The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1883-02-01
How Women Use Arsenic.

One of the strangest phenomena of the
society in which we live is its taste for
poisons, says the London World. The
day has passed when the chemists blue
bottle inspire awe. The boudoir is rapid
ly assuming the appearance OF u tispens-
ary, and the toilet-table is medium for
instructing inquisitive housemaids in
the science of toxicology. A few months
since the discovery was made, or rather
bruited in Paris, that the practice of
taking morphia by hypodermic injections
had risen to such favor with ladies who
plunged deeply into the excitement of
the capital, that the jewelers. were selling
largely curious and novel kind of pei
sonal adornment, viz, a little phial to
| hold morphia, with injection needle at
tached. Indulgence in this poison how
ever, entails such greedy revenge of
nature that, generally speaking, even
those women who live for society are in
no great danger of falling victims to its
infatuation.
But it is otherwise with another poison
which of late years has been steadily
rising in the favor of ladies, and whose
consumption is now enormous. No
doubt the doctors are primarily respon-
sible for this fashionable vice. They
prescribe arsenic ss a tonic. 1t is I'M
questionably very efficacious one, and
when used discreetly. an excellent blood
purifier. But no sooner does many a
fair patient perceive that it makes the
complexion very clear and white an it
has fatal fascination for her; and as
preparation Of the drug is to be OBJ
foirnI Of nj OF no 10 mt ohio
to make the doctor o confidant of her
where this poison is chiefly in vogue,
of beauty greatly changes for the worse,
the habitual arsenic. takers will remain
very small minority in this country.
For the effects of the drug are two-fold:
it makes the skin marble wilderness, but
also produces form of obesity that
comes into violent conflict with our
prevailing notions of feminine charms.
Frenchmen and Moors agree in thinking
that the more closely the female form
resembles that of the quail the more d.
vine it is. We stand aloof from the wor-
shippers of embonpoint, and have as little
admiration for the fat kline as we
have for the lean. Those who are
familiar with French life know
with what ardor French woman
cultivates we'll rounded form. With
cunning arrangement of padding and
putting, the dressmaking may do good
deal to produce the much-desired out
line of which the salient feature is the
bust en- offrande; but the result, after all,
is only artistic. On the other hand, the
embonpoint which comes of arsenic is
natural, or will easily pass as such. If
this drug is not the elixir of perpetual
youth, it is, at all events, the construc-
tive elixir of beauty of the contemporary
French type, and the name of its devO.
tees across the channel is legion.
No doubt the habit Of arsenic taking,
like other virus that is poisoning society,
originated with those. in speaking of
whom the cant of modern politeness has
borrowed word from the Greeks;
"Hotairp" and arsenic seem to have o
natural affinity. In Paris, where the
demi-monde gives to most of the fash
ions the stamp that insures their success,
arsenic only needed the patronage of the
ladies who cause snch heart-burnings to
estimable patrons at Longchamps for the
latter to became feverishly anxious to try
the effect of the "elixir" on themselves.
Neither of the two worlds" can hold any
secret from the other, and the agency
employed to produce those physical re-
suits of which we have been speaking
has long ceased 10 be a mystery in Paris.
Now, whether it be on the greenswards
of Longchsmps, the gilded rooms of the
Elysee, or at an afternoon reception of
the Princess X. one does not need to
be learned in medicine to perceive that
arsenic has taken the lead of morphia,
belladonna, or any other noxious drug
that ever entered into conspiracy with
feminine vanity to make the genuine
woman Of mans delightful ideal the film.
siest of distractions, as the favorite
poison OF the ladies of France.