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need help w/ poison symptoms

susandiane 11 Mar 09 at 11:53 a.m. GMT

My daughter is writing a script for a movie (a school project) My question is, what kind of symptoms would photo developer chemicals poisoning cause? I ask this here because Dame Agatha was so good with poisons. As far as I can tell, the developer is alkaline and the stop is acid. I found out that the developer causes cyanosis (yes I know what that is) Do you think that she (my little girl) could get away with a description something along the lines of the first murder in "The Mirror Cracked"? There are SOOOO many chemicals in both I can't find a straight answer on the web.

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GKCfan 11 Mar 09 at 8:07 p.m. GMT

People respond to poisons in different ways.  The common movie stereotype is that you gasp, grab your throat, and fall to the ground, but that rarely happens.  Poisoning is often messy, and people often take a while to die, and it's not pretty.  It looks as if the chemicals in developer would be very painful, with gasping, vomiting, and potential internal bleeding.  Frankly, I think that in a case like this, in terms of writing and filmmaking, it is best to have the death occur offscreen, like in "Mirror Crack'd," and possibly have a character refer to a few cyanoisis symptoms.  A few lines about the gruesomeness spoken by an observer might be more effective than showing it in detail.  It wouldn't be pleasant to watch someone die on screen.  Perhaps you've seen this, but this list will give some more details on chemicals:

http://www.ci.tucson.az.us/arthazards/photo2.html

Marc_Anton 12 Mar 09 at 9 a.m. GMT

I agree with GKCfan, some poisonings are extremely painful and messy especially when ‘ordinary’ household poisons are used. There are some famous cases in the 19th century (Bravo, Palmer) where the victims suffered for days through arsenic used in weed killers and rat poisons. Not at all a picture you want to see in the ‘clean’ Christie novels. Christie was never one to rely on the ‘mysterious South American poisons’, in fact, she made rather fun of it through Mrs. Oliver (except maybe in Death in the Clouds). Most often she used strychnine (Styles) and cyanide (Sparkling Cyanide). In the 1950s and 60s people started to use all kind of sleeping drugs and tranquilisers, a murder method she used in The Mirror Cracked. Often the name of the poison is not mentioned at all. It always struck me how relatively little poisoning there was in the Marple stories, even when these are the most domestic murders and almost everybody has some toxic substances in their kitchen or garden shed.

Indeed the ‘gasp, grab your throat, and fall to the ground’ you see most often in melodramatic movies (and perhaps opera), so perhaps it is best when it happens ‘off-screen’. In general Christie has very little attention for the physical suffering of victims. Once the murder was done, the person was mentioned as ‘the body’. But then, murder was all a game.

GKCfan 15 Mar 09 at 7:57 p.m. GMT

Marc Anton- great to hear from you!

I just thought of something else.  The chemicals in photo developer probably taste terrible, and it might be difficult for someone to drink enough to kill without quickly realizing it.  Unless... some of the photo developer poisons can be absorbed through the skin and eyes.  I don't know what it would take to kill someone with that.  

It was different back in the early 20th century, when photographers often had large stocks of pure prussic acid in their labs, which could easily be slipped into drinks and not detected until it was too late.  Prussic acid poisoning is one of the fastest-acting poisons around, but Hollywood has always sanitized poisoning symptoms.  The messiness of accuracy doesn't make for good viewing.

EeZee 16 Mar 09 at 7:55 a.m. GMT

I'm not really sure the method of absorbing the developing chemicals would work: my father was a professional photographer, shut in his darkroom developing his own black and white photos for over 30 years and he's still alive and kicking at age 87!

Marc_Anton 16 Mar 09 at 9:50 a.m. GMT

Good to see you are still around yourself GKCfan. I have been absent from the Forum for some time because I found it boring and not very inspiring (I still do). The same old subjects chewed over and over again. At least you are still hanging on but unfortunately less frequent than before.

I agree about the use of a photographer’s developing chemicals as a poison. They would be extremely dangerous when swallowed (but so will most of the stuff you will normally find under the kitchen sink), I don’t think they bring a risk when handled by an expert photographer. And while I think 19th and early 20th century photographers used chemicals that might proof dangerous for your health in the long run, we can presume most of these (at least by the photographers who still use film) are now controlled and safe in use. I don’t think Christie ever used photographer’s chemicals in one of her books, though she took a lot of photos herself, especially in the archeological digs. Did she develop them herself?  

Christie did mention some poisons that can be absorbed through the skin though, in Caribbean Mystery (from the top of my hat). I sometimes find it curious how certain murderers would find a certain poison that looked exactly like aspirin (or something else harmless), like in A Murder is Announced.  

Tommy_A_Jones 16 Mar 09 at 1:08 p.m. GMT

I agree with you Marc Anton about the site being less inspiring but I am still so glad that there is a site that I can discuss my love of the work of Agatha Christie. It's nice that you and GKC fan are still (If only sometimes) still around.

susandiane 20 Mar 09 at 7:24 p.m. GMT

Thank all of you! My daughter and her friends decided that it (the death) would be "off camera" BTW, the teacher did it *LOL*

TheButlerDidIT 08 Oct 09 at 11:36 a.m. GMT

The teacher did it! LOL!

I want to enquire to which poisons that have not been used by Christie but are not some strange South American poison that only experts know about and be as inventive as you like but try to make it plausible