umbrella poisoning

ah -- found it.

remember my post about the russian who was recently poisoned, and the other strange poisoning i dimly recalled? here are some details:

Ricin has achieved a certain amount of notoriety in the past 30 years, due in large part to its use in the suspected 1978 KGB assassination of Bulgarian defector and BBC World Service commentator, Georgi Markov, in London. In a fashion more befitting a Hollywood spy movie, a poison pellet containing an estimated 0.28 milligrams of ricin was stabbed into his thigh with the tip of an umbrella. Three days later he died of cardiac failure, having been afflicted with a host of other ailments. Although no ricin was found, it was suspected by the doctor, who recreated the scenario, injecting a laboratory pig, which later died, in a similar fashion, and with similar symptoms. (http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/ricin-factsheet.cfm)

there is additional information here.

the deadly ricin is made from caster beans and should be avoided, although they're looking into it as a cancer treatment.