Van Gogh, self portrait after cutting off his ear and working with green pigment

For my upcoming book on insects and their effect on human history, I started researching arsenic as a component of many insecticides. The more I read, the more I learned about how widespread was the use of arsenical compounds during the 19th century. Now I’m obsessed with arsenic.

Arsenic has been a favorite poison since ancient times; it’s been called “inheritance powder” for its ability to hasten the death of an impatient heir’s relative.

In smaller doses, it doesn’t kill you right away, but you can be slowly poisoned over time. Prolonged exposure causes all kinds of terrible gastrointestinal problems which, incidentally, may mimic the symptoms of cholera.

Victorian-era women, anxious to achieve a fashionable pallor, nibbled on arsenic wafers.  And arsenical compounds were used to tint all kinds of products. There’s story after story about acute and chronic poisonings, both intentional and accidental.

Shades of green derived from copper arsenate were known by different names: Paris green, Scheele’s green, emerald green, and parrot green, to name a few. Mountains of arsenic were the by-product of the coal industry, so mining industrialists were all too happy to sell it to manufacturers. And the public loved it; brilliant greens became all the rage in the 1860s. In his fascinating book,  The Arsenic Century, James Whorton documents how omnipresent the arsenical pigments were throughout Victorian society–everything seemed to have been tinted green, including hard candies, fake flowers, stuffed birds, wallpaper, upholstery, fabric, butcher paper, shelf liner, and even money, in the U.S. The list goes on and on. And it was all toxic. There’s a lot of speculation that the arsenic in green paint led to Monet’s blindness and Van Gogh’s psychotic episodes. As one reviewer of Wharton’s book put it, “society beauties whirling through waltzes in their green muslin ball gowns spread clouds of toxic dust like helicopters spraying pesticide.”* Museum curators who handle gowns and accessories from that era have to wear protective gloves and clothing.

And I haven’t even talked about the arsenic in pesticides yet. They’ll have to get their own entry.

Back to arsenic and fashion: Evidently the movie-makers on the set of Gone With the Wind got the color pretty accurate–both in the scene where Rhett presents Scarlett with the fashionable green hat he bought for her in Paris, and in the scene where Scarlett decides to fashion herself a dress from the green drapes.

I wanted to see what the color really looks like. Granted, there were all different shades, but I found this pair of gloves on ebay that were advertised as from the 1940s. I bought them for twelve dollars, and the seller turned out to be a little old lady in Florida. When I got the package, I found that she had enclosed three one-dollar bills with my gloves, along with a note explaining that the five dollars I’d paid for postage was more than it had actually cost. I can’t confirm that this is actually an arsenical green, and yet, I’m pretty sure that it is, given the era, and the color. I wish you could see them in real life. They’re really a beautiful color. I’ll be bringing them to school visits to show kids (enclosed in a Ziploc bag, for everyone’s safety).

*review by John Carey timesonline.co.uk 1/24/2010