The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1875-08-27
The Omnipresence of Arsenic.

Arsenic is getting to be, throughout
| the world, almost as common as dirt.
We doubt very much whether it would
not be impossible, at the present day,
in any country, to convict, on chemical
evidence, before any jury, the most
bungling arsenical poisoner, if he or she
had legal defender who would make
use, as he might, of the argument fur
nished him by the almost universal dis
tribution of the venomous element
throughout our most familiar walks of
life. We have received medicines our
selves from drug stores wrapped in ar
senioaf papers, put up in Paris green
paper boxes, with arsenical paper caps
tied over the corks, etc. We have often
seen confectionery exposed for sale to
young children wrapped in the deadly
green paper. We have often found
young children smoking toys painted
with the horrible stuff, and with their
mouths stained throughout with the
venom. The Paris green paper is one
of the commonest in use for binding
school books, and we have more than
once taken such books away from our
own young children, which had been
given them by their teachers. Numer-
GUS deaths of children are known to
have been thus occasioned. No coun-
try can be called civilized in which such
suicidal Ignorance, such stupid slaugh-
ter of the inpocents is common. One
more illustration only. It is very COM
mon to see lawyer or his clerk put
into his mouth, to moisten the gum side
of it, beautiful green paper disk with
scolloped edges, to attach to some decu-
ment. These things are found in every
lawyers office in the land and used con-
stantly. They are seldom made of any
other than the Paris green paper. Can
this be Ignorance, or are our lawyers all
fatalists, and believe they can only "die |
when their time comes" In commenc-
ing to write we had in our mind to refer |
to someof the wonderful facts developed |
of late, in Great Britain especially, of |
open carts loaded with white arsenic |
passing in open day through the coun-
try in some districts, with drivers
sitting on top of the hideous heap ; |
such carts being often exposed all |
night open to the rain of strongly |
arsenical waters flowing from mines and |
works into streams of |
water afterwards drunk by large popu-
lations, and so on. These are facts.
Everybody will remember the cargo of
salt and arsenic together shipped to us
from Europe few months ago, which
got little mixed during a rough pas
sage. This particular mixture was dis
covered. The water we ourselves drink
comes from stream on one of whose
tributaries is a large chemical works,
which so contaminates the said tribu-
tary with arsenic that cattle drinking it
have been poisoned to death. These
things, we say, are facts on both sides
of the Atlantic but really, while we
wrote the first part of this article espe-
cially, when we thought of the reckless
ness of the public press, which has ac-
tually recommended their rural readers,
in many cases, to pile on the Paris
green on their potato patches with a
perfect looseness. these other things
seem trifes, as fiat and stale as they
are Improbable, and our en-
5husiasm and zeal for the cause of
humanity seems to wilt down into a sort
IF sentimentality, which is certainly lu-
licrously lame and important, if not
downright siokly.-The Gas Light
Journal.