8 ARSENIC IN PAPERS AND FABRICS. 



INVESTIGATIONS OF THE CAUSES OF POISONING BY ARSENICAL 



PAPERS. " 



In the following brief sketch no attempt will be made to present a 

 complete survey of the literature, but only those cases will be men- 

 tioned which at the time of their publication seemed to throw light 

 on the subject in question. 



In 1852 Krahmer* performed a series of experiments to determine 

 whether arsenic could be set free from wall paper or organic matter 

 as a volatile compound. He first mixed an arsenical compound with 

 paste and lime and placed this mixture in a double-necked flask. At 

 the end of nineteen days he could not detect the odor of arsenic. lie 

 next drew air through the bottle for twenty-one days and passed it 

 through a potash solution. He was not able to find arsenic in the 

 potash solution. Silver nitrate solution was then substituted for pot- 

 ash and it was not discolored after fifteen days, but no test for arsenic 

 was made in the solution. Next the air was passed through a heated 

 glass tube for five days, but no arsenic mirror was observed. Krah- 

 mer states that he lived in a room for eight years the walls of which 

 were painted with arsenical pigment, and during that time suffered 

 no inconvenience, and, further, that he could detect no arsenic in the 

 dust of the room. The method of examination used, however, was 

 such that he very likely would not have found arsenic even if it had 

 been present. From these experiments he concluded that arsenic was 

 not set free from wall paper either in the form of dust or as a volatile 

 compound. 



During the year 1858 Abel c made some experiments along this line, 

 using a room whose walls were covered with a paper containing 259 

 grains of arsenious oxid per square yard. He first closed the room 

 for thirty-six hours, then passed the air of the room through a silver 

 nitrate solution and then through asbestos saturated with ammoniacal 

 silver nitrate for several hours. At the end of this time no arsenic 

 could be found in either of the solutions. Then gas jets were burned 

 in the room and the experiment was conducted just as before, but 

 again no arsenic could be detected. He next performed several 

 experiments by filling glass tubes with arsenical paper and passing 

 (1) the air of the room, (2) the air of the room with gas jets burning, 

 and (3) the concentrated gases coming from burning gas, etc., through 

 the tube and thence through the silver nitrate and ammoniacal silver 

 nitrate mentioned above, but arsenic could not be detected in the solu- 

 tions in any of the experiments. Decomposing paste was then com- 



The authors had partially collected the references on this subject when an 

 article by Sanger was found (Proc. Amer. Acad. of Sci., 1894), which contained 

 a very complete resume of the literature. A number of the cases quoted by Sauger 

 which had not been already found are given. 



6 Deutsche Klinik, 1852, 43: 481, through Sanger, loc. cit. 



^Pharm. J. and Trans., 1858, p. 556. 



