Mathieu Orfila
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.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.He discovered that the test used, the Marsh test, had been performed incorrectly, and that there was in fact arsenic in the body; LaFarge was subsequently found guilty.