ATROPINE POISONING: WAS IT THE CAUSE OF DIMMESDALE’S DEATH? In an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Jemshed A. Khan claims that Roger Chillingworth poisoned Arthur Dimmesdale with the drug atropine in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Certainly, Chillingworth was “a man of skill in all Christian modes of physical science” (Hawthorne 65) and was very knowledgeable about medicinal roots and herbs (Hawthorne 65). Undoubtedly, he could have been aware of how to …showed first 75 words of 695 total…

…showed last 75 words of 695 total…true through the eyes of a person who started reading the novel looking for signs of atropine or some other kind of poisoning. To a person who starts reading the book with no preconception as to what caused Dimmesdale’s death, the valid references in the novel that support the idea of some sort of poisoning are just coincidental; and the true reason of Dimmesdale’s death is shown through his overwhelming since of guilt.