Zbrodnicze otrucie - przegląd kryminalistyczno-historyczny
Murderous poisoning - criminalistic-historical digest

Summary/Abstract: Poisons had many applications, but none of them raised so much controversy, like using them to kill another human being. Without a doubt, this method was willingly used in every age until modern times, when the progress of science led to easy detection of poisons in our bodies (eg the famous arsenic). Although today the criminal poisonings are rare, it is worth looking at their evolution over the centuries. In particular, the knowledge of the murder by poisoning may still be used in the practice of criminal investigation. In the first part of the article, the author introduces general information on poisons and their properties, while the second gives examples from history, among whom women predominate clearly: Locusta, Agrippina Younger, Marquis de Brinvilliers, Giulia Toffana, or Lucrezia Borgia. The article also mentioned, among others, the death of of Alexander Macedon, Napoleon Bonaparte, that still raise many uncertainties, criminal dealings with the use of Zyklon-B in the Nazi death camps and the case of criminal use of radioactive polonium-210 in the case of Alexander Litvinenko and probably also Jasir Arafat.

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