Arsenic

a chemical element having a grayish white color and a metallic luster. It is widely distributed throughout the world in very small quantities. It occurs usually in union with iron, silver, nickel, cobalt, or antimony. Its commercial preparation is confined chiefly to Bohemia, Saxony, and England. One smelter, at Everett, Washington, ships thirty-five tons a week to the New York market. In bulk it is worth eighty dollars a ton. Arsenic is obtained from crushed arsenical ore by roasting in carefully glazed earthen ovens. It vaporizes at a temperature of 356deg. F. and is collected in crystals. The free element arsenic is little known; the white powdered arsenic of the drug store is a compound with oxygen. It is a deadly poison, and was known to the ancients. The terrible crimes imputed to the Borgias of the Middle Ages were effected by means of arsenic.

In case of arsenical poisoning the anti-dotes most likely to be at hand are milk, flour and water, or the white of an egg and water, the coagulating of which tends to entangle the particles of poison and sweep them out of the stomach. Arsenic is used freely by taxidermists in rendering bird skins safe against the attack of insects. Under the name of ratsbane it has long been sprinkled on bread and butter or similar articles of food to clear premises of rats and mice. Paris green and Scheele's green are compounds of arsenic with copper. The arsenic vapor which escapes from the copper smelters of Butte and other Montana cities settles to the ground and injures vegetation for miles around.

Arsenic may be taken in minute quantities seemingly without injury. The women of certain districts of Hungary and Switzerland are said to take arsenic to whiten the complexion. By beginning with infinitely small amounts the dose may be increased beyond the dose customarily regarded as fatal. Workmen in arsenic plants rub their faces and necks with fine clay, lest, when they perspire, the open pores may absorb an over amount of the deadly powder.

See Poison; Paris Green; Spraying