|
Abstract
|
In December, 1846, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a British Member of Parliament, published his latest three-volume novel, Lucretia—or the Children of the Night. One of the most prolific writers of the time, Bulwer-Lytton's work included the celebrated opening line, “It was a dark and stormy night”. The book is certainly, to paraphrase the author, a dark and stormy tale: blood “gushes and plashes” as the heroine, Lucretia Clavering, poisons her way from one sensation to another. As something of a clue to her character, she shared a first name with Lucretia Borgia, one of history's most famous poisoners, while her surname was borrowed from a village in Essex that had recently been in the news as a hotbed of criminal poisoning.
Lucretia was an immediate best-seller but not everyone was impressed. The Daily News called it “hateful from the first page to the last”, while The Times pronounced it “a disgrace to the writer, a shame to us all”. Given the subject matter and Bulwer-Lytton's lurid style, the attacks in the popular press were predictable enough, but the usually sober London Medical Gazette, edited by the seriously scientific Dr Alfred Swaine Taylor, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at Guy's Hospital in London, UK, sounded equally overwrought. Lucretia seemed to have been written for the express purpose of “giving a dignity to the crime of assassination”, the journal claimed, adding that the most eloquent novelist of the day had given the world a work of fiction “the entire plot details and moral of which form a most complete revelation of the art of murder by poison”....
In his novel, Bulwer-Lytton described a colourless, tasteless liquid, which he claimed had “hitherto baffled every known and positive test in the posthumous examination of surgeons”. No such poison was known in Britain, but arsenic administered over time in subacute doses came closest. The metallic element called arsenic will pass quite safely through the human body provided it remains in that elemental state. What most people mean when they refer simply to arsenic, however, is arsenic trioxide, or white arsenic as it was popularly known in the 19th century. White arsenic is a tasteless, harmless-looking powder that is fatal in small doses. During the first half of the 19th century, white arsenic was available over the counter of druggist shops for just a few pence and with few questions asked. Poisoning cases were also notoriously hard to diagnose. The main symptoms of arsenic poisoning—vomiting and diarrhoea—mimic those of many stomach ailments common in the 19th century, while of course at that time doctors had only those symptoms and the circumstances in which the patient fell ill to go on. “If you feel a deadly sensation within and grow gradually weaker, how do you know you are not poisoned?” asked The Leader newspaper. “If your hands tingle, do you not fancy it is arsenic?…Your friends and relations all smile kindly upon you; the meal…looks correct but how can you possibly tell there is not arsenic in the curry?” The idea was terrifying....
So in the first half of the 19th century, British politicians, scientists, journalists, and concerned members of the public alike began to call for some control of the sale of white arsenic. They were prompted not only by fear of crime but also by some tragic accidents, for the poison was a popular rat killer, insecticide, and cosmetic, as well as being one of the constituents of a fashionable green pigment used in paint, wallpaper, fabrics, toys, sweets, and candles. Doctors too were adding to the menace by prescribing arsenic for everything from asthma to typhus, malaria, period pain, worms, anaemia, syphilis, neuralgia, as a general pick-me-up, and topically for surgical wounds and skin conditions. “The bad effects which this medicine produces…often leads us to regret that we should have employed it at all”, warned the eminent surgeon Sir Astley Cooper. However, the favourite mixture of white arsenic, a commercial brand called “Fowler's” which consisted of a one per cent solution of potassium arsenite, was still being prescribed in the 1930s.....
Language: en |