title: Poison: A History and a Family Memoir
author:  Gail Bell 
description: Readers with a strong stomach will enjoy this unusual memoir laced with a natural history of poison. The author, an Australian journalist, short story writer and pharmacist, has both a professional and personal interest in her subject. From family gossip, Bell learned that her paternal grandfather, William Macbeth, deliberately poisoned two of his sons. He and his wife divorced after this dark deed, and Macbeth, an herbalist and chemist, continued to practice his trade. The author's interviews with her great-aunt revealed that her grandmother was reluctant to accuse Macbeth out of fear for their two remaining sons. Bell's exhaustive investigation of this family secret and her effort "to see the man in the monster" leaves her, finally, with a version of events that differs sharply from her great-aunt's recollections. Along the way, she offers scientific details on many types of poison and a series of engrossing but graphic and unsettling accounts of legendary poisonings, both real and literary, murderous and suicidal. Included is Flaubert's horrific description of Madame Bovary's death; the case of Mary Anne McConkey, who was hung in Dublin in 1841 for sprinkling her husband's lunch with aconite, which killed him in three torturous hours; and a 20th-century man who accidentally murdered his love interest by giving her what he thought was an aphrodisiac-Spanish fly.<br />Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: 
  
  
  [Copyright](Just_You_Wait-2.xhtml#Contents-A)
  
  
  Copyright © 2015 by Jane Tesh
  
  
  First E-book Edition 2015
  
  
  ISBN: 9781464203701 ebook
  
  
  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in,
  or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any
  means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without
  the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of
  this book.
  
  
  The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of
  the author or used fictitiously.
  
  
  Poisoned Pen Press  
  6962 E. First Ave., _Ste._ 103  
  Scottsdale, AZ 85251
  
  
  [www.poisonedpenpress.com](http://www.poisonedpenpress.com)
  
  
  [info@poisonedpenpress.com](mailto:info%40poisonedpenpress.com?subject=)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  [Chapter Six](Just_You_Wait-2.xhtml#Contents-A)
  
  
  “Oozing charm from every pore…”
  
  
  Now I’d like to say I tuned in on Camden’s brainwaves or had a vision or
  sensed where he was, but nothing like th