Dictionary.net

killing by the administration of poison

A condition or physical state produced by the ingestion, injection or inhalation of, or exposure to a deleterious agent.

The art of applying a poisonous substance to any of the textures in a dose capable of occasioning more or less serious symptoms. Rigorously speaking, therefore, if a physician, in treating any case, employs a deleterious medicine in a small dose, which, owing to particular circumstances, produces unpleasant symptoms, he may be said to have poisoned. The term is, however, generally restricted to poisoning by design. Poisoning has also been used, by a few, to denote the series of symptoms resembling those produced by certain poisons, which occasionally follow the use of substances that are generally innoxious. Overloading the stomach with indigestible food, has, for example, given occasion to symptoms resembling those produced by a narcotic poison, and the effect has been termed poisoning. Secret poisoning was, at one time, practised as an art. It consisted in administering medicines, which should act as slow poisons, and gradually undermine the strength and life. Its agency was far from being so extensive as was imagined.

The act of administering a poison in such an amount or manner as to produce its specific poisonous effect.

The condition produced by a poison.