What you should know about poisons

Review of ‘What you should know about poisons’ by Heinz Norden

CITATION: Norden, H. (1930). What you should know about poisons (Little Blue Book Number 1508). Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Publications.

Reviewer: Dr W. P. Palmer

Heinz Norden was born in London on 18th December, 1905, into a German family who returned to Germany before the outbreak of the First World War. Norden received his secondary education at a gymnasium and immigrated to the United States in 1924. He attended the University of Chicago in 1926 and worked in the USA as an editor and translator. He got to know Emanuel Hademan-Julius, who was the publisher of the best-selling Little Blue Books, becoming one of his authors. Norden wrote ten Little Blue Books and one Big Blue Book and these are listed below. Norden served in the United States Army for seven years, 194l-47 eventually becoming a major. In 1978 Heinz Norden died in a traffic accident whilst crossing a London street.

The book ‘What you should know about poisons’ is only 32 pages long and would have sold for just five cents. The first half of the book consists of a short history of poisons followed by some general remarks about the conditions modifying the effects of poisons and the basics of first aid. The second half of the book describes specific poisons explaining the symptoms and the treatment for each poison. The book was written in 1930, and there are now new poisons and new treatments, but at a basic level this book remains substantially correct. Poisons were more easily available in the 1930s and 1940s, so a cheap but simple source of information about how to protest the family would have been useful. However the converse may also have been true, that poisoners may also have found the book useful. It was a helpful book in its era!

BILL PALMER

LITTLE BLUE BOOKS WRITTEN BY HEINZ NORDEN
1340. How to Get a Job [by] Heinz Norden
1354. A Book of Striking Similes [by] Heinz Norden
1400. Advertising from the Inside [by] Heinz Norden.
1508. What You Should Know about Poisons [by] Heinz Norden
1514. The Famous Inventions of Thomas Edison [by] Heinz Norden.
1516. Facts You Should Know About Gonorrhoea [by] Heinz Norden.
1523. How to Avoid Catching Venereal Diseases [by] Heinz Norden.
1527. Herbert Hoover, the Man [by] Heinz Norden.
1532. Don Quixote: The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha [by] Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra, edited by Heinz Norden.
1535. How to Throw a Party [by] Heinz Norden.

BIG BLUE BOOKS WRITTEN BY HEINZ NORDEN
Herbert Hoover - The Man [by] Heinz Norden.