Mathieu Orfila

Mathieu Joseph Bonaventure Orfila (1787-1853) was a Spanish-born French toxicologist and chemist regarded as the father of modern toxicology. His 1813 treatise Traite des poisons, published while he was still in his twenties, was the first systematic work to apply rigorous chemical analysis to the detection of poisons in the body, replacing the largely anecdotal and symptom-based approach to suspected poisoning cases that had prevailed until then. Orfila went on to hold the chair of medical chemistry and later the deanship of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, and he testified as an expert witness in numerous French poisoning trials, using his own chemical tests to establish or rule out the presence of specific toxic substances in ways that shaped how courts across Europe came to expect scientific evidence in cases of suspected poisoning.