Arsenic
3 of the 7 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Arsenic. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
Important: Safety Warning This page contains a formula or preparation using substances now known to be dangerously toxic, such as arsenic, mercury, lead, or cyanide compounds. Exposure to these substances can cause severe poisoning, permanent injury, or death. In addition, this page recommends pest-control substances such as arsenic compounds, strychnine, or cyanide — in some cases applied to food crops. These substances are lethal to humans and animals, and their use is now banned or strictly controlled. In addition, this page gives first-aid or emergency advice that predates modern medicine and can make an emergency worse. Do not follow it. In any medical emergency, call emergency services and follow current first-aid guidance. In addition, this page contains cosmetic recipes using substances now known to be poisonous, such as lead, mercury, or arsenic compounds, which cause cumulative and serious harm when absorbed through the skin or eyes. This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon. 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 2026 Editor's Note: Arsenic was the poisoner's favorite — tasteless and long undetectable, the 'inheritance powder' of countless Victorian murders — until the Marsh test of 1836 could reveal a trace in the body. It lurked in green wallpaper dyes (a suspect in Napoleon's death), and today it poisons the well water of tens of millions, especially in Bangladesh, in one of the great public-health crises of our time. (Ed: BR 2026-07-04)
The Encyclopedia of Founding (1892)
Important: Safety Warning This page describes trade processes that use dangerously toxic materials such as cyanide solutions, mercury amalgams, or strong acids. These processes require training, equipment, and precautions far beyond what the text describes. This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon. Arsenic is sometimes found pure, but more generally combined with nickel, cobalt, sulphur, and iron. To separate arsenic from the ores, they are first crushed and the arsenic dissipated in a reverberatory furnace by roasting, when the arsenious acid is condensed into white arsenic. The metal is obtained from white arsenic by incorporating it with carbonaceous matter and heating in a closed crucible provided with a receiver, in which the arsenic is condensed as a brittle white metal with a slight degree of lustre; the specific gravity of which is 5.7, its melting-point being 400 deg. At 500 deg. it volatilizes without fusing, the vapor having a strong tincture of garlic. The metal may be powdered in a mortar. The chief property of arsenic is to promote the union of metals that would be otherwise difficult to mix--aluminum with iron; lead with zinc; lead with iron, etc. It promotes the fusion of many metals, and occasions some refractory ones to melt at a low temperature. Being a union rather than a true alloy, it is customary to call all alloys of arsenic by the name of arsenides. While arsenic, like antimony, tends to crystallize other metals, they are not rendered as brittle as the latter metal makes them. Nearly all metals combine with arsenic; but, except in the case of silver and gold, such alloys may be decomposed by lengthened fusion. White tombac is copper alloyed with arsenic. The metal for lead-shot is rendered more fusible and solid by a slight proportion of this metal, and gold may be permanently alloyed to form a brittle arseniuret of gold by exposing the heated metal to its vapors. From 1/4 to 3/4 of an ounce to the pound of any alloy will materially assist in preventing a tendency to porosity, but will result in a harder casting, somewhat lighter in color. Speculums and all similar objects are, by means of this metal, made hard, white, and lustrous. For the manner of fluxing alloys of arsenic, also the methods employed for introducing this metal into the crucible, and alloys containing arsenic, see SPECULUMS; TOMBAC; LEAD-SHOT; COBALT.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
(symbol As, at. wt. 75, sp. gr. 5.76), a metallic element of very common occurrence, being found in combination with many of the metals in a variety of minerals. It is of a dark gray color, and readily tarnishes on exposure to the air, first changing to yellow, and finally to black. In hardness it equals copper; it is extremely brittle, and very volatile, beginning to sublime before it melts. It burns with a blue flame, and emits a smell of garlic. It forms alloys with most of the metals. Combined with sulphur it forms orpiment and realgar, which are the yellow and red sulphides of arsenic. Orpiment is the true arsenicum of the ancients. With oxygen arsenic forms two compounds, the more important of which is arsenious oxide or arsenic trioxide (As2O₂) which is the white arsenic or simply arsenic of the stores. It is used as a flux for glass, and also for forming pigments. The arsenite of copper (Scheele's green) and a double arsenite and acetate of copper (emerald green) are largely used by painters; they are also used to color paper hangings for rooms. Arsenic has been too frequently used to give that bright green often seen in colored confectionery. ARSINOË (ar-sin'ō-ē), a city of ancient Egypt, on Lake Meris, said to have been founded about B. c. 2,300, but renamed after Arsinoë, wife and sister of Ptolemy II., of Egypt, and called also Crocodilopolis, from the sacred crocodiles kept at it. ARSINOË, daughter of Ptolemy I., King of Egypt, born 316 B. C., married at 16 the aged Lysimachus, King of Thrace, whose eldest son, Agathocles, had already wedded Lysandra, her halfsister. Desirous of securing the throne for her own children, Arsinoë prevailed on her husband to put Agathocles to death. Later Lysimachus was slain. In 279, she married her own brother, Ptolemy II. Philadelphus.