Comments on: In the Archives: Poison Pages

By: Laura Bien

Laura Bien — Mon, 07 May 2012 01:33:41 +0000

Thank you for the link, TeacherPatti!

By: TeacherPatti

TeacherPatti — Sun, 06 May 2012 15:26:52 +0000

Thanks to Google, I found it: [link] The story I talked about was actually the "back story", told in flashbacks...I don't even remember how the actual mystery was resolved :)

By: Laura Bien

Laura Bien — Sat, 05 May 2012 02:51:07 +0000

Jim: That is interesting; gasoline stoves were a big cause of fires in 19th-century Ypsilanti homes. The gasoline reservoir was in a gravity-fed can kind of suspended via pipe above the stove itself. They were touted as a way to keep your kitchen cool in summer versus laboriously firing up a coal or wood stove. And indeed, the kitchen was a lot cooler when half of it was burned to the ground…

19th-century insurance policies used to base their rates on whether or not you had a gasoline stove, and how many per multi-family house…the stoves were known to be deadly.

Both my husband and I are what I guess you could call “pyros,” but firing up an ancient gasoline blowtorch of uncertain integrity, soldering, &c., is probably a bit more excitement than I’m looking for. Speaking as someone who looks at arsenic books for fun. :D

By: Jim Rees

Jim Rees — Sat, 05 May 2012 00:47:14 +0000

You’re not going to fire up the blowtorch? It’s kind of fun. You fill the pan with gasoline and light it, making a big smoky flame. This heats the generator up enough to vaporize the gas. Once it’s going, the generation is self-sustaining.

Best to do this outdoors. My grandfather was a big fan of gas appliances (his grandfather owned oil wells). He installed a gasoline stove in my grandmother’s kitchen in 1913. It blew up and nearly burned the house down. He also owned the first gas car in Luckey, Ohio, which luckily didn’t blow up. Coincidentally, my wife’s great-grandfather owned the first car in Port Huron.

By: Laura Bien

Laura Bien — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:27:57 +0000

To add one more comment for Teacher Patti: Some of the (many!) accidental historical arsenic-poisoning cases came about when someone thought that this odorless, flavorless white powder was a cooking ingredient (this is white arsenic, not arsenical Paris green, which is, uh, green). Read one story of a farmer who hid a tin of white arsenic, left-over rat poison, in a clock-body of all places in an attempt to keep it away from accidental ingestion. Years later a house-servant found it, thought it was (then-expensive) sugar, and mixed it into a cake with deadly results.

By: Laura Bien

Laura Bien — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:19:50 +0000

Colin: As it turns out this mystery artifact is from my own ramshackle collection of “junque,” and I use it all the time. It’s less than an inch from my keyboard at this very moment (hint). I can’t decide if it’s cool or kind of pathetic that I can pluck random old-fashioned often entirely useless (blowtorch from last column; no way am I firing that baby up) stuff from my own home. :)

By: Laura Bien

Laura Bien — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:15:48 +0000

TeacherPatti: That book sounds interesting, do you recall the title? I haven’t come across any stories of physical addiction to arsenic; perhaps this was a psychological addiction.

Arsenic was a part of many patent and mainstream medicines in the 19th century; in the latter, it was there as a relic from the days of “heroic medicine” when it was thought that the power of a serious illness could best be fought with a powerful (sometimes fatal) treatment like mercury (calomel), bloodletting, violent vomiting caused by purgatives, or arsenic. Calomel was in use well into the 20th century; I’ve seen it come up as a medicine in a 1919 Ypsilanti diary to give one anecdotal example.

By: Laura Bien

Laura Bien — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:09:19 +0000

Thank you for that link, Cosmonican! Arsenic from well water is the current leading cause of arsenic poisoning in the States; it is important, as you say, to have well water tested. Municipally-supplied water is tested before it reaches one’s home.

By: Colin Oatley

Colin Oatley — Fri, 04 May 2012 02:27:09 +0000

The mystery artifact is a stamp dispenser. It neatly holds a coil of 100 postage stamps. The outside end of the coil is fed through the slot, making it easy for the owner to tear off one stamp at a time, along the perforation. The device would be stored in the home office or wherever one addresses and stamps envelopes. I have a plastic version that I still use today.

By: cosmonıcan

cosmonıcan — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:54:04 +0000

Laura, you have the rest of that newspaper available I presume. Does all this stuff in the ad about bears and turkeys have something to do with the Russo-Turkish War of that year? And if so, what does it have to do with the druggist, Mr. Smith; does it prevent importing his stocks somehow?