DETECTION OF POISON

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30177, 8 July 1963, Page 6

DETECTION OF POISON

New Methods Needed

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) SYDNEY, July 5.

The Bogle-Chandler mystery had highlighted the need for revision in the detection and identification of poisons, according to the “Medical Journal of Australia.”. In some deaths, in which the cause was not readily apparent, body tissues should be promptly removed and preserved by freezing or freeze-drying, the journal said.

Experts in various branches of poisoning could then go to work, looking for changes and other signs in the tissues that might lead them to the poison used. “New drugs need new methods of detection. However thorough our research may be in the toxicological field, it is always possible that a new poison may be used and escape detection. “Many modern drugs are based on, or closely related to, natural substances occurring in the body. “The rapidity with which these drugs may be lost from tissues as a result of metabolism is almost always greater than was the case with the classical poisons of the ‘materia medica’ era. “It is essential that if drugs of this kind are to be detected, every care should be taken to preserve samples of tissues in such a way that the minimum of enzymatic destruction can take place.” (An enzyme is a substance that causes change in body tissues).