The Daily Mail (U.K.) has a fascinating story today about Mary Ann Cotton (1832 – 1873), Britain’s first serial killer. According to the author, Professor of Criminology David Wilson, a serial killer is someone who kills more than three people over a time period of more than thirty days. Cotton more than met this definition:
Few have heard of the
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“Bath Salt” Ingestion Leading to Severe Intoxication Delirium: Two Cases and a Brief Review of the Emergence of Mephedrone Use. Kasick DP et al. Am J Drug Alcohol Abuse 2012 Jan 5 [Epub ahead of print]
This paper from the Ohio State Department of Psychiatry is worth reading for vivid descriptions of acute toxic delirium in two patients …
Irukandji Sydrome [sic] in the Torres Strait: A Series of 8 Cases. McIver LJ et al. Wilderness Environ Med 2011;22:338-342.
The problems with this paper merely begin with the dropped “n” in the second word of the title. Then we get to the first sentence of the abstract, where despite the title’s promise of a case series of Irukandji …
Murder by insulin: suspected, purported and proven — a review. Marks V. Drug Test Analysis 2009;1:162-176.
With the recent death following an unexpected hypoglycemic episode of a fifth patient at Stepping Hill Hospital in Greater Manchester (U.K.), this classic article on the forensic pathology involving insulin as a murder weapon has become even more timely. Dr. Marks is one …
African crested rat
In the lively, entertaining, and spectacularly well-written lead piece in Tuesday’s New York Times science section, Natalie Angier surveys the use of chemical weapons among different mammals, from the African crested rat (covers its fur with curare-like poison from the Acokanthera tree) to the zorille (a kind of skunk whose malodorous spray fakes approaching predators into …
This weekend both the Daily Mail (U.K.) and the Sunday Telegraph (U.K.) had stories highlighting the dangers of metal-on-metal artificial hips, which have a high rate of failure, causing local tissue inflammation, pain, and leaching of chromium and cobalt into blood and other tissues.
A recent letter to the BMJ (Arthroprosthetic cobaltism associated with metal on metal implants. BMJ 2012;344:e430) …
Mad-Honey Sexual Activity and Acute Inferior Myocardial Infarctions in a Married Couple. Yarlioglues M et al. Tex Heart Inst J 2011;38:577-80.
Mad honey – produced from nectar of Rhododendron ponticum - contains grayanotoxins, cyclic hydrocarbons that have two main toxic effects:
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The Los Angeles Fire Department has released tape of a 911 call placed this past Monday from the Benedict Canyon home of actress Demi Moore. On the tape, an unidentified female caller tells the operator that:
She smoked something. It’s not marijuana, but it’s similar to incense, and she seems to be having convulsions of some sort.
The substance …
Life-threatening Necrotizing Fasciitis Due to ‘Bath Salts’ Injection. Russo R et al. Orthopedics 2012 Jan 16;35(1):e124-7. doi: 10.3928/01477447-20111122-36.
This dramatic case report fro Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center describes a 34-year-old woman who developed a rapidly progressing necrotizing fasciitis several days after injecting a “bath salt” product intramuscularly into the right forearm.
The authors report that the infection …
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