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 poison Dimmesdale slowly. Although Khan’s line of conjecture is somewhat persuasive and seemingly