Editing Agatha Christie (section)

=== Pharmacology ===

During the First World War, Christie took a break from nursing to train for the Apothecaries Hall Examination.<ref name=":11"/>{{Rp|xi}} While she subsequently found dispensing in the hospital pharmacy monotonous, and thus less enjoyable than nursing, her new knowledge provided her with a background in potentially toxic drugs. Early in the Second World War, she brought her skills up to date at Torquay Hospital.<ref name="Auto1993"/>{{Rp|235, 470}}

As Michael C. Gerald puts it, her "activities as a hospital dispenser during both World Wars not only supported the war effort but also provided her with an appreciation of drugs as therapeutic agents and poisons{{nbsp}}... These hospital experiences were also likely responsible for the prominent role physicians, nurses, and pharmacists play in her stories."<ref name=":11"/>{{Rp|viii}} There were to be many medical practitioners, pharmacists, and scientists, naïve or suspicious, in Christie's cast of characters; featuring in ''Murder in Mesopotamia'', ''Cards on the Table'', ''The Pale Horse'', and ''Mrs. McGinty's Dead'', among many others.<ref name=":11"/>

[[Gillian Gill]] notes that the murder method in Christie's first detective novel, ''The Mysterious Affair at Styles'', "comes right out of Agatha Christie's work in the hospital dispensary".<ref name=":10"/>{{Rp|34}} In an interview with journalist Marcelle Bernstein, Christie stated, "I don't like messy deaths{{nbsp}}... I'm more interested in peaceful people who die in their own beds and no one knows why."<ref>{{cite news |date=8 March 1970 |title=Agatha Christie: 'Queen of Crime' Is a Gentlewoman |page=60, quoted in Gerald (1993), p. 4 |work=[[Los Angeles Times]]}}</ref> With her expert knowledge, Christie had no need of poisons unknown to science, which were forbidden under [[Ronald Knox]]'s "Ten Rules for Detective Fiction".<ref name=":12"/>{{Rp|58}} [[Arsenic trioxide|Arsenic]], [[aconitine|aconite]], [[strychnine]], [[digoxin toxicity|digitalis]], [[nicotine]], [[thallium]], and other substances were used to dispatch victims in the ensuing decades.<ref name=":11"/>