Learning physiology by looking at the poisons that shut it down

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Neil Bradbury is a physiology professor whose first book, A Taste for Poison, uses tales of poisons and poisoners as a means to explain physiological processes by describing how each poison disrupts them. The grisly episodes are like the proverbial spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down; Bradbury seems to think that people will only read about human physiology if they are first treated to stories demonstrating that science isn't boring, that it can actually be dangerous and racy. He might be right.

Each chapter focuses on one fatal molecule and the murderers who used it and then goes on to explain how it kills. So we learn about how electrical signals are propagated down the length of nerve cells and then transmitted across synapses by neurotransmitters. That shows up in the chapter on atropine, the toxin in deadly nightshade that blocks the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, and again in the chapter on strychnine, a popular rat killer that blocks the neurotransmitter glycine. We learn about aerobic respiration in the chapter on cyanide, which prevents the mitochondria in our cells from using oxygen to generate energy. And we read about protein synthesis in the chapter about ricin, which destroys ribosomes, the complexes responsible for protein assembly in every cell.

A better alternative?

As a pedagogical tool to teach physiology, the book is cute, but that's about all it is. Deborah Blum's The Poisoner's Handbook is about the birth of toxicology and forensic medicine; it covers similar ground, but it's much more engaging.

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