1885 .] 
and other Manufactured Articles. 529 
But whether the greater activity of the arsenical wall- 
paper poison is due to the crystalline particles separated, 
thrown off, from the surface of the wall-paper, or liberated 
by albuminous decomposition or recomposition, as hydrogen 
arsenide, it is scarcely possible to say. This after all is a 
question of far less moment to the public than to medical 
men and chemists. At all events the difficulty is just as 
great with regard to lead poisoning. It is almost impossible 
to conceive, much less explain, why a person sleeping in a 
newly-painted room should find himself unable to move hand 
or foot on waking. He at once becomes a sufferer from lead 
paralysis, and no one has yet detected either carbonate or 
oxide, of lead, or other subtile agent, diffused throughout 
the air of the room. Nevertheless, it must be so. 
If, then, as I have shown, arsenical wall-paper poisoning 
constitutes a serious and pressing danger to health it will 
surely not be denied that the use of arsenic in our manu- 
factures should be placed under some restrictions. By the 
intervention of the Foreign Office we are in a position to say 
what is done in this respeCt by the Governments of other 
European nations. As regards Germany, the use of poi- 
sonous pigments in wall-papers, and in other fabrics and 
materials likely to affeCt health, are absolutely prohibited by 
law. By an imperial Law issued in 1879, ah colours deemed 
poisonous are fully enumerated. The use of Scheele’s green 
and of all other arsenical and poisonous colours for wall- 
papers and clothing are therefore prohibited, not only by the 
laws of Prussia, but by those of nearly every minor State. 
An exception was subsequently made in the case of papers, 
&c., intended solely for exportation, so that German manu- 
facturers might not be placed at a disadvantage in compete- 
ing with French firms ; but the restrictions imposed on the 
use of arsenic were found so onerous and harassing that the 
manufacturers themselves found it the more profitable 
course to discard arsenical colours altogether. 
In the kingdom of Saxony legislation has been of a piece- 
meal character : the use of a green precipitated copper car- 
bonate on cotton yarn having been forbidden in 1840 ; of a 
Brazil or Munich red, an arsenical colour in 1856 ; of 
Schweinfurt green for fabrics and papers in i860 ; and a 
warning issued to the public against the use of arsenical 
colours in sleeping or much frequented rooms, and in forms 
temperature, and will pass over before a single drop of condensed liquid enters 
the receiver. So difficult is it to obtain in solution, that Hufschmidt convinced 
himself that every trace of the trichloride remains in the receiver, whether 
it be filled with water or solution of potash. 
