The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York

The rise and fall of Prohibition serve as a backdrop to The Poisoner’s Handbook’s main narrative of how Charles Norris and Alexander Gettler established forensic medicine in New York in the 1920s. Blum explores how Norris and Gettler’s work intersected with Prohibition, lending them unique insight into its social efficacy and transforming them into key figures in Prohibition’s history.

Prohibition was the result of a long campaign by temperance advocates to pressure the United States government into completely banning liquor. These activists were often conservative Christians and joined groups such as the Anti-Saloon League, which argued that rampant drunkenness was a social ill that needed to be stamped out. By the time Charles Norris became chief medical examiner in 1917, the 18th Amendment had already passed through Congress, after which it had to be ratified by two-thirds of the states. Norris and Gettler’s work placed them in direct contact with deaths occurring in New York City, and they were acutely aware of how many New Yorkers were dying of alcohol poisoning prior to Prohibition. Most of these deaths were due to the consumption of