![]() It’s as well about the birth of American forensic science and the transformation of the untrustworthy office of the coroner - formerly a political appointment, with no qualifications needed and plenty of opportunity for graft - into the much-respected forensic science of current practice and pop culture. The film, which seems to be about one thing and then another, is also a story of New York itself during Prohibition and the Depression, a melting pot on a high flame. WINTER TV PREVIEW: Full coverage of the season’s shows But both were dedicated to “a medical-legal justice system” and the rule of science. ![]() They were an unlikely pair, Norris from Philadelphia money but with a healthy sense of noblesse oblige (he paid for equipment and subsidized salaries in his department when money was short) Gettler, a Lower East Side Jew who liked bowling and playing the ponies. Some credit for this goes to pioneering main characters Charles Norris, a crusading, visionary New York City medical examiner, and Alexander Gettler, who ran his toxicology labs. A certain sort of viewer might get ideas, of course, but should he watch to the end he will learn that poisoning is a hard crime to get away with anymore. Debuting Tuesday as part of the PBS series “American Experience,” “The Poisoner’s Handbook” offers a fascinating look back at how the chemical age changed police work.īased on Deborah Blum’s 2010 book “The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York,” it is divided into toxin-specific “chapters,” (cyanide, arsenic, carbon monoxide, lead, radium, denatured alcohol and so on), but there is nothing particularly instructional about it.
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