The 1850 murder of Gustave Fougnies in Belgium is not famous because of the cleverness of his killers.Not at all. They his sister and brother-in-law practically set off signal flares announcing their parts in a suspicious death.

Its not famous because it was such a classic high society murder. The killers were the dashing, expensive, and deeply indebtedComte and Countessde Bocarm.The death occurred during a dangerouslyintimate dinner at their chateau, a 18th century mansion on an estate in southern Belgium.

Nor it is remembered because the Comte died by guillotine in 1851 so many did after all.

No, this is a famous murder because of its use of a notably lethal poison. And because the solving of this particular murder changed the history of toxicology, helped lay the foundation for modern forensic science. The poison, by the way, was the plant alkaloid nicotine. And it was chosen because at the time, no one absolutely no one knew how to detect a plant alkaloid in a dead body. During the unsuccessful prosecution of a morphine murder only a few years earlier, a French prosecutor actually started shouting about it in the courtroom: Henceforth, let us tell would-be poisonersuse plant poisons. Fear nothing; your crime will go unpunished. There is no corpus delecti (physical evidence) for it cannot be found.

And that was certainly the idea when the Comte and his wife decided to murder her young brother for his money. That they could kill him with this very special poison. And never be caught.

We probably know nicotine best today for its role in creating the highly addictive chemistry of tobacco, a reason that so many people find it difficult to quit smoking even though the habit is so conclusively linked to disorders ranging from heart disease to lung cancer. The compound has such a potent effect on the brain that some researchers have even suggested that it provides a gateway for drugs such as cocaine. Others have wondered whether that potency could somehow be harnessed to good effect, as a treatment for disorders ranging from Alzheimers to depression, although its addictive nature makes such approaches obviously complicated.

But back in the 19th century, of course, there was no way to peel apart its neurochemical effects. What people did know was that nicotine was one lethal compound. Tobacco, a plant native to the Americas, had caught the attention of the Europeans during the 16th century. One of its strongest advocates was Jean Nicot de Villemain, the French ambassador to Portugal, who acquired plants and seeds from the Portuguese colony in Brazil and promoted their use during the 1560s. The tobacco plant, Nicotiana tabacum, is named after him, as is the plants primary alkaloid.

Nicotine was first isolated from tobacco leaves in 1928 by two German chemists, Wilhelm Heinrich Posselt and Karl Ludwing Reinmann (its structure would be determined in 1893 and it would be first synthesized in 1904). Do you wonder what its made of? Three of the most common elements on Earth carbon, nitrogen and hydrogen and this represents one of the things I like best about chemistry, the way nature takes the planets ordinary ingredients and mixes them up to such varied effect. The formula for nicotine is a straightforward: C14H10N2. Of course, that underestimates its complexity. If you look at a 3D model of nicotine (frankly, these always remind me balloon art) youll see what a clustering twist of compound it really is:

Note: Carbon (black), hydrogen (white), nitrogen (blue)

And its that elegant arrangement that turns nicotine into such an effective poison, moving through the bloodstream with exceptional speed. When inhaled, nicotine travels from lung to brain in an estimated seven seconds. Toxicologists estimate that a fully smoked cigarette delivers about 1 mg of nicotine to the lungs; this compares to a lethal dose estimate of 30-60 mg. (For comparison, the lethal dose range for arsenic is 70-200 mg.) The International Programme on Chemical Safety (IPCS) notes that: Nicotine is one of the most toxic of all poisons and has a rapid onset of action. Apart from local caustic actions, the target organs are the peripheral and central nervous systems.

Read the rest here:
Nicotine and the Chemistry of Murder