Hey @shaniac! Thanks for your question.
Unfortunately I don't remember a lot about cyanide because it doesn't come up so much in practice as you might imagine xD but I did have a lecture from an Agatha Christie loving pharmacologist about it who reminded us that one of the initial signs of cyanide poisoning is that the person's breath smells like almonds. Don't know if that's useful to you. What's probably more useful for you is that cyanide kills you instantly or within minutes. There are antidotes - Vitamin B12 being a popular one, but unlikely that anyone would be carrying them around unless they suspected that someone was trying to poison them. Remember that the Nazis all carried cyanide capsules so they could die quickly before anyone noticed.
So. Cyanide kills you fast. As I say I'm not a hundred percent up on my poisons - but check out thallium for a slow and painful death (and can be passed on by skin contact, unclear if cyanide can). I just read up on a spate of murders in Australia in the 1950s - mainly by women - with thallium poisoning and here is an interesting list of signs and symptoms: https://www.dermnetnz.org/topics/thallium-poisoning/ mainly severe stomach cramps and vomiting/diarrhoea and loss of nerve endings starting in your fingers and toes which can be really really painful. Your poisoner would just have to be careful to not be exposed themselves.
That's just one suggestion. If you go with cyanide, the cyanide will kill them before the stab wound.
Here's the thing about stabbing someone once: it's surprisingly difficult to kill someone, especially with a kitchen knife. Multiple wounds will do it but really unless you hit their heart or a big artery, it's unlikely that they'll bleed to death. A gut wound would open you up to infection... A hit to a kidney would maybe have you bleeding internally enough to die. But basically as long as it isn't heart or abdomen... it's tough to kill someone straight away.
Beyond your aorta which runs right down the centre of your body, most likely places that you would bleed out from are:
- femoral artery coming our of your groin and running down your leg deep in the middle of your thigh - awkward to reach with a knife
- brachial artery- emerges from your thorax under your arm and runs down to the medial edge of your elbow (with your palm facing forward, the edge closer to your torso. You should be able to feel a pulse there)
- carotid artery- in your neck.
So other than your neck... it's almost like humans evolved to not have major arteries in unprotected places! Which is great for us as a species but not great as writers who love blood and guts....
What I'm saying, long, awkwardly and tangentially is this: stabbing someone in the shoulder won't cause too much blood or too much permanent damage. There is a chance you might puncture the very top of someone's lung but assuming they're going and fit this will heal over (putting them on high flow oxygen helps the lung to reinflate and seal itself off). Other than that, the majority of your blood vessels and nerves run under your arm along the inside edge, so you wouldn't get too much nerve damage either. The same can be said for most of your leg. What you'll really hit is muscle which will hurt like heck. But muscle grows back. Nerves don't.
Skin also is good at regenerating. What type of damage is done depends on the knife, a serrated knife and sloppy cut make for a worse wound that may be more difficult to sew up and is more likely to cause skin tightening and maybe even be keloid when it heals. A knife with a smooth edge and a single stab wound is more easily sewn up, and as long as it's not over a skin flexure (like over a joint where the skin has to be supple and mobile), a scar wouldn't cause any permanent disability.
So if you're looking for places to stab your character that won't cause chronic damage, the shoulder is still a good call, as is the leg. The abdomen is maybe a bit more dangerous... in the sides and back they run the risk of losing a kidney, elsewhere if they get a gut wound they can become profoundly septic and may need surgery ICU to get over the infection... but if they survive that they'll be flying. Same can be said for being stabbed in a lung. But honestly, limbs seem your best bet, particularly if your murderer is relying on poison and isn't fussed about a fatal wound.
I hope that that helps! Sorry I rambled a lot. Need to get more practice
Gender:
Points: 53415
Reviews: 1125