I recommend an American diet: ultra-processed foods, excess sodium, saturated fat, refined grains, calories from solid fats and added sugars, and avoid vegetables like the plague! The target will be dead within 50 years…

There is a way, and it might already be somewhat of a trope but you can use fruitpits to extract amygdalin which can be then refined with a homelab to a cyanide like substance. Although not pure or concentrated enough, but it could be added to food by a wife on a very long period of time and make the Victim very I’ll with fatal results.

Amygdalin is extracted from almonds or apricot kernels by boiling in ethanol; on evaporation of the solution and the addition of diethyl ether, amygdalin is precipitated as white minute crystals.

For that i think having a read about acqua tofana would be a pretty good source of inspiration, since it was designed to have effects like an illness. it originates in italy so most of it’s ingredients are by default from a mediterran climate.

Or if you want something natural without too mutch human processing, belladonna is a surefire, but not slow acting.

I’m a writer

“A writer” 😉

Ricin was used in Breaking Bad. Fairly easy to produce and administer.

Whole maybe not “poisons” by definition I have a couple scary stories of people working in damp, moldy office and basement environments and after a couple years getting rare autoimmune and neurological disorders that killed them. One being my uncle, my family tried to get his workplace to test where he worked because the doctors said that’s most likely where he contracted it, but they refused. We weren’t looking for money, just trying to save the next guy. I was fairly young when this happened so I don’t remember all the details.

Apple seeds contain cyanide, and are easy to get in quantity without raising suspicion. How long does it take? No idea.

don’t be Don, don’t be Don, don’t be Don

Oh thank God.

Apple seeds contain cyanide, simply crushing them will release the poison and it can be added to something else, although it’s not very slow.

There’s also the Destroying Angel/Death Cap mushroom, whose symptoms can take up to a day to even start, by which point the toxins have been incorporated and destruction of liver and kidney tissue is irreversible. They also contain toxins that can cause severe DNA damage, making it so your body can no longer repair itself after exposure, and you slowly die cell by cell.

Alcohol is a very effective slow acting poison.

If you want long-term, look to the liver. Alcohol will destroy it over time, but so will viral hepatitis. Have you considered slow acting diseases like hepatitis or HIV? Or something intensely carcinogenic?

How slow are you talking? Days? Weeks? months?

Mushrooms are a good option, and you can just make up a species if you want specific time frames/symptoms. Mushrooms can cause a lot of weird symptoms.

There’s also a brain eating amoeba or other sickness from still water (people back in the day were very aware of tainted water).

If you have access to polar animals, a unique poisoning would be vitamin A toxicity from their livers. It’s a horrific way to die, though (skin sloughing off).

how slow acting? As in months, or as in time to get the fuck outta dodge?

Ricin will kill you in a couple of days, was first extracted in 1888, and the plant grows in the mediterranean.

Apple seeds contain cyanide. You’d have to crush and eat anywhere from 150 to a few thousand seeds for it to be fatal though. I’m sure that hasn’t stopped authors from using it before.