Poisoner's Handbook by Deborah Blum

The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum describes the birth of New York Cities' forensic crime lab in the first third of the 20th Century.  The book is organized in rough chronological order with each chapter focused primarily on one poison. 

The book chronicles the struggle of the cities first professional medical examiner, Charles Norris and his toxicologist, Alexander Gettler, to develop wet chemistry methods to determine the cause of death from poisoning.  They also used the appearance of the body as a clue to the type of poisoning, such as the red cherry lips from carbon monoxide poisoning.  It's an excellent book for a student in occupational health or toxicology as the health effects of the poisons are well described.  Murder mystery fans may also like it for the investigation into the mysterious deaths. 

PBS also has interactive graphic novel that allows people to experience the medical examiner's work.   

I was not aware that people were so desperate for alcohol during prohibition that they drank methyl alcohol or denatured ethyl alcohol.  The chemicals used to denature ethyl alcohol were also very toxic as authorities attempted to make redistillation of the denatured alcohol difficult.

The book, The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York is available from Amazon.com