The poisoning doctor of Paris and digitalin
Paris, France, 1863
This case is a work of fiction. The characters, names, places and events in the game do not portray real people. The account below is a factual summary, based on public sources, of the case that served as inspiration.
In 1863, the physician Edmond de la Pommerais had his mistress, a widow, sign life insurance policies in his favor, and weeks later she died of a sudden illness. Her family grew suspicious. The toxicologist Ambroise Tardieu, unable to detect the poison through chemical analysis, applied extracts from the victim's stomach to laboratory animals and observed the effects on their hearts.
It was the first time a court accepted proof of poisoning by digitalin, the extract of foxglove, based on a biological experiment. The doctor was convicted and executed in 1864.
Sources
In the game
Final Runway
Backstage at Maison Delaunay, Paris Fashion Week, 7:20 pm. Gaspard Delaunay, 58, the house designer, collapsed beside his own makeup table, forty minutes before the show.
The game borrows the poison (foxglove, which acts on the heart and is hard to detect) and nineteenth-century Paris. Characters, motive and outcome are fiction.
