The Kitchen Cartel: Pure Food & Drug Act 1906
Conflicted: A History Podcast
Green Vitriol Is a Toxic Chemical
Green vitriol was used as a sweetener by everyone from confectioners to wine makers. It caused severe constipation and unbearable colic pains, loss of speech, deafness, sterility, blindness, paralysis,. Loss of control of the extremities and eventually death. In 18 forty seven three english children fell seriously ill after eating birthday cake decorated with arsenic tinted green leaves. Five years later, two london brothers died after eating a cake whose frosting contained both arsenic and copper. And these were just the cases where people ingested so large or so concentrated a dose that the effects were immediate. For most people, it was a slow, gradual poisoning.
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