The elements contained in the poison top-flow arsenic are also used to treat diseases

In 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleone Buonaparte, 1769-1821) sneaked back to France from the island of Elba where he was exiled. Unexpectedly, the famous mathematician Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier (Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier, 1768-1830), who followed his old subordinate during the expedition to Egypt, opposed his comeback, and the angry Napoleon sent someone to Fourier caught him and scolded him severely, but still appointed him as prefect of the Rhone with an annual salary of 6,000 francs.

However, Fourier never received this salary, because just two months later, Napoleon, disheartened by the defeat of Waterloo, accepted the fate of exile. Six years later, Napoleon died in the British South Atlantic. St. Helena is controlled by the East India Company. Some studies say that he died of arsenic poisoning.

Arsenic has been known as a poison since ancient times. Before the chemical detection method of arsenic appeared, it could be regarded as a perfect poison.

White arsenic (arsenic, arsenic trioxide) is odorless, and it will only make the water slightly sweet when dissolved in water. The symptoms of arsenic poisoning are easily ignored and confused with other diseases, such as diarrhea, vomiting...etc. Also known as white cholera.

Arsenic tri-sulfifide is a yellow ore that has been used as a pigment since ancient times.

Arsenic trisulfide structural formula Source: Chemical Encyclopedia

Another pigment is arsenic disulfide, which is used to dye hair. Arsenic trioxide, the first arsenic compound to be used medicinally, was first obtained 5,000 years ago as a by-product of copper smelting. While Paracelsus believed it was effective in treating cancer, ulcers, and wounds, he warned that arsenic was too toxic.

During the Industrial Revolution, the demand for various metals rose sharply, and the output of arsenic trioxide, a by-product, also increased steadily. Many companies turn this cheap arsenic into products such as rat poison and insecticide for profit. The availability of arsenic has led to a sharp increase in arsenic poisoning cases. It was dubbed "Heir Powder" as a poison.

In 1832, a suspect was accused of poisoning his grandfather with arsenic in his coffee. Due to a large amount of property involved, the court asked the famous scientist Michael Faraday (Michael Faraday, 1791-1867) to analyze the stomach contents and coffee residue of the victim. Faraday was a professor of chemistry at Woolwich Royal Military Academy, near where the crime took place, from 1830 to 1851.

Faraday was engrossed in the study of electromagnetism at the time, and he handed over the task to his assistant James Marsh (James Marsh, 1794-1846). Marsh worked at the Woolwich Royal Arsenal and worked part-time as Faraday's assistant from 1830 to 1846, which won Faraday's trust.

In 1830, Marsh developed the spiral time fuze and shock tube for use in mortars. So Marsh was called up by the prosecution. He mixed the suspect sample with hydrogen sulfide and hydrochloric acid for a standard test, and got a yellow arsenic trisulfide, indicating that the sample contained arsenic. However, when Marsh showed the arsenic trisulfide to the jury, they had deteriorated after sitting for some time, and the suspect was acquitted.

Annoyed by this, Marsh came up with a better test, mixing a sample containing arsenic with sulfuric acid and zinc to produce arsine gas. When the gas is heated, it breaks down into elemental arsenic, which, when it encounters a cold surface, appears as a silver-black deposit. The detection method has a sensitivity of 0.02 mg.

Marsh published this test in the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal in 1836. The Marsh detection method provides solid forensic technical support for arsenic poisoning. However, the number of arsenic poisoning cases did not decline until the British government decided to regulate arsenic-based chemicals.

In 1834, German chemist Robert Wilhelm Bunsen (Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, 1811—1899) systematically studied arsenate and arsenite, and he found that ferric oxide could be combined with arsenic to form ferric arsenite. Compounds that are neither water nor soluble in body fluids are formed, so it is believed that ferric oxide hydrate can be used as an antidote for arsenic poisoning.

Arsenic has long been used as a pharmaceutical preparation, the most famous of which is Fowler's solution invented by Thomas Fowler (1736-1801).

Fowler was an English physician who in 1786 reported the use of arsenic in the treatment of malaria, fever, and periodic headaches. He invented his own 1% solution of potassium arsenite, which he named after, based on an arsenic-containing "odorless malaria drop" popular in Lincolnshire.

In 1865, Berlin physician Lissauer used Fowler's solution to improve the condition of a young woman suffering from acute leukemia. From then on, Fowler's solution was used in the treatment of leukemia, which continued until the 1940s, after the first cytotoxic drugs became available.

In 1858, Scottish physician and missionary David Livingstone (1813–1873), who had explored much of Central Africa, recommended Fowler's solution for sleeping sickness (a parasitic disease of trypanosomes transmitted by tsetse flies, Also known as trypanosomiasis) symptoms.

Throughout the 19th century, Fowler's solution was widely regarded as a remedy for malaria, skin diseases, chorea, edema, rabies, and blocked glands. Even in the 1940s, Fowler's solution became a tonic for the treatment of pernicious anemia.

In 1851, there was a poisoning lawsuit in the then Austro-Hungarian Empire, which sparked the controversy about "drug addiction". A Swiss physician and naturalist, Johann Jakob von Tschudi (1818–1889), published an article on the matter in the Vienna Medical Journal. In the article, he introduced the arsenic eaters in Styria (now part of Austria). They have been insisting on taking small doses of arsenic for many years, and they seem to regard this poison as a health product. Their purpose is either to achieve a moisturized complexion and healthy appearance or to adapt to the effects of high altitude on the body.

The simple form of arsenic has low toxicity and is not easily absorbed by the human body. However, the oral median lethal dose of arsenic trioxide to rats is only 14.6 mg/kg. For a 50 kg adult, 0.1 g is enough to be fatal. Therefore, arsenic eaters immediately attracted the attention of the scientific community. Especially some British scholars have questioned the authenticity of arsenic eaters. After a decade or so of controversy and continuous research, the scientific community has generally accepted the existence of this special group of arsenic eaters.

With arsenic eaters' advertising, arsenic has become a popular beauty product, and many companies have launched arsenic-containing cosmetics, such as arsenic-containing soaps. A variety of arsenic complexion wafers were popular at that time, and users could take them in small doses in order to achieve the purpose of whitening through intake of arsenic, such as Dr. Simms' Arsenic Complexion Wafers. Wafers) and Dr. Campbell's Arsenic Complexion Wafers.

Arsenic was often added to the flood of patent medicines of the 19th century. Both arsenic and mercury are used to treat syphilis. Others mixed arsenic with iron for heart disease treatment. German scientist Paul Ehrlich (Paul Ehrlich, 1854-1915) discovered Salvarsan (Salvarsan, also known as arsphenamine, arsphenamine) in 1910, which was used to treat syphilis and was called the magic bullet.

Some organic arsenic was used for intestinal parasitic infections until the 1990s, but arsenic preparations have been withdrawn in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere because of shown carcinogenic effects.

In the 1980s, Zhang Tingdong and others reported that intravenous injection of arsenic preparations could alleviate the condition of patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia. In 2001, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a patented formulation of Fowler's solution for injection in promyelocytic leukemia. In 2003, arsenic trioxide (Trisenox®) was repurposed to treat specific hematological malignancies.