The Poisoner's Handbook By Rob Rapley

In the film, The Poisoner's Handbook, director Rob Rapley tells a tale of several poisoning cases that happened during the 1920s. Throughout this documentary, Rapley analyzes two well-known men who have an impact on the field of forensic science; toxicologist, Alexander Gettler and medical examiner, Charles Norris. Both, Alexander Gettler and Charles Norris went to great lengths in their profession to make a difference in criminal investigations and forensics. In addition to Gettler and Norris, French criminologist, Alphonse Bertillon developed a measurement system to help identify criminals in the late 1800s. In addition to Bertillon, the first anthropologist to become a forensic expert within the United States was George Dorsey. Although

Bertillon was the son of physician, Louis Adolphe Bertillon. His grandfather, Achille Guillard, was someone who had a great passion for statistics and Jacques Bertillon; Alphonse’s brother, was also a physician just like his father and he also wrote many publications on statistics in Paris. Although Alphonse grew up in a well science based family, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do in his life. On March 5th of 1879, his father convinced him to work in a police prefecture. It was then that he began to discover objects that could be used in identification. He was particularly concerned with the amount of recidivism. Recidivism is a continuous undesirable act or behavior that a person has experienced that they negatively affect others with the same behavior. It is one of the most fundamental abstractions that relates to a repetitiveness in a criminal's behavior. Alphonse’s admiration for anthropology and family background all had an influence on his research. Moments later, Alphonse’s greatest invention, “The Bertillonage” came

According to authors Glenice J. Guthrie and Sharon Jenkins, they believe that there was an analysis issue that contradicted Bertillon’s credibility on The Bertillonage. While Bertillon worked on his measurements, they were all done on the same person. This clearly could not be beneficial enough because it does not provide enough evidence and proof to work with. If Bertillon worked on several people, his invention would not have lacked some of the credibility it had when it first came about. While Bertillon’s methods were not as strong as they should have been, George Dorsey’s actions during the Luetgert case was not as well. When Dorsey testified that the bone fragments were from a female he had to be confident in his work. Even today, differentiating the sex of human remains is difficult. So the results from Dorsey are even more insufficient because this case took place within the late