Arsenical poisoning by wall-papers and other manufactured articles / by Jabez Hogg.

  • Jabez Hogg
Date:
1885
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Arsenical poisoning by wall-papers and other manufactured articles / by Jabez Hogg. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    2/12 page 2
    use among us. There is no longer room for doubt of the truth of this assertion in the minds of those who have carefully inquired into the subjeft. Nevertheless public feeling has not been aroused, at least to an extent sufficient to produce any very marked effedl in diminution of the evils which the physician and the chemist have from time to time endeavoured to bring prominently into notice. In the investigation of an obscure or hidden disease the medical man, in any and every case, is given to associate fafts and group together symptoms ; and should he find that these recur in pretty much the same order, in a number of cases, and if some distinft or special pathological condition is seen to underlie them and constantly reproduce them, then he considers that he is justified in regarding them as an unmistakable indication of cause and effedt. By careful observation it has been found that wall-papers coloured by arsenical pigments will produce, and do produce, a series of symptoms of poisoning which are not only significant, but perfecftly conclusive of poisoning by their agency. It is a well-recognised fa6t that those persons who are susceptible to the aftion of such potent toxic agents as arsenic, and who may be compelled to occupy a bed-room the walls of which are covered by an arsenical paper, will certainly suffer in health therefrom. That this is so receives additional strength from the fa6t that immediate relief from a series of distressing symptoms is experienced on removal from the room and its surroundings, and which always recur on their returning to the apartment, or even to the house. It is a fa6t, then, that sufferers from arsenical wall-paper poisoning invariably experience perfect relief from all their distressing sj'mptoms on trying change of air,—na}' more, by changing one room for another. Any permanent change produces a cure. But on their returning to the influences or surroundings which were the original cause of the illness, they just as surely experience the same train of distressing symptoms which in the first place was the cause of the mysterious illness. It may readily be surmised, from these few introduftory observations, that the question of arsenical poisoning is in many respedts an important one for individuals and for households. From the large number of cases of poisoning already made known by the medical profession and by ana- lytical chemists, I gather that the evil is widespread, and the danger arising therefrom can in no way be exaggerated. The late eminent chemist and toxicologist Dr. Alfred Taylor was the first to put the public on its guard against
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image
    No text description is available for this image