Lydia Sherman: American Borgia

Lydia Sherman: American Borgia is the first biography of a woman who killed three husbands and seven children with arsenic. She was the first murderess in this country to rack up a double-digit body count. This book began with a simple question: If the English chemist James Marsh created an efficient test for arsenic in 1840, how was Lydia Sherman able to poison so many people after the American Civil War? It turns out that her enablers were the poorly educated medical practitioners of the time. Overlay a delicate history of nineteenth century medicine on the story of this attractive, elfin sociopath and the result is Lydia Sherman: American Borgia. (The full confession of Lydia Sherman is in Appendix A of this biography.)