In the case of arsenic, the body uses enzymes to chemically transform arsenic into monomethylarsonic (MMA) and dimethylarsinic (DMA).
With many toxic substances, our body protects us from damaging effects by making chemical changes that render them less toxic and easier to excrete. The quantities encountered in most people’s everyday lives are minute and not worth worrying about. If we then eat these crops we will in turn ingest some arsenic. Arsenic is often present in soil and plants grown in that soil will naturally absorb some arsenic. Humans do have some tolerance to arsenic, but it is very, very low. Now it seems that scientists have found evidence for a way that Sayers’ poisoner could have managed to get away with their fiendish plan. New observations are made, more data are collected, known facts are brought into a new light and better theories are developed. This would not have helped Sayers’ poisoner either, as large gritty lumps of arsenic in a meal would have been noticed and the victim unlikely to eat it.īut science moves on. It has also been suggested that these arsenic-consuming individuals were in fact eating large lumps of arsenic that would not have been absorbed completely into the body and excreted largely unchanged. If this was the case the Strong Poison plot would not have worked.
Perhaps chalk was substituted by the arsenic eaters, or the samples of arsenic taken were impure.
Some of these arsenic eaters, wheeled out in front of audiences like fairground attractions, would eat quantities of arsenic normally considered fatal with apparent immunity.īut more recent science has dismissed the idea of building up a tolerance to arsenic. There would still have been damage to health, but this may have taken months or years to appear.
One of the diners would then be able to eat a normally lethal dose of arsenic without cause for concern.Īrsenic eating was something of a fashion in 19th century Europe as it gave glossy hair and flawless complexions. When Sayers was writing Strong Poison, it was thought that developing an arsenic tolerance was entirely achievable by eating small mounts of the poison over a period of weeks or months.
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