Gary Gygax and poison, 1st edition AD&D Options

[Wounded Ronin]

Man, I'm reading through the 1st edition AD&D manuals in my spare time and Gary Gygax seems obsessed with poison. As in, which character classes are allowed to use it and which are not. How there's a 10% per round chance someone will notice a poisoned weapon and "call for the city watch" because of the poisoned weapon but not because of the melee combat/assault? There seems to be a lot of mental energy dealing with how to penalize or disallow poison use permeating these rules.

But wasn't this Gygax's fault in the first place for introducing poison needle traps that make you drop dead if you fail a saving throw and having lots of monsters that are the same way when they hit?

I mean if he didn't want player characters to be able to do stuff like that maybe he shouldn't have loaded his dungeons with crap like that in the first place. Of all people to have a problem with players doing the same thing you'd think he was the guy who has the least of a basis to object.

All this poison which you see in 1st edition D&D is like curare or something. A single touch and your dead. In real life I don't think there's very many poisons that are that powerful.

You'd think the solution would just be to have poison do temporary attribute damage or something instead of being an insta-kill. Instead of all the references to poison and reasons why you shouldn't use it and cogitation about who is or who isn't allowed to use it a single revision making it less powerful could have both been more realistic and made all that stuff unnecessary.