I’m amusing myself by writing a story that’s a bit of a murder mystery. Only a bit, but it does have the requisite dead bodies which turn up and a bit of a who-dunit theme and some other mysterious trappings. In search of verisimilitude, I have a couple questions:
Suppose a character receives a dose of quick-acting poison which is just shy of fatal – a dose where you’d say “looks like she’s going to live, but there still might be some long term damage.” In this case, what would be some plausible medium-term effects (over the next few days or weeks)? Or would there be any? Mental fuzziness? Lack of co-ordination? Tiredness? Nausea?
Suppose one were to discover a character that had been suffocated. What would be the distinguishing characteristics that would lead one to conclude that she had been smothered? Or are there any, sans extensive forensics?
Dunno nothin’ bout poison. Presumably the side effects of a near lethal dose would depend entirely on the poison and what systems it attacks.
For asphyxiation by strangulation you might find petechiae. As the article indicates, this phenomenon will occur if vascular compression is great enough to close the veins returning blood to the body from the head, but NOT great enough to close the arteries delivering blood to the head. Pretty good chance you’d get this result with a scarff around the neck. A little more info about other kinds of asphyxiation here.
um…enjoy!
In terms of poison, the non-fatal results would depend on what it was the person was given, but seems likely that unless the substance was metabolized very quickly, a coma of some duration would happen. And there would probably damage to the liver and/or kidneys thereafter. Some poisons cause internal bleeding – rat poisons, particuarly warfarin, are bloodthinners which kill by causing massive hemorrhaging. Someone who got a near-fatal dose of such a poison would be afflicted with the effects, starting with pain, confusion, weakness, dizziness and fainting at the most basic level, and escalating up the scale to shock, cardiac arrest or stroke.
Smothering deaths are among the hardest to detect, certainly difficult without close examination. In a manual strangulation of a mature adult (40+) you could have the fracture of the hyoid bone (not to mention bruising) but asphyxiation from say, a pillow held over the face is only likely to be discovered from signs such as the petichiae that Inigo mentioned, which would only be found during post-mortem.