[History of studies of alcohol toxicology]

The early history of forensic alcohology was presented, based on writings from the beginning of the 20th century and numerous forensic medical protocols from autopsies performed in Institute of Forensic Medicine in Cracow in the 19th and 20th century. Ethanol has not been considered a poison for a long time. Suspicion of its toxic effect resulted from cases of deaths as a results of people betting who can drink more alcohol. In case of alcohol poisoning, autopsy does not show any typical changes, so the poisonings have not been recognized for many years. At the beginning of the 20th century, the first chemical tests appeared. They were able to detect the presence of alcohol in tissues. A method for measuring the amount of alcohol in blood was also developed. The majority of methods were based on distillation of blood and inspection of the resultant distillate by physical methods (interferometry, colorimetry, refractometry, gravimetry, measuring thermal expansion and electrical conduction) or chemical methods using different reactions (oxidation of alcohol to acetic acid, reducing potassium dichromate by alcohol, alkylation of iodine by alcohol) and marking the amount of products of reaction by titration. Distillation of blood samples required complicated chemical devices and was very time consuming. Erik Widmark suggested a certain method in 1920, in which distillation of a blood sample took place in the same container, in which titration was performed earlier--the so-called Widmark's Flask. It allowed for distilling many samples in an incubator at the same time and dramatically shortened the time of research. Widmark's method was applied to testing drivers and people who committed crimes and was used in the whole world for many following years.