Mineral Point tribune. (Mineral Point, Wis.) 1869-1938, 1875-04-22
Paris Green.

There Is no longer any room for doubt
that the common habit among farmers
of applying Paris green TO potatoes to
save them from the ravages of bugs is
using remedy that is worse than the
disease. This is saying good deal when
we bear in mind that the loss sustained
by the country during the last ten years
from the destruction OF the potato crop
is estimated by good judges to exceed the
whole cost of the late war; but the facts
will more than justify the statement.
Many Of the best chemists beth in this
country and in Europe have protested
repeatedly and strongly against the reck-
less use OF so villainous compound and
have invoked the interference of the law
to prevent 1T. They urge several good
and sufficient reasons, and fortify them
by startling array of facts. Paris
green is compound of arsenic and cop
per, both Of them poisonous when taken
into the human system, and the former
Of them most deadly poison. Arsenic
is not only poisonous when swallowed
but when applied to cuts or wounds, or
when taken into the lungs as vapor or
fine dust. Deaths have occurred from
inhaling the steam arising from water in
which arsenic was boiled. When CON-
bined with copper, forming Paris
green, the copper acts in one respect as
a diluent, in another it helps TO form
more subtle and dangerous poison. A
larger dose Of Paris green would be re-
quired to produce death than of the pure
arsenic; but arsenic, on the other hand,
may be taken into the system in minute
quantities for some time without neces-
sarily prove injurious. Paris green is
more difficult thing for the body to get
rid of; it remains in the system longer,
and its effects, if taken repeatedly in
minute doses, are cumulative. 1t is then
far more likely to give rise to occult
disease, and the patient dies, as it were,
by a slow decay. The man, therefore,
who Sits Paris green on his potato vines
every week or so during the season
places his health in imminent peril, for
he can scarcely fail to breathe considera-
BILE quantities of the poison. Many
alarming cases of sickness and some
deaths have even occurred from breath
ing the air of room contaminated by
the fine dust arising from wallpaper or
curtains painted with the arseniate of
copper. The second reason against its
use is that it is, likely to poison the
ground on which it is spread, rem
dering it less productive, and in time
useless; or, worse still, be taken up
by the cereals which are raised upon it,
and become a poison in our daily bread.
That many mineral poisons are thus
taken up from the soil by plants APP
pears to be well-established fact; there
S no reason to believe that Paris green
will prove an exception; and, until it is
SO proved, all men with the facts before
them, who have the lives and welfare of
humanity more at heart than their pota-
to crop, will refuse TO sow the poison
broadcast in the soil. In the meantime
il would be wisdom to experiment more
fully on the effects of vegetable poisons
on destructive insects. lis not unlikely
that some alkaloid Of vegetable origin
may be found that will be both cheap
and effective, without the objections
that attend the employment of mineral
poison. The fact that quinine is most
deadly poison to many of the lower ami
mails, while most valuable medicine to
man, ought to furnish a hint as to the
direction investigations should take. A
recent article in scientific journal states
that a decoctlon of the common man
drake root lpodophyllum pcttatum) is
effective in destroying potato bugs
The plant is common everywhere, and it
will cost but little to test its efficacy
Interior.