and reviewed by NACCHO staff. Book reviews in this series originally appeared on NACCHO Voice: The Word on Local health Departments and are republished here with permission.

The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum tells the captivating tale of the evolution of the New York City medical examiner’s office between 1915 and 1936. During this period, the office was led by the first scientifically trained medical examiner, Charles Norris, who appointed the city’s first toxicologist, Alexander Gettler. These two recognized that poisoners were literally getting away with murder and set out to map the toxicology effects of various poisons, setting the forensic standards for the rest of the country.

Told through a series of murder investigations, the book presents a lively and suspenseful tale that foretells the current medical examiner role.

Want to discuss this book and others? Head over to NACCHO’s Virtual Communities page and connect with peers.

You Might Also Enjoy These Book Reviews:

• Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
• The Warmth of Other Suns
• The Butchering Art: Joseph-Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine
• So You Want to Talk About Race
• The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
• Overkill: When Modern Medicine Goes Too Far
• Vaccinated: One Man’s Quest to Defeat the World’s Deadliest Diseases
• Pandora’s Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong 
• Lyme: The First Epidemic of Climate Change
• How to Survive a Plague: The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS 
• Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City  
• Dreamland: The True Tale of America’s Opioid Epidemic 

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Christina Baum is a Senior Program Analyst in the infectious disease program at the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) where she works to support the efforts of local health departments across the country in infectious disease prevention and control. Project work has focused on healthcare-associated infections, antimicrobial resistance and stewardship, and emerging infectious diseases but also includes a broad range of infectious disease, reflecting the diverse work of local health departments. She received her Master’s in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health and previously worked as a community health worker at a Federally Qualified Health Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.