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The Arsenic Affair · Dead Serious

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Dead Serious, a true crime podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, James Murray.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: This podcast contains mature themes.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Your discretion is advised.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Hey guys, and welcome back to Dead Serious.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: How is everybody doing?
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: Hope you're all having a good week so far.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: I actually picked up a little hobby.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm making sourdough bread.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: And listen, this is not easy.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: The lingo, everything is just confusing me.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm, you know, feed the bread, proof the bread.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I have no idea what I'm even doing.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: I just really hope it turns out good and we'll see how long I stick with this.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Do we have any listeners who are into making sourdough bread?
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Which are pro tips?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're going to go into today's story, which is stemming from a current book that I'm reading.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm actually reading a few books, but this one is the true crime one I'm reading.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: No Stone Unturned.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: The true story of the world's premier forensic investigators by Steve Jackson.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not done with it.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: The book is like really long.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm reading it digitally on my phone.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: I started it like years ago, got close to the end, and I don't know what happened.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: I just couldn't access it.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: So we're starting over.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Really good.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: So far, I recommend I think I'd recommend it.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Even though I haven't finished it, I'm gonna recommend it.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: So for today's story, we are going back, that's right, back to 1840s France, to a case so sensational, so scandalous, and so bizarre that it basically invented the modern forensic toxicology drama.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: This is the story of Marie Lafarge, the woman who may have loved literature, luxury, and poison in equal measure.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: The names, towns, everything's in French.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to hack this up and I apologize.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: All right, let's start.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Marie Fortunet-Lafarge was born in Paris, France, January 15, 1816, to Edme, Caroline Fortunet, Alexis Collard, and Antoine Laurent Capel.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: Antoine was an artillery officer and a colonel in the Imperial Guard.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, he died in a hunting accident in 1828 when Marie was just 12.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: Her mother did end up remarrying, but she too passed away just seven years later.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: So now we've got Marie orphaned.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: And at 18, she's adopted by her maternal aunt, who was married to the Secretary General of the Bank of France.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: So this is money.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: These people were wealthy.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, they made Marie aware, hey, you're you're just a poor relative, you know, staying with us.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Even with that, she she was raised in Paris still.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: She was educated, cultured, and very aware that she was meant for a life far grander than the one that she actually had.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: As Marie grew older, she got jealous of the other girls who were marrying rich noblemen.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: Marie had no choice when it came to she married.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: This was during the days when the bride's family would pay the groom's family for their daughter.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Marie's dowry, which is the payment essentially, was 19,000 francs, which for a wealthy family was not very much.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: And at 23, Marie was still not married.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: So her uncle, unbeknownst to her, decided to make it his responsibility to find her husband and sought the services of a marriage broker.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Enter in 28-year-old Charles Pouche Lafarge.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_01: Charles's father, Jean-Baptiste Lafarge, was a Justice of Peace in Vigo, France, and he had purchased a Carthusian monastery in Le Glandier, which was run by monks since the 13th century.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: However, it had fallen into disrepair after the suppression of the French Revolution.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Charles tried to make a profit by turning it into a foundry, but that didn't work out.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: Before he knew it, he was in debt and bankrupt.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Charles thought a good marriage would be a way out of debt and a way to pay his creditors, which kind of makes me laugh because I don't think anyone in today's world believes getting married as a way out of debt, but kind of a way into debt.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Just so happens Charles used the same marriage broker as Murray's uncle and advertised himself as a wealthy iron master with more than 200,000 francs and a yearly income of 30,000.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: Charles had letters of recommendation from his priest as well as the local deputy.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: This kind of sounds more like a job posting, or, and or I guess the online hookup sites basically.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Since Marie was unaware that her uncle had hired a marriage broker, the uncle arranged Marie and Charles' meeting at an opera saying Charles was a friend of his.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Marie thought he was boring and gross, but he was wealthy, or so she thought, but he wasn't.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: So she agreed to it.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: They were engaged after four days and married on August 10th, 1839.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: Afterwards, they left Paris to live back on Charles' estate in La Glendier.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think happens next?
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Marie arrives, and it's this damp, rat-infested monastery.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Not the life she thought she was signing up for.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Her in-laws were peasants, and she was disgusted by them.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: On the opposite, you know, Charles' family didn't like her either.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: They did not trust Marie.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And Marie quickly realized there was no wealth here, but there was a lot of debt.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: The truth was, she had essentially married into a haunted Home Depot.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Marie's like, uh, F this.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: And she locks herself in her room the night of the wedding.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: She writes Charles a letter telling him she wants it out of the marriage, or she'll kill herself with arsenic.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: Charles responds, All right, fine, I will make some concessions, such as giving up his marital privileges until the estate was restored to its original condition.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: But you are going to be staying my wife.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it seemed Marie was okay to go along with this arrangement.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: But was she?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, Marie sends letters to her friends saying she's happy, enjoying domestic life, everything's great, kind of like people do on Facebook, right?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: But secretly hating being a wife, hating her husband, hating her in-laws.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_01: Again, very Facebook sounding.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: In December of 1839, prior to Charles leaving for a business trip, Marie told him she would have a will drawn up to leave her inheritance to him if Charles did the same for her.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And he did.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: But he had another one drawn up that Marie was not aware of.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: The beneficiary, his mother.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Now, while Charles is away, Marie is writing him these passionate love letters and sending her picture along with it.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: Around the holidays, she also decided to send him a Christmas cake.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: He had a slice, and not long after, he felt really sick.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Really sick.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: He had cholera-like symptoms.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Cholera is a bacterial infection in the small intestine from eating or drinking contaminated food.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds like food poisoning.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: His symptoms were vomiting, diarrhea, rapid dehydration, and muscle cramps.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: This was common in this day and age, so Charles didn't see a doctor right away.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: He assumed the cake had just spoiled during transit and threw it away.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: He returned home to the Glandere to Marie, and he was still feeling sick.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: But he's home now with Marie and she's going to take good care of him.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_01: She fed him venison and truffles, but unfortunately, it just made him sick again.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: The family called their physician, Dr.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Barden, so he comes and assesses Charles.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: He notices the cholera-like symptoms, so he's not too concerned.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now on the side, Marie was talking to Dr.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Barden and she asked for a prescription for arsenic so she could kill the rats that were in their home.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Sounds normal for that time and probably where they're living.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: The following day, Charles started to experience leg cramps, dehydration, and nausea.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: He was so sick that his family was keeping watch on him.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: They had one of his cousins, Emily Pontier, and another young woman, Anna Brun, stay with him and Charles.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: But Marie was still the primary caretaker.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And she was always giving him some type of medicine, especially this one thing, gum arabic, which is made from different tree species.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: That she said it helped her.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: She felt sick, she would take this, she'd feel better.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, that was not the case for Charles.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: He continued to decline rather quickly to the point where another physician was called in.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Massanat evaluated Charles, and he too thought these are cholera-like symptoms.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: So he prescribed eggnog to help him get his strength back up, which I find interesting, getting eggnog as your medicine.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like 1800.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: So Anna noticed that Marie was mixing in a powder that she'd take out from a small malachite box she carried around.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Malachite is a mineral.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: When Anna questioned Marie on it, she told her it was just some orange blossom sugar.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: But after Charles took a few sips, she noticed some white flakes floating in the drink.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Anna brought the glass to Dr.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Mostanov, who took a sip and experienced a burning sensation in his mouth afterwards.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Still, he attributed to the possibility that flakes from the ceiling could have fallen into the glass.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, really?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Anna wasn't so sure, and she decided to keep that glass of eggnog and hide it in a cabinet.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: Later, Anna saw Marie stir more white powder into a soup she prepared for Charles.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And again, a few sips later, Charles is violently ill.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Anna took the soup and hit it with the eggnog.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: And at this point, her suspicions got to the point where she went to Emma Pontier, the cousin, and told her what she was observing.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: On January 12, 1840, Emma brought the family together to talk to them about what Anna had seen.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Charles's mother immediately told Charles, do not eat anything else Marie brings to you.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Then more panic erupted when it was found that the gardener slash servant of Charles had purchased arsenic for Marie.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: When Marie was questioned, she admitted to the purchase and said it was to make a rat poison paste.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: At first, this was accepted.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: It made sense.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: But just the next day, more white powder was found at the bottom of a glass of sugar water Charles had drank.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: On January 13th, another doctor is called in, Dr.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_01: Rene D.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Lespinas.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: He suspected poison, but it was too late.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Charles died just a few hours later.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, all eyes are on Marie, who seemed completely unfazed.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: And while word got around of the suspicion surrounding her, she was off to a notary with the will that she did not know was completely invalid.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: Emma seemed to be the only person who would be near Marie and made her aware that Charles' brother-in-law would be going to the police.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And she also took possession of the Malachi box that Marie carried.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: On January 15th, the justice of the peace, named Moran, met with the family, uncertain of their accusations, but took the soup, the eggnog, and the sugar water that Anna had put aside.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: He also spoke to the gardener who shared that he purchased arsenic from Marie to make a rat paste in both December and January.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: Moran did notice the paste all over the home, but it didn't seem like the rats had eaten any of it.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the paste was also collected.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Moran went to the apothecary, which is a historical medical professional who formulates and dispenses herbal and chemical remedies to physicians and patients.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: He went to the one who sold the arsenic to Marie and spoke with him directly.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Next, Moran asked Charles' physician to perform a post-mortem examination.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: He knew of a new test that pathologists were using in Paris to detect the presence of arsenic.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: He asked the physicians if they could perform the test, and they said yes, but unfortunately, they really didn't know what they were doing.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that got all messed up.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: This test he was speaking about is called the Marsh Test, and it was named after a Scottish chemist named James Marsh, who invented it in 1836.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is the description.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: It was a glass apparatus that detected minute traces of arsenic and measured its quantity.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: The sample is mixed with arsenic free zinc and sulfuric acid.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: And any arsenic present causes the production of arcine gas and hydrogen.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: The gas then is led through a tube where it is heated, decomposing into hydrogen and arsenic vapor.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: When the arsenic vapor impinges on a cold surface, a mirror-like deposit of arsenic forms.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: The doctors did not know about this process when they performed their autopsy on Charles.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: They had subjected Charles' stomach to the old testing methods, which proved to be unreliable.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: However, they finally did find arsenic present in Charles Lafarge's body.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Then the rat paste was analyzed, and it turns out it was just a mixture of water, flour, and soda.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: No arsenic.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: One final object was examined, the malachite box Marie had kept and Anna took possession of.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: This was the icing on the cake, as there was arsenic found in it.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And with that, Marie Lafarge is arrested.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: As Marie's lawyers prepared for trial, they dug a little into her past and found out this was not her first indiscretion.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_01: Prior to meeting Charles, Marie was visiting the home of a former classmate, Lady De LaTude.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And while there, some jewels belonging to De Latoude went missing, and an investigator was called out.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Marie was a likely suspect, but De LaTudeude did not believe Marie would be involved.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: Now, after newspapers started circulating, accusing Marie of murder, Lady De LaTudeude changed her mind, demanded a search for the jewels be done.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what do you know?
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: They were found in Marie's room.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: She was put on trial for that while simultaneously awaiting a murder trial.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Marie was found guilty and sentenced to two years for the theft.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: The murder trial began on September 3rd, 1840.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_01: And by this time, it had gained so much interest that people from all over Europe came to watch.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: And just like today, where the defendant is made to look as innocent as possible, maybe they put a pair of glasses on them, a bow in the hair, shave, whatever.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: When Marie came out, she was dressed in mourning, carrying smelling salts in her hand.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: This image did not appear to coincide with the murderess.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: And just like today, he had those that were immediately for Marie and those that were against her.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: His case relied heavily on forensic toxicology.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And no one knew that better than Matthew Orphila, the father of modern toxicology, who was a marsh test expert in France.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Interestingly, it was one of Marie's lawyers who wanted to bring in Orfila.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: This attorney had contacted him with the toxicology results that had been done, and Orfila replied, they were not conducted properly and meant nothing.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: After the doctors of Breve, where work was happening, after they testified, they had in fact found arsenic and Charles' body.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: The defense read the affidavit that Orfila wrote up and requested he come in to testify.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: The prosecution argued that was unnecessary.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: The judge ruled in favor of the prosecution.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: So instead, they had two local apothecaries that would take the stand.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: And this didn't happen right away, and trial slowed down a bit, but it gave time for the prosecution to read Orfila's book, and they learned that arsenic can actually leave the stomach and spread to other areas of the body.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: Upon testifying, the apothecary stated, although they performed the marsh test, they could not find any arsenic in Charles' stomach.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_01: In response, the prosecution arranged for the body of Charles from Lafarge to be exhumed and be retested.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: Again, nothing is found.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Things are looking good for the defense.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: So when the prosecution asked for the food items that were set aside to be tested, the defense agreed.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like, sure, go ahead.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: But unfortunately, this time for them, the chemists did find arsenic enough to poison 10 people.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now, with this information, prosecution again asked for Orphila to testify, since there was now contradictory evidence, and he could be the one to settle it.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: The judge agreed.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: When Matthew Orfila arrived, he asked to have the other chemists watch him perform the test.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: So everybody knew that it was fair and what was happening.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so behind a closed, locked, and guarded door in the courthouse, the test was completed using the same materials and chemicals the other chemists used.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: Orfila and the other chemists came back into court, and Orfila announced that he had, in fact, found arsenic in the samples of Charles Lafarge's body.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: The courtroom was stunned, especially the defense.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: They were, after all, the ones who wanted Matthew or Fila to testify in the first place.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: Little did they know his findings would side with the prosecution.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Orfila noted it was not the test that gave erroneous results.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: The test had simply been performed incorrectly.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Basically, user error.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: So what does the defense do?
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: What any good defense does.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: They wanted to bring in another expert to refute that testimony.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And this would be Francois Vincent Raspell, who would be called.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, he arrived four hours too late.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: And Marie had been found guilty and sentenced by the president of the court to life imprisonment with hard labor on September 19th.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: She was brought to Monte Caler to serve her time.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: And while there, King Louis Philip ended up commuting her sentence to just the life imprisonment.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: No hard labor for Marie.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, Marie wrote a book, Memoirs de Madame Lafarge, a first-person autobiography of her life.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: In 1852, Marie Lafarge came down with tuberculosis and was released from prison by Napoleon III.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: She went out to live the rest of her years and ended up dying on November 7th of the same year, still claiming her innocence.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: I thought this was such a crazy story, such a cool story.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: And uh definitely that it was, you know, in the book that I was reading, just like one of the first ones to rely on forensic toxicology.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I looked a little into like, you know, is there any books on this or is there any movies on this?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I've attached some links because there was a fictional novel in 1937 by Joseph Shering called The Lady and the Arsenic.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: There was actually a movie made too back in 1938 called Laffaire Lafarge.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I have not looked into uh either of those, but I do like to see if there's anything out there.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: Marie Lafarge's story is a reminder that the past wasn't innocent.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was just quieter, right?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we didn't have social media and everything.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: We had, you know, not anything like that.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Her trial changed the way courts understood science.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: And her crime changed the way people understood domestic murder.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: She wasn't the first poisoner, she wasn't the last, but she was the one who made France realize that arsenic wasn't just for rats.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: Her case shaped forensic science, inspired novels, and cemented her place in true crime history as one of the earliest celebrity criminals.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's gonna be it for today's episode.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: As always, you can find me on socials at dead underscore serious pod.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: You can subscribe on YouTube, please share, it really helps.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you so much for listening.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: Until next time, stay sharp, stay safe, and if you're baking a cake or, you know, perhaps some sourdough bread, maybe skip the rat poison.