What Did In Darwin?

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John Maler Collier, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s an enduring mystery and much-debated. He suffered fifty years of chronic ill health, including nausea, headaches, dizziness, insomnia, depression . . . the list goes on and on.

Various theories range from physical maladies such as malaria, Chagas, ulcer, and gout to psychological issues, including hypochondria and general agoraphobia (fear of leaving the house).

If you happen to have just finished writing a book about insects (like me), you probably subscribe to the theory that he contracted Chagas Disease. He describes being attacked by assassin bugs in his diary written while aboard the Beagle, and many of his symptoms of chronic ill health are consistent with Chagas.

If you happen to have written a book about arsenic, as James Whorton masterfully did, you may believe that Darwin’s lifelong poor health may have been made horribly worse by his doctors, who treated him with arsenical medicine, the notorious Fowler’s solution. Arsenic may have been what ultimately killed him.

I asked Deborah Heiligman, author of the lovely biography, Charles and Emma, what she thought, and she believes it was probably a combination of things, including lactose intolerance and general anxiety about publishing.

And as Georgia Bragg points out in her hilarious and informative book, How They Croaked, it didn’t help matters that he spent years in his laboratory, breathing in formaldehyde, working with dead animal specimens, and taking virtually no precautions to ventilate his workspace or wear protective clothing.

You Light Up My Life

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City streets could be very dark in the days before street lamps. On moonless nights, citizens in 18th century cities could hire a “linkboy” to light the way; he used a torch of rope stiffened with fat, pitch, and resin.

Sting-a-long

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According to the “pain scale” rating of researcher J.O. Schmidt, the sting of a southern paper wasp feels like “spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.”

To Die For

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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

Legging It

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Trousers were standard wear during the Byzantine Empire, even for women. When a European woman was presented to the Persian court wearing a skirt, they at first thought she had lost a leg.

 

Source: Batterberry, M and A, Mirror, Mirror 

Reel Bugs: 8-Legged Freaks

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Over the weekend I watched another insect horror film, Eight-Legged Freaks (2002). It’s meant to be a satire of the insect B-movies from the fifties, but I found it wanting.

The set up is labored, the plot contrived, and the subplots are confusing and dull—a bad combination. It stars David Arquette and also features a young Scarlett Johansson, playing the rebellious daughter of the local sheriff.

The plot, such as it is, involves a spider farm owner who feeds his spiders crickets that were contaminated by toxic waste. They grow bigger and bigger, escape from the cages, eat the owner, and then begin terrorizing the sleepy town of Prosperity, Arizona.

It’s a pretty dumb movie that tries to be funny, but most of the comic bits fall flat, particularly the scenes showing a lot of people, as well as several cute dogs and cats, who get their insides liquefied by arachnids the size of minivans. And the giant spiders giggle and grunt a lot.

Most of the scientific information is imparted by a boy named Mike (Scarlett Johansson’s character’s younger brother), who informs us about spiders’ nocturnal behavior, feeding habits, and sensitivity to vibrations. Of course no one listens to him until it’s too late, after dozens of people have been cocooned and exsanguinated.

It’s mildly cool to see gigantic trapdoor spiders in action, and the moviemakers at least nod in the direction of the actual spiders’ behavior. In real life, trapdoor spiders build hinged, camouflaged hiding places, lay trip lines outside their burrows, detect their prey by vibrations, and then burst out and snag their prey.

Giddyap Joe

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On long cattle drives, cooks were paid better than cowboys. Coffee was so strong, it was said that a pistol could float in it.

 

source: Reader’s Digest Everyday Life through the Ages

No Match

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"The Alchymist, In Search of the Philosopher's Stone" painted by Joseph Wright in 1717.

I’ve been haunted for some time now by a 19th century affliction known as “phossy jaw.” To understand what it is, you have to know a little bit about the element phosphorous. It was supposedly first isolated in 1669, by a German alchemist named Hennig Brand, although other sources mention Arabic scientists as having discovered it earlier.

Anyway, Brand gets the credit. He stumbled across it by dumb luck as he was trying to create the philosopher’s stone (believed to offer the possessor immortality). He boiled up 60 buckets of urine, which contains traces of dissolved phosphates, and then distilled what was left over. The resulting white, waxy substance glowed in the dark. He called it phosphor after a Greek word that means “light bearer.”

Nowadays phosphorous is derived from other sources (like prehistoric deposits of dead animals and ancient bird droppings), so chemists no longer have to boil up vats of urine.

Phosphorous is a highly toxic and incendiary substance, and is still used in modern warfare. Back in the 19th century, it was used to make matches. Early matches, known as “lucifers,” had a lot of problems, among them, a disgusting odor. In 1830, Frenchman Charles Sauria coated lucifers with phosphorous, which helped diminish the odor, but which contained enough toxins in one pack to kill a person.

Workers in match factories—primarily women—were exposed to the deadly white phosphorous. Many of these “mixers,” “dippers,” and “boxers” developed a grotesque affliction that became known as “phossy jaw.”  The jawbone was destroyed by chronic exposure to phosphorous, which resulted in swollen gums, abscesses, and a gradual disfigurement of the jaw bone. After prolonged exposure they experienced convulsions, general debility, and lung hemorrhage. I’d include a picture but it’s too gross. You can google it.

 

 

Powder Room

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British soldiers of the 18th century received one pound of flour per week, so that they could powder their wigs.

I’ll Just Go Freshen up

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Ancient Egyptians “cleaned” their bodies with scented oils. Greeks and Romans scraped down with a strigil. The Gauls used a paste made of animal fat and potash. Soap of any kind seems not to have reappeared in the western world until the tenth century.