NATURAL AND SYNTHETIC POISONS

Unlike the species-by-species listings of Limburg and Busch (both 1976), this is more a general overview of what poisons are and how they work. Moving from animal venoms to plant toxins to bacterial poisons and infections (and the difference between the two) to mineral poisons (mostly industrial), Haines identifies the toxic materials chemically, explains how they affect their victims, points out medical and chemical distinctions among them, and notes how a difference in dosage can turn a medicine into a poison. She begins each chapter with a toxicological mystery case, providing the solution at the end for those who haven't yet figured it out, and her examples--from the Redcoats' jimson weed mania in Jamestown, Virginia, to the 1974 Kepone plant illnesses in the same state--are interesting and to the point.