THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE APPEARED IN THE

DECEMBER 1997 ISSUE

THE POISON SLEUTHS

DEATH BY LYSOL

-Dr. Anil Aggrawal

"Good morning doctor. Oh, my God, what are you doing today. You seem to be doing the post-mortem on a very old man. He is showing some ghastly trickle marks over his chest and abdomen too. What happened to him? Please tell me."

"Good morning Tarun. The name of this man is Ramlal and he is 60 years old. His dead body was found in his house on 29 November at 8 am. He lived alone in his house. His wife had expired some time back, and his two sons had both left him, and were living abroad along with their families. The most peculiar thing about the dead body, as you have already commented upon, are these strange and curious reddish black trickle marks starting from his mouth and going on to his neck and chest..."

"Yes certainly. I would think he had been poisoned by someone?"

"That's exactly what the police is thinking. It certainly appears that someone had given him some poisonous substance to drink. No poisonous substance has however been found in the vicinity of the body, and this substantiates the belief that Ramlal was indeed poisoned..."

"What significance does the presence of poisonous substance near the body has?"

"If the poisonous substance is found near the dead body, the presumption is that the person took it himself. The reason is that he might have died soon after taking poison, and had no way to remove the poison from the vicinity. On the other hand if the poison was administered by some poisoner, he would take the remaining poison with him. However there have been cases where the person has taken the poison with suicidal intention and then kept the poison back at some secret place, before the death actually occurred."

"Oh, I see."

"Well, the fact that no poison was found in the vicinity of Ramlal gave rise to the suspicion that someone visited Ramlal, perhaps on the previous day and gave him something to drink. After Ramlal had drunk the potion, the poisoner left. The suspicion of Police has fallen upon Pyare, who had an old axe to grind with Ramlal. Ramlal had lent Pyare Rs 20,000 about 2 years back which Pyare was not returning. Recently Ramlal had intensified his efforts to get the money back. Pyare was unable to give the money back. Recently Ramlal had threatened to go to the police if Pyare did not pay up within two weeks."

"Sure enough, Pyare had lot of good reason to do away with Ramlal?"

"Yes, and he has a criminal background too. Twice before he had been to jail, once for shoplifting, and once for eve-teasing. He had even visited Ramlal on the evening of November 28, just one day before the body of Ramlal was found. Several neighbors had seen him entering Ramlal's house. There were angry shouts from within the house after which Pyare hurriedly left. As you can plainly see, all this evidence is against Pyare, but when the police questioned Pyare, he expressed his complete ignorance about the death. The police inspector Gajendra Singh had decided to apply third degree methods to Pyare, when this case was brought to me."

"So how you are going to find out if Pyare had indeed done away with Ramlal?"

"Well, look at the body first (Please reproduce handmade fig 1 here). These trickle marks have surely been made by some strongly corrosive substance. Such a strong corrosive substance could only have been administered by Ramlal himself. No one could possibly give this substance to him. So it appears that Pyare indeed is innocent."

"How can you prove it scientifically?"

"Well. I have examined the stomach contents chemically and have found them to contain large quantities of Lysol..."

"Never heard of such a substance. Doctor, please give me some more information about lysol."

"Really! Well, let me first tell you about a related substance Carbolic Acid. Both carbolic acid and Lysol are very strong poisons. They are chemically quite closely related too. The chemical formula of carbolic acid is C6H5OH. It is known by several other names, some of them being Phenol, Phenyl alcohol, Phenic acid, and Hydroxybenzene. It is a colorless substance, but its needle-like crystals turn pink and liquefy when exposed to air. Although we call it an acid, it is not a true acid and does not redden litmus paper. It has a sweet burning taste and a distinct `carbolic' smell, the one which you would usually get in hospitals or operation rooms. In homes too we generally use it in our toilets. It is usually known as Phenyle in ordinary parlance. It looks like a thick syrupy brownish red liquid.

"Oh sure we do use it. So it is carbolic acid?"

"Yes it is. It is soluble in water. Its solubility in water is 6.7 g/100 ml at 160C. Besides water, it is soluble in many other solvents including alcohol, ether and glycerine. The commercial carbolic acid is a dark brown liquid containing several impurities, chiefly cresol."

"Well, we are getting another new substance. What exactly is cresol doctor?"

"Tarun, cresol is a mixture of three isomers of methyl phenol (CH3C6H4OH). It is now known to be a better disinfectant than phenol. It is less toxic than phenol, yet has a better germ killing activity. It is available in the market as an oily solution known as Lysol. Sometimes even lysol is used as a disinfectant in homes. This is what Ramlal has ingested."

"Doctor, you talk about germ killing activity of phenol. Now I am beginning to recall. Isn't carbolic acid the same which was proposed by Lord Lister as an antiseptic?"

"You are right Tarun. In fact Carbolic acid was originally introduced by Lemaire as a disinfectant and its use for this purpose became general when Lord Lister chose it as an agent to prevent and cure sepsis. Lord Lister was a British surgeon who was born in England in 1827. In his time, the concept of antiseptic surgery was completely unknown and many patients died after the operation because of infection. For the first time, Lister came to the right conclusion that the infection was caused by the bacteria present in the air. To kill those bacteria, he used carbolic acid. The first operation in which he used carbolic acid was performed in March 1865. Surely, no infection occurred. Subsequently all operations were conducted in rooms where the air had been disinfected with a carbolic spray. Lord Lister also introduced carbolized oil for the storage of catgut sutures. The Listerian method soon yielded great benefit to the patients but unfortunately, the poisonous nature of the remedy took its toll too. Many patients died when the wounds were disinfected with carbolic acid, because it was absorbed in the system."

"Oh, it appears every good thing has its own bad aspects too."

"Things were not as bad as they appeared. Safer disinfectants were soon discovered. The principal modern phenolic disinfectants include Lysol which is a 50% solution of cresol in saponified vegetable oil. Lysol is only about one-eighth as poisonous as phenol. And it might come as a surprise to you that the modern Dettol is also a relative of carbolic acid. Of course it is even less dangerous than lysol, so much so, that it is frequently used by people for disinfecting wounds even without the recommendation of a doctor."

"Then why do people use Lysol at all?"

"Lysol is mainly used for disinfecting bathrooms and toilets. The term Lysol is a actually a trademark rather than a chemical term. The chemical term as I have already told you is cresol. It might interest you to know that this trademark was first registered by a German firm, but following the First World War, this registration was cancelled. It is however still a protected trademark in certain countries, notably in the United States, and thus the term is always written with a capital L. Lysol has an amber or red-brown color and a distinctive phenolic odour. Although it is only about 1/8th as toxic as carbolic acid, it remains quite irritating, and its toxicity is well known. You can see that Ramlal died because of this poison. It is alkaline in nature, and it is its alkalinity that makes it more irritant. During the 1930s, it was a common choice of the suicides by poisoning. It can be absorbed from the intact skin and concentrated solutions of it are corrosive."

"Doctor, can lysol be used as a homicidal poison?"

"Hardly. The reason is that it is so corrosive and has such a distinctive color and smell. As I told you in several of my earlier meetings, an ideal homicidal poison should be colorless, odorless and tasteless. However it has been used as an irrigating fluid for inducing abortions by quacks..."

"What does that mean doctor?"

"Tarun, if an unmarried girl becomes pregnant, she wants to have an abortion for fear of society's ridicule. And for this purpose she frequently contacts quacks. They do not know of the modern safe methods of abortion and use age old dangerous methods. One of the methods is to irrigate the uterus with strong irritant substances, such as phenol or lysol. The solution is passed through the vagina through a tube. Whether it really expelled the uterine contents is anyone's guess but what is certain is that it caused several deaths of pregnant girls."

"Really? So even a passage in the uterus can cause death. But how?"

"Tarun, it can enter the blood stream through dilated uterine veins and can cause fatal poisoning. You must remember that in pregnant women, the uterine veins are often very much dilated. Since all veins empty in the right side of the heart, it is reasonable to expect the right side of the heart to contain unusually high amounts of lysol in such deaths. If high amounts of lysol or phenol are found in the right side of the heart, it is safe to assume that some quack did administer phenol or lysol to the unfortunate mother through the vagina."

"Very clever doctor! Tell me, are there some other points which can help you prove that Ramlal did die of lysol poisoning?"

"Tarun, the greatest proof is the chemical report of the stomach contents. But there are other findings too. Look at the stomach wall. It is soapy to touch. You would remember that lysol is actually a solution of cresol in saponified vegetable oil. It is because of this fact that the stomach wall is appearing soapy to touch. Further, you can find that the stomach wall is reddish brown. This is the color of lysol. The stomach wall is also soft in texture, and this is how the stomach wall becomes in lysol poisoning. Of course the trickle marks over the face, chest and abdomen also go in favor of lysol poisoning. Ramlal has indeed taken the poison himself. This poison couldn't have been administered to him by Pyare, who in fact is innocent. Ramlal was actually extremely depressed because his wife had died and his sons had left him. After Pyare left him on November 28, Ramlal became all the more depressed, because of constant irritations from various quarters. Sure enough in a bout of severe depression after Pyare left, Ramlal ingested the poison, and finished himself. Come let us tell the police about our findings."

"Wait a minute doctor. Where is the bottle of lysol? If Ramlal took the poison himself, he couldn't have removed the bottle. Then why haven't we found the bottle?"

"Tarun, death in lysol poisoning occurs in about 3-4 hours. So Ramlal took the poison, and put it back in his almirah. I have looked in his almirahs and have found the bottle there. It is half empty. It shows the fingerprints of only Ramlal. No fingerprints of Pyare have been found on it. So it seems that Pyare indeed is innocent."

"Oh, how very clever of you doctor. This was a most interesting discussion. Tell me what are you going to tell me the next time?"

"Tarun, next time, I would tell you about a very deadly poison- Phosgene "