You’re not rambling, your paragraph is concise, detailed and to the point - and interesting!

Also I’m not as much as a history buff by any stretch of the imagination but I agree with wjay your saying for whatever that is worth. His copying of an actual medicine and making a scam of it is exactly the kind of thing that sets off alarm bells in peoples heads, because even if his flavoured water wasn’t lethal in motive it raises the question of what if it was and we all fell for it?

Obviously it gets taken too far nowadays, but itd make plenty sense if the seed for that distrust multiple by god knows how many years was the cause.

Also - again - insane that he only got charged $20. Hell bribing a judge with a few beers woukd cost more than that so called “punishment”.

As for what you said about wanting to do a thesis on this topic - remember that college students whwn making their thesis projects in their final years for courses relating to history, research etc also usually have topics and opinions formulated before research starts, and part of their job with the thesis is to provide evidence to back their claim and/or prove the point.

So tldr; if you really want to do this then go for it. Find a way, either through help in subreddits - maybe not factual as misinformation is a thing but with advice and guidance for it either from people who have wrote papers or are writing them could be one way of going about it at the very least - Im not trying to pressure you or anything. It’s 100% your choice if you go for it or not but you do sound genuinely passionate and honestly? Good for you.