Word: prussic
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...agents and hit men have access to numerous James Bondian devices that can make murder look like natural death ?poison delivered by aerosol spray, tiny darts fired from pens or cigarette boxes. In the late '50s a KGB agent killed two Ukrainian exile leaders in Germany by squirting prussic acid into their faces from a fountain pen; the symptoms made it appear that the men had died of simple heart attacks...
...some more subtle definitions. It was first-degree murder if connected with robbery, burglary, rape, sex offenses, the death of a policeman or prison guard, the use of explosives. Repeated use of a slow poison, such as arsenic, would be a capital offense; but a single, lethal dose of prussic acid would be only second-degree murder...
TRUTH CAME OUT&151;E. R. Punshon&151;Houghton Mifflin ($2). Following the trail of a prussic acid theft, Sergeant Bell of Scotland Yard blunders his way into an inspectorship, following his self-denied solution of the crime...
...Polytechnic Institute has found that in a large percentage of deaths, burning clothes supplied the deadly fumes. This he verified by setting a variety of fires in an asbestos-lined room, he reported last week in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry. Woolen and silk clothes, rugs and furnishings produce prussic acid and ammonia as well as carbon monoxide and dioxide. Burning wool also produces toxic hydrogen sulfide. Cotton, rayon, paper, wood and other cellulose produce poisonous concentrations of carbon monoxide and dioxide, and acetic acid which makes smoke acrid and causes coughing...
...than pulmonary oedema. Even with such complete disability, only 0.38 per cent of the entire war expenses were devoted to poisonous gases. There are five types of gases. The first, active irritants such as chlorine and phosgene; the second, lachrymators, which render vision impossible; the third, paralysants, such as prussic acid, which are the most dangerous, causing immediate death by destroying the nervous system, when used in great concentration; the fourth, sternutators or sneezers, which are effective by causing respiratory irritation, nausea and general depression. Diphenyelchlorasine is the most frequently used. The fifth class are vesicants such as mustard...