Mathieu joseph bonaventure orfila biography for kids
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Mathieu Orfila
Spanish toxicologist and chemist (1787–1853)
Mathieu Joseph Bonaventure Orfila (Catalan: Mateu Josep Bonaventura Orfila i Rotger) (24 April 1787 – 12 March 1853) was a Spanish toxicologist and chemist, the founder of the science of toxicology.
Role in forensic toxicology
[edit]If there is reason to believe that a murder or attempted murder may have been committed using poison, a forensic toxicologist pharmaceutical is often engaged to examine pieces of evidence such as corpses and food items for poison content. In Orfila's time the primary type of poison in use was arsenic, but there were not any reliable ways of testing for its presence. Orfila created new techniques, refined existing techniques and described them in his first treatise, Traité des poisons (1813), greatly enhancing their accuracy.
In 1840, Marie Lafarge was tried for the murder of her husband. Although she had had access to arsenic, and arsenic had been found in the victim's foo
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Abstract
Mateu Joseph Bonaventura Orfila i Rotger was a prominent Spanish chemist and scholar of the 19th century whose experimental work has enormously contributed to the progress of toxicology. Being a pioneer with his research on the effects of toxins and antidotes on live animals, he established basic principles of modern medicine and pharmacology. Orfila improved the accuracy of several chemical techniques such as the Marsh test. He served as an expert and well-known scientific investigator in important legal trials involving alleged poisonings with arsenic and other chemical substances. In 1840, he was asked to investigate the notorious case of Charles Lafarge’s death, whose wife had been accused with murder by poisoning his food with arsenic. After four failed chemical analyses, Orfila was finally able to detect arsenic in the victim’s body, leading the court to convict Madame Lafarge. Due to his overall contribution to the field, Orfila is considered the father of modern to
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Orfila, Mathieu Joseph Bonaventure
4/24/1787–3/12/1853
SPANISH, NATURALIZED FRENCH
CHEMIST, PHYSIOLOGIST
Mathieu Orfila helped initiate the study of toxicology . His massive treatise on poisons appeared in three languages in the second decade of the nineteenth century and immediately propelled the medical, biological, chemical, physiological, and legal sciences in new directions.
Born as Mateu José Bonaventura Orfila inom Rotger Maó, Minorca, Spain, he eschewed his family's traditional career of merchant seafaring when he was fifteen in order to study medicine . From 1804 to 1807, he attended courses in medicin at the University of Valencia and chemistry at the University of Barcelona. He won a scholarship to the University of Madrid to study chemistry and mineralogy, but went instead to Paris in June 1807 to study medicine and pharmacy. There Orfila became the protégé of pharmacist and chemist Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin and chemist Louis-Jacques Th