This article essentially talks all about this book called “The Poisoner’s Handbook” by Deborah Blum. The book details how forensic science has come so far and how New York City played a huge part in that. She talks about how Tammany Halls corruption spilled over into the invention of the modern day coroner. She also talks about how the first coroners would often show up to court drunk and would also take many bribes from various different entities. They would exchange these bribes for falsified death certificates. Under this original system, many murderers roamed free and good men were framed and locked away until 1918, when a new system was put into effect.
This new system was spearheaded by a blue-blooded doctor named Charles Norris, who discovered how to detect toxic substances like Thalium and Radium. Dr. Norris brought about a new and less corrupt body examining system that benefited all parties, except for the guilty ones.
Ultimately, this book is a collection of short stories and how they center around poison and the two detectives who are in charge of finding out who the perpetrators are.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/books/review/East-t.html
3 comments:
I thought that this article was good because of it's historical context. Blair did a good job of talking about and explaining the early and corrupt court systems while dealing with forensic evidence. Blair also did a good job of making the transition from explaining what it was like in the past and talking about what changes they made and what it is like now. I thought that this article was well written because of the detail and content of the article. All in all, I thought that blair did a great job in writing this article and giving a good historic background of what the court systems used to be like in dealing with forensic science.
The parts of this review that were well written were how he described what the book was about, how he described how Tammany Hall led to the modern day coroners, and how he described the new system. This review could be made better by perhaps including an example of someone who was wrongly convicted or perhaps describe Dr. Norris' new examination method. From this review, I learned that coroners used to show up to court drunk and take bribes.
I found that Blair’s review was written in a very colloquial style which made it easy to read and the information simple to digest. Too many times, writers attempt to be too formal about these reviews and end up screwing up the presentation by throwing in fancy words, and not having that here was refreshing. It was also refreshing to see an article about the history of forensic science rather than the usual updates. Regression can sometimes be more interesting than progression. I also felt that Blair’s presentation of the article’s material inspired me to want to learn more about the topic and possibly investigate the book itself—evidence of a good writer.
Unfortunately, Blair’s review could have profited from some minor editing, as it was peppered with quite a few grammatical errors that could have easily been fixed. Some people really overlook the great tool that is spellchecker. Also, I would have preferred if Blair had gone into more detail as to how the detection of Thalium and Radium came about and specifically what kind of significance it held for Forensic analysis. Elaboration is always nice.
I was aware that the justice system was rarely truly just way back then but I was not aware as to the extent of the corruption that existed. Blair’s tidbit has enlightened me to the fact and piqued my curiosity to learn more.
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