Croonian Lecture - Lethal synthesis

Abstract

It is hardly necessary for me to refer to my appreciation of the great honour conferred in asking me to give this lecture. It might be thought that the title is more suited to a detective novel and that it was somewhat frivolous for the occasion! Curiously enough I hope that some of the points with which I shall deal to-day will make the path of would-be poisoners somewhat more thorny; and in a way there has been a little of the detective atmosphere about the research. My main theme is the biochemistry and physiology of the poison fluoroacetic acid; this is, as I think, the first instance of ‘lethal synthesis’ in the sense that fluoroacetic acid becomes lethal only when it has been transformed by the action of the tissue enzymes. It is the biochemistry which makes it lethal, the poison being a biochemical product of the tissue which is poisoned.