Martyrs of Science

by S. Henry Berthoud

  To take advantage of coal tar, it is necessary to distil it further.

  Chemistry first, and then industry, obtain from this substance, previously useless, liquids infinitely variable in density and properties, for a light oil scarcely weighing as much as alcohol to the heavy, nacreous solid naphthalene, which plays an often-efficacious role in curing skin diseases.

  The hydrocarbons produced by the distillation of coal tar form a family of substances appropriate to remove stains from fabrics, such as etherene, carburene and benzene.71 The last-named enjoys great popularity; everyone in Paris possesses a bottle, and every cleaning shop displays bottles of it in its windows.

  The second distillation of coal tar gives rise to another family, that of gazogenes. Mixed with alcohol they can replace fuel oil to a certain extent, and are known by the name of liquid gas. Almost alone, they possess the property of dissolving rubber; they cause the noxious odor emitted by garments coated in that substance. Finally, submitted to certain reactions, distilled again and combined with ether, they become essences with a delightful perfume, which Parisian confectionery, the best in the world, employs to give its bonbons the taste of strawberry or pineapple. Rum and cognac often receive their bouquet from a few drops of the least of these essences.

  One also obtains from coal tar a pigment analogous to one of the precious colors obtained from madder.

  Various properties of coal products, observed and studied, will doubtless not be long in giving further progress to industry. Tanning, among others, will one day achieve results in a matter of hours that can presently only be obtained after months of work. The principle on which these future methods rests exists in theory, but its application still remains insufficient. One finds oneself blocked by one of those invincible obstacles that hazard often ends up removing when human genius, thinking itself vanquished, gives up.

  But let’s get back to the bonbons.

  Sugary confections with the flavor of apple, pear, quince, melon and many others, the English sweets that have become popular and are sold by grocers, owe their aroma to combinations of butyric ether with vinegar, valerianic acid or coccinic acid, extracted from coconuts. Butyric ether is itself merely a compound produced from butyric acid. Now, that acid is obtained by the distillation of decomposing organic matter, such as cheese or meat. Let us add, to reassure the disgusted, that one can also prepare it by the metamorphosis that sugar, starch and other analogous substances undergo on contact with nitrogenated substances capable of acting as fermenting agents.

  And besides, does not chemistry, like fire, purify everything?

  A HAUNTED ROOM

  Most of us shrug our shoulders and laugh pityingly when someone mentions those mysterious rooms, once so common in old châteaux, where no one could sleep easy, because they were haunted by spirits. Nevertheless, the most courageous and the less credulous emerged from those sinister places, and sometimes still emerge today, in a state of irremediable unease, pale, frightened by strange visions and disinclined to undergo such a rude ordeal again.

  In the Middle Ages, such phenomena were explained either by the visitation of a soul in pain soliciting prayers that would extract it from purgatory, or by the presence of some demon put in possession of a part of the château thanks to some crime committed between its old walls.

  In the 18th century, strong minds denied these stories, ridiculous in their opinion, and treated as imbeciles those who did not share their incredulity relative to the subject.

  Now the 19th century has come, which, in its maturity, not only observes but also explains the reality of phantasmagorias that frightened our ancestors, in which philosophers of the Voltairean school did not believe and which, at present, many people mock.

  It is from English and French medical journals that the facts you are about to read are taken.

  Last year—which is to say, in 1858—a young lord inherited an ancient manor house in the mountains of Scotland, in which there was a “Green Room” in which no one dared to spend the night. It was said that two or three audacious individuals who had attempted to sleep there had only emerged from it dead or in a pitiful state, even the most fortunate needing weeks to get over it.

  On the very day that he took possession of his manor house, Lord MacM*** ordered that the Green Room be made ready for him and announced his intention of residing in it for the entire duration of his stay. By acting thus, the new inheritor wanted to show the domestics and tenants that he was not to be duped by some crude trick doubtless invented to keep a master to whose surveillance they did not want to submit away from his estate.

  At first he slept peacefully in the Green Room, which was rather small, and in which, as its name indicated, everything was green: the wallpaper, the curtains, the ceiling, the woodwork and the carpet. After a few hours of sleep he experienced a violent nausea, intolerable stomach aches, vertigo and hallucinations, which only dissipated after several days when he was relocated to another room.

  He attributed that serious indisposition either to the natural dampness of a room uninhabited for more than half a century or to the neighborhood of a small pond situated a short distance from the windows, whose stagnant waters might be producing the symptoms that he had suffered by their pestilential miasmas. The pond was drained, the room disinfected by means of a large peat fire maintained there day and night, and two months later the young lord, sticking to his guns, went to bed again in the Green Room.

  He had not been asleep for an hour when he heard groans. No one would have dared to come in, and he had taken precautions, for the door was bolted. He had forbidden his staff to enter, but the next morning, when he did not come out, the door was forced and Lord MacM*** was found dying in his bed.

  By a fortunate chance, Dr. S. Taylor,72 a professor of medical jurisprudence at Guy’s Hospital, was in Scotland, not far from the manor. He was summoned in haste, and found the young lord sufficiently ill to inspire serious anxieties.

  It was only by changing residence and returning to another of his properties near Edinburgh that Lord MacM*** was able to recover. Even then, he was not completely cured, and suffered several months of palpebral conjunctivitis, a painful and tenacious kind of ophthalmia.

  The owner of the Scottish manor told Taylor that after falling asleep peacefully, he had suddenly seen, either in that strange state of torpor that is neither wakefulness not slumber, a green monster loom up before him that had gazed at him in a sinister fashion. Then the phantom had leapt on to the bed, dug its claws deep into the young man’s breast and dug around there for a long time, causing him intolerable agonies. Finally, it had disappeared, after having passed a red hot iron fork that it was holding in one of its hands through his eyes.

  “My lord,” said Dr. Taylor, “if you wish, I can exorcise the demon that has twice cause you to feel its power so cruelly within a month.”

  “Doctor, I’ll write to my steward telling him to carry out any instructions that you give him.”

  “The orders will be quite simple,” said the Doctor. “You’ve been poisoned by copper arsenate.”

  “Who has dared to make an attempt on my life? Tell me the murderer’s name, so that I can denounce him to the law.”

  “The criminal won’t appear at the Court of Assizes. It’s quite simply the painted paper in your room, which has been prepared with Scheele green. Before bringing you back to Edinburgh, I shook the books that had been in the accursed room for many years and collected the dust that covered them; finally I tore off a section of the paper stuck to the walls, and I submitted the dust and the paper to Reinsch’s process. The paper alone yielded 450 grains, which is 22 grams, of a substance containing enough arsenic to cover a copper plate ten feet square. Subsequently treated with heat, the material formed octahedral crystals of arsenic.

  “By going to reside in the Green Room, you stirred up the poisoned dust that had been covering the furniture, the books, the wallpaper, the parquet and the bed-curtains for a long time. It penetrated your
nose, eyes and throat, as far as the lungs, and put your life in danger. As for the demon, the suffocation of your lungs and your feverish brain gave birth to it. Have everything that is green in the bewitched room torn out and burned, and you can then inhabit that room with as much impunity as the beautiful white and gold room that we’re conversing in at present.

  The Green Room did, indeed, become a Yellow Room, and since then, one can spend the night there without being subjected to nightmares, or poisoning, or palpebral conjunctivitis.

  Let us also say that in the heart of Paris, in our own apartments, similar accidents can happen, and often do. It is not even necessary that the apartments in question have green paint and wallpaper; the essence of terebinthine,73 frequently in use, is sufficient to produce dreams, headaches vomiting and dangerous symptom—even death.

  Some time ago, a young seamstress ignorant or imprudent enough to sleep in a mansard that she had painted herself that evening, and from which she had not removed the pot containing the paint, was found dead in her bed.

  Dr. Marchal de Calvi74 has published a remarkable work on poisoning produced by essence of terebinthine.

  An actress at the Théâtre des Variétés almost fell victim to her imprudence in moving into a newly-painted apartment too soon. At night she woke up suffocating, and could hardly find the strength to pull the bell-cord; in spite of the care lavished upon her she remained plunged in the most alarming absolute prostration for five or six days. One of the senior employees of the Palais des Tuileries has recently suffered ordeals of the same kind.

  Madame A***, who lives in the Rue Neuve-Coquenard, has been afflicted even more cruelly; in consequence of inhaling terebinthine vapors she has lost her reason and required, to be cured, a sojourn of eight months in a lunatic asylum.

  Dr. Maffei, a physician in the Tuileries quarter, was fulfilling his duties one day, giving a consultation in the imperial château, when he was suddenly overcome by a strange stupor. His thoughts became confused and, so to speak, extinguished. He sought the most commonplace words without being able to find them.

  He felt his pulse; its beat was slow and weak; a kind of paralysis overtook al his limbs, and it was with a superhuman effort of will that he succeeded in getting up from his armchair and dragging himself to a window, the opening of which he demanded by gestures.

  The external air rendered him a little of his strength, of which he took advantage to remove his cravat and coat. He felt life and intelligence gradually return. However, it was nearly two hours before the last traces of the mysterious illness disappeared, whose like he had never experienced before. When he tried to put his coat on again, the strong odor of terebinthine that it gave off gave him the key to an enigma that had almost proved fatal. Monsieur Maffei’s valet had cleaned the collar of the garment with the essence and, unfortunately, had not used it sparingly.

  Will this enumeration of accidents do any good? We fear not. Alas, no one resembles more than a journalist the poor Greek girl who spent her life making true predictions that that no one wanted to believe.

  When he was only the Comte d’Artois, King Charles X, in his youth, stopped one morning during the carnival in the middle of the Pont Neuf, climbed on top of his carriage and, taking out of his pocket a purse that was heavy and bulging with coin, as Rabelais puts it, started shouting: “Who wants to buy six-livre coins for thirty sous?”

  More than a thousand people went past the prince without doing anything but laugh, shrug their shoulders and repeat, knowingly: “What kind of idiot does he take us for?”

  Only one woman—a market trader—approached the Comte d’Artois and said: “I’ll risk it! You’re too handsome a chap to cheat an old lady; if I were young I’d have less confidence. Here’s fifteen thirty-sou coins; give me fifteen of your six-livre pieces.”

  There were jeers in the crowd then. Soon, however, the cheers took on a different character when the brave fishwife stuck her fists on her hips and said to them, in the language of the market: “If you weren’t stupid, you’d have recognized that charming charlatan, as I did, as the king’s brother.”

  Everyone then precipitated themselves toward the caleche, but the prince whipped his horses, departed at a gallop and disappeared.

  How many six-livre coins do science and publicity offer every day to the masses without their wanting to accept them, I don’t even say for thirty sous, but gratis.

  If you want to know about other dangerous effects produced by the employment of verdigris, listen to another story.

  Paris is overflowing with unknown dramas.

  Nowhere, as Montaigne says, “does the inconstancy of the various oscillations of fortune, present a greater range of visages.” Nothing is certain there, neither wealth nor poverty, obscurity or renown, popularity or unpopularity, or even power. Yesterday, I saw a man coming out of a two-franc restaurant who had been a minister and had left the most honorable memories in the administration. On the other hand, I have encountered in a two-horse caleche the son of one of my former porters, who, aided by hazard and the Bourse, now has a town house and distributes gold by the handful. God grant that he does not end up exercising a profession less worthy than that of his father. There is one of my good Flemish proverbs that says: “The plant that grows on the compost heap will return to the compost heap.”

  I also know a young woman, brought up in the midst of luxury, with a dowry of eight hundred thousand francs, who came home the day after a ball to find that a seizure by bailiffs had left her with nothing: no house, no carriage, no wellbeing, not even the certainty of daily bread. As cowardly in adversity as he had been presumptuous and insensate in prosperity, her husband had committed suicide. She, by contrast, who had been gentle, charitable and sober in the bosom of luxury, took her two children by the hand, looked poverty in the face without apprehension, rented a small ground-floor apartment in a distant quarter, and became her florist’s apprentice. In a matter of months Madame X*** became more skillful than her mistress, set up in business for herself, and did not take long to become advantageously known to fashionable milliners, who marveled at the perfection of the products that emerged from her hands.

  Commerce in artificial flowers forms one of the largest and most lucrative industries making up what traders call “Parisian goods.” Not only do the capital and the départements consume considerable quantities, but the rest of Europe and all of America obtain provisions from our market.

  So, Madame X*** could not keep up with the orders that were arriving from every direction. Often, her work and that of her former chambermaid, a faithful Bretonne who had not wanted to be separated from her in the evil days, continued long into the night; however, four apprentices, young women saved from poverty and perhaps misconduct, lent her ardent support.

  Need had disappeared in the early days, and ease had arrived—the pleasant and noble ease that one feels so glad and so proud to owe to hard work—when all of a sudden, a mysterious illness, a kind of epidemic, struck the tiny factory. The complexion of all the young women took on a livid aspect; they experienced frissons; cold sweat and nervous tremors became manifest, complicated by body vomiting, with atrocious aching in the head and all the limbs. Finally, the slightest prick made by a needle or brass wire caused ulcers on the fingers of the six florists that refused stubbornly to heal.

  A local practitioner was consulted and could not understand the strange phenomenon. Nevertheless, he put the blame on the dampness of the ground floor. Madame X*** moved out the next day and established herself on the fifth floor. The mysterious illness, which disappeared at first, came back a week later more violently than ever.

  This time, the physician attributed it to the unhealthiness of the neighborhood.

  Madame X*** relocated her workshop to Neuilly, in the heart of the countryside. A week had not gone by before the six florists experienced the fatal symptoms yet again.

  The Breton chambermaid thought the scourge as the work of a demon or spell-caster, and commenced
a novena.

  The doctor ran out of explanations.

  Fortunately, Madame X***’s old doctor, having learned by chance about the alarming state of his former client, came running, and understood at the first glance at the so-called epidemic that was desolating the workshop was caused by the very industry practiced therein.

  In fact, the charming profession of florist, such a near relative of art, is surrounded by perils. All those who exercise it or manufacture the materials that it employs are exposed to the risk of poisoning. That is because arsenic forms the base of each of those materials.

  To begin with, many natural herbs and employed, which are sprinkled with arsenous greens after being covered in gum. Then, when the florists assemble bouquets, the dangerous powder is detached and fills the air with venomous dust. Furthermore, the fabrics from which the leaves are made are coated with a paste whose base in Schwenfurt green—fabrics that have to be cut up into little pieces, stuck together, manipulated and often applied to the lips. With such handling, the near-impossibility of avoiding accidents is understandable.

  When Dr. J*** had enlightened Madame X*** about the dangers of her profession, the poor woman dissolved in tears.

  “So it’s necessary,” she cried, “to renounce the profession that has given me the means of vanquishing poverty and obtaining an honorable existence!”

  The doctor lowered his head sadly and went out, broken-hearted. A few days later, however, he came back full of joy.

  “Don’t worry, Madame,” he said. “A means exists of removing all the unhealthiness from the profession of florist. That means consists of incorporating into the coloring material employed in the manufacture of greens a special collodion—a mixture of ether and cotton prepared with sulfuric acid, known as cotton powder—which, far from harming industrial manipulations, renders them easier as well as completely inoffensive.