"What common poison was known as ""inheritance powder"" in the early 19th century?"
Poison In modern society, cases of suspicious death elicit the attention of the Coroner's office and forensic investigators. While arsenic is a naturally occurring environmental poison, its artificial concentrate was once nicknamed inheritance powder. In Medieval Europe, it was common for monarchs to employ personal food tasters to thwart royal assassination, in the dawning age of the Apothecary. Of increasing concern since the isolation of natural radium by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898—and the subsequent advent of nuclear physics and nuclear technologies—are radiological poisons. These are associated with ionizing radiation, a mode of toxicity quite distinct from chemically active poisons.
Particulate inheritance Particulate inheritance Particulate inheritance is a pattern of inheritance discovered by Mendelian genetics theorists, such as William Bateson, Ronald Fisher or Gregor Mendel himself, showing that phenotypic traits can be passed from generation to generation through "discrete particles" known as genes, which can keep their ability to be expressed while not always appearing in a descending generation. Early in the 19th century, scientists had already recognized that Earth has been inhabited by living creatures for a very long time. On the other hand, they did not understand what mechanisms actually drove biological diversity. They also did not understand how physical