I am such a librarian
So I was browsing through an author's journal last night looking for fanfic (yes, my guilty pleasure) when I noticed a post in which she linked to an article referencing a "bastard child" and went off in a righteous rant about how we should be beyond attaching insulting names to children born out of wedlock, and how it was the father who should be
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a very toxic book at the special collections branch of the
New York Public Library.
The Tibetan book of the Dead* had been saturated on purpose
with a radioactive isotope of Thallium**, most likely in a compound.
Handling the book killed two people and almost killed their
morgue doctor.
* I couldn't figure out why two people signed in to view it for
very casual research.
Yes, it was probably a rare century old first edition but other
than that, it's not at all a hard book to find in bookstores.
In fact, a modern copy of the same edition was given as a gift
to ? at the end of the episode.
** The element itself and its compounds are very poisonous,
let alone Th 201, though they goofed on using that isotope
since it has a half life of only ~73 hours.
Other radioactive isotopes of thallium like
Th 204 last much longer, though much harder to get.
(Lead 201 decays into Thallium 201 and is common in medical treatment,
so ease of acquiring it played a role, i guess)
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