Editor’s Note
This fictional case explores how a seemingly straightforward crime—a wealthy man’s arsenic poisoning—can unravel into a complex mystery. While initial suspicion falls on the son, an amateur detective suggests a less obvious explanation, reminding us that the simplest answer isn’t always the correct one.
The cited story begins with the death of a wealthy old man. After a large amount of arsenic is detected in his tissues during the autopsy, the police first suspect his son, a medical student, of murdering his father for the inheritance, as the syphilis treatment drug Salvarsan, made from arsenic, is a medication the son could easily obtain from the hospital.
Napoleon, known to have died of cancer in exile on St. Helena, was found to have high levels of arsenic in his hair. Coincidentally or not, the wallpaper or carpets in the house he lived in were green. The source of this green was copper hydrogen arsenite (CuHAsO3). While green pigment is generally not harmful, in damp places it can seep into the air and slowly poison the inhabitants, and St. Helena had just such a climate. So, Napoleon lived in a ‘house that emitted poison.’
In July 2010, in Venezuela, the coffin of Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), the father of Latin American independence, was opened 180 years after his death for an investigation, also prompted by the possibility that he died of arsenic poisoning, i.e., was murdered.
In the East as well, Guangxu Emperor of the late Qing Dynasty, who dreamed of reform through the Self-Strengthening Movement, is suspected of being poisoned, as large amounts of arsenic were detected in his remains exhumed after 100 years.
In the early 20th century, around the time Guangxu Emperor was poisoned, Germany was using arsenic to create a very useful medicine: Salvarsan arsenical. German immunologist Paul Ehrlich (1854–1915), together with Japanese bacteriologist Sahachiro Hata (1873–1938), developed Salvarsan in 1909. Salvarsan, also famously known as ‘Compound 606,’ was the first human-made ‘magic bullet,’ synthesized after 605 failures over seven years.
In Korea, arsenic was also used as an important poison. In historical dramas, there are often scenes of state criminals receiving a royal decree and drinking a bowl of poison made from ‘bisang’ (砒霜), which is a compound of arsenic. During the Joseon Dynasty, the official methods of execution were hanging or beheading, but high-ranking nobles were granted the special favor of receiving ‘royally bestowed poison’ (賜藥) to die quietly away from public view.
However, ‘bisang’ (arsenic) is not a poison that kills instantly. For this reason, a criminal who drank the poison was made to enter a hot room to help the poison spread quickly. But since it took a considerable time to die, imagine the suffering.
Yet, ‘bisang’ was not used only as a poison. The “Dongui Bogam” (東醫寶鑑) records it being used as a treatment for malaria (ague), as an anthelmintic, and also as a medication for skin diseases or malignant ulcers.
Salvarsan, in any case, gained attention as a specific remedy for syphilis, replacing toxic ‘mercury,’ and saved many people with sexually transmitted diseases.
Neosalvarsan (1912), which appears in this novel, is one of the improved arsenic preparations along with acetarsol. Even in 1940, the setting of the novel, these drugs were very useful for treating syphilis, but with the advent of penicillin a few years later, they quickly disappeared from doctors’ prescriptions and were soon forgotten.
In 2000, when the FDA approved the leukemia treatment drug Trisenox (arsenic trioxide) and it became known that its ingredient was arsenic, people recalled the first human-made magic bullet, ‘Compound 606.’
Ambler’s detective novel thus features Salvarsan, an important drug of its time, to capture readers’ interest. The doctor who uses arsenic as medicine and the painter who uses it as pigment—who slowly dried up and killed the poor old man? Knowing the hidden story of arsenic, wouldn’t the tale of concealed murder be more interesting?