Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Arsenic Wallpaper

Episode Date: November 16, 2021

No, dear listener, “arsenic wallpaper” is not just a great band name, it’s also a reference to a mid-1800s fanaticism around using arsenic to create a particular vibrant shade of green. A sort of . . . jade? Sage? Anyway. You’ve probably already guessed how that works out, but we’ll lay it out for you just the same on this week’s Sawbones.

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, talk is about books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's busted out. We were shot through the broken glass and had ourselves a look around.

Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Wow. I feel my poth. Hello everybody and welcome to Saubones, Emeralds who are of this guy. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. And I'm so happy to be here with you said, wait your timer. Can you start your timer? I'll start it. It started.

It started there. Now we know how long I'm in podcasting for. Yeah. My dad watches the kiddos while we record sobhones with Carol, my stepmother, and they, if we're not done in 40 minutes, they'll abandon the children. They'll abandon the children.

They'll love them. They'll leave them. They'll walk right out of the house. That's not true. That was a joke. That was not true. I don't want your dad and Carol to think, that we,

It might be good to take dad down a peg. That's all I'm saying. Just, you know, so he's hustling. Well, I'll get right down to business. Yes. Justin, I'm really excited about this topic. I did not know about this little piece of history. This is one of those where it's like history,

medical adjacent, it's medical history, medical, adjacent. It's medical, but also just interesting stuff. Until Chris emailed us about it. So thank you, Chris, because we have done an episode on- Chris Nolan? No. Director of Inception? No, it was not Chris Nolan. Wow. Yeah, I can see it. I'm not sure. No, I'm not Chris Nolan. Well, no, no, no, it is. Definitely not Chris Nolan. We have done an episode on arsenic in the past, right? Like you can listen to that. That was back in 2016. So that's out there. That's out there.

But one aspect I went back through to see like, did we talk about this? Because I don't remember this. One aspect of arsenic that we did not discuss was its use in wallpaper. Seems that bold a bold choice. Yes, and the impact that that may have had on the health and well-being of those within the walls. We have a terrible track, I'll kind of say like walls for humans. We have a really bad track record with walls.

We have a bad track record with walls? Okay, hear me out. Seriously, no joke. Asbestos in the walls, right? Yeah, yeah, bad. Yeah, bad. Led paint. Yeah. Bad.

Our sinking wallpaper, apparently. Yeah. Bad. Like, we're really bad at this. This is the one where it's like, I don't know. Why can't we figure this out? Everybody did mud. And we should have stopped there.

Mud, this is good. Well, there are issues with mud too, but. We mean, mud's mud. God made that so they don't hurt, come on. Mud. Okay. We talked about, I wanna talk about arsenic. Dry, dung.

That's where we used to be. There are definitely issues with that. Pooop has a lot of bacteria in it. Yeah, but you dry it. Sit me, you heard me say dry it. I know bacteria in it. Yeah, but you dry it. Sit me. You hurt me. I know, but like you hurt me. Say, dry it.

I think you're being I think you're being kind of jingle. And the smell. Yeah, it's dry. Is it neat? It's dry. Do you think dried poop doesn't smell? Yeah, it's dried. The smell evaporates with the water.

Okay. I think I would know what I'm all I think in this area. I would know what I'd like. You're the doctor. I'm the poop brick expert. The, we, okay. We largely focused on the, I don't wanna talk about dried poop anymore.

There was largely, okay. We talked about arsenic as poison. Yeah, but now we're gonna rehabilitate it today, talk about its great design properties. We also talked about the fact that it was used as a medicine, the poison people. Like, there was the fact that it was used as a medicine, the poison people. Like there was the intentional use of arsenic as poison. There was the unintentional oops, sorry,

we thought it was medicine use. We talked a lot about something called Fowler's Drops. Do you remember this? It was an arsenic based cure all. The hunt around a long time, it was made in 1786 and used into like the early 1900s for anything. They also used to use arsenic for syphilis and it could treat syphilis sort of if you

didn't die from the arsenic, but anyway, we didn't talk about the fact that arsenic was used in a lot of other products because, you know, there's more industrial uses and I kind of stayed away from that, but it does have like a medical, obviously, angle to it. So first, before we get into that, I want to talk about somebody named Carl Wilhelm Scheele. That's where this whole story starts. He was a Swedish German chemist in the late 1700s,

and he identified like a bunch of the elements, a bunch of elements and a bunch of organic acids. I know that doesn't sound very exciting just to say like he identified a bunch of elements, but this next sentence is going to sound more exciting. He discovered oxygen. Okay now hold on He discovered Oxygen yes, he discovered oxygen. He was the first one to like hey oxygen wait time

It must have been tough before that. I don't know what we were doing for this First one to isolate and say like this is the big one. Oh, he didn't discover oxygen I mean like oxygen already existed, but we didn't call it that. Well, we didn't know where we didn't, we couldn't say like there it is, point to like that atom and be like there it is. There's the oxygen until Carl.

Poor nitrogen too. It's like, you know, I make up most of the air around you. Yeah, but that's not the one we need. Yeah, that's fair. Although he wasn't first to publish this, so he didn't really get the credit for it. Who was the first to publish? Somebody else.

They're not, this is an episode of about film. I'm not talking about them. They got enough credit for discovering oxygen even though it was really our friend Carl. And apparently like this was a theme, like at one point Isaac Asimov called him hard luck shield because he would routinely discover things and then not be the first one to write about it.

And so not get the credit for it. For Carl. Many found a bunch of elements and organic acids and all kinds of things and published tons of papers on all this different stuff. And among all of his different discoveries and things he published about, he discovered that if you mix white arsenic with nitric acid, you get arsenic acid, and then about three years later,

he found that one of the salts you get from mixing arsenic acid, arsenic acid, could be mixed with copper ammonium sulfate to make copper arsenite. Can you believe it? Whoa, I'm going to need a second to figure out arsenite. Yeah, that's exciting. Yeah. Is it?

Okay. It is exciting because it was green. Oh, it's a dye. It's a beautiful green that he discovered. It was a very, very pretty green that would go on to be known as sheels green. So he did get that, like you did get credit for this one. This specific, like the shade or the dye

was called sheels green. This pigment that was made, this color. That is pretty. It was a beautiful green. It's beautiful. It would be used in paints primarily. I'm trying to decide how you would describe it. It's sort of like, the word at least in one is like Jade. It's sort of like maybe like a blue,

a slightly more bluish Jade, if that. It was a very pretty, copper often will make these sort of green colors. If you link of like the patina on metal like on cop Like you know what I mean as it ages This is sort of where we're going with this. Did you know in Japanese that they refer to stoplights as being red and blue For a long time like they didn't distinguish for a long time

So you think of that just like as part of blue It's like part of the blue family. There's never worth for it now. But like, so he made this green. Okay, he found this green or blue. Either way, it was very popular among artists of the time, Manet used this green. And then building on that knowledge, another, there's a there's the birth of another green because both of these greens come into play in this story So we knew that arsenic and copper made lovely collars and so there was this German paint manufacturer named Wilhelm Sattler another Wilhelm Whoa

There's another Wilhelm. I already taught. Yeah. Oh car well. Oh, they're all kinds of Wilhelms Anyway, he mixed vinegar with it was like their bill They're all kinds of little homes. Anyway, he mixed vinegar. It was like their bill He mixed vinegar with white arsenic on copper carbonate and he got another beautiful green that he would call emerald green or Vienna green or Paris green or Schweinferc green. I guess it depended on Where you were who got credit for it? But this other green so I like this less. I would say this is like a I love describing colors on podcasts. It's like a sort of like a sage, like a light sage. This is a

vocative for you. It looks like the color that Disney uses on construction walls to distract you from the fact that they're doing construction there. Go away green. Well, this one, this one was very popular as well, particularly among the impressionists. So now we have all these beautiful, deadly green paints that have been made. It's shades, colors. You can use them for anything that you want to die, right? I'm saying paint for like actual, you know,

artists making paintings. Or, I rightly, anything that you want to die. Yeah. It works, from the lines. In a uniform. I do think it's important because this is saw bones. So I do think it is important to mention. You probably thought you're listening to the color zone or one of many other artistic podcasts our family makes.

What would become of poor Carl? I mean, because on saw bones, I always have to fall into the end, right? You know how I am. I'm a marital turf misgu, right? You know how I am. A marital turf misguided medicine that always concludes in the grave. Poor Carl worked extensively with heavy metals while making his discoveries. You gotta keep the lab bumping somehow, right? Eventually, you gotta crank it up the metal and

Not that was like the elements and he would eventually meet an untimely death due to heavy metal poisoning They didn't really know it at the time, but like years later they recognize a lot of the symptoms like specifically I had a lot of mercury poisoning, but That was a job hazard at that time.

Always a room I meant some killers. Anyway, well, I mean, I mentioned this because like, I think that it underlines at the time we were making all of these sort of scientific discoveries and we didn't always know what we were playing around with. Yeah. I mean, it's the same story as I was. I mean, this is experimentation. Yeah. And I mean, the same story would happen with radiation, right?

Of course. Yeah. Like, there are a lot of things that we would get exposed to in terms of radiation before we went, oops, that's actually bad. Anyway. You were worried it's going to be like that with cell phones. I was. You ever worry about that? No. Okay. It's what's too late. They're ubiquitous.

They're here. They're with us. All right. So this green pigment, I guess maybe shouldn't have been such a big deal as it turned out to be, but at this moment in history before these colors, before these specific pigments were sort of introduced. There, I guess there wasn't like an easily made or purchased green pigment for things. Oh, okay. There just wasn't one yet. They were expensive. And I guess until this arsenic copper-based stuff, they weren't thought of as the best

greens, like a lot of people thought, that's a good green, but I could see a better green if I just looked at like a plant tree. There's a better green. So we've recovered that green. Yeah. Watch the plants get them all the great greens. Right. Like, well, I mean, I guess that makes sense if like you're trying to make a painting of a landscape and you want it to be something that someone would prefer to look at to just like out the window. Right. It at least at least needs to be on par with that green, right? So if you can't get to that level of green,

I'm just gonna go outside. Yeah. You know, when you're describing is bar none, the wildest way I've ever heard of him being talk about art. If the painting isn't better than outside, I could just, this is how you think about art. I could just go outside and see a tree, make paintings that look like stuff.

But I can't see, make a painting about a dragon. This is the way I think about art. Absolutely the wildest, wildest way. I only hang paintings in the winter because in the winter it's not sunny and it could be sunny in painting. This is why we only have paintings of things like jelly pirate doughnuts and pepperoni rolls on our house. I can't see those all the time. So we put them all in. It's nice to be a little refer to them when I don't know. I can't see those all the time. So we put them all in. It's nice to be a little refer to them when I was young.

Anyway, this new pigment excited a lot of artists, but it also caught the attention of others. So not just people who made fine art, but like designers, people in industrial designing type things, and specifically wallpaper designers. Wallpaper color was an issue. Wallpaper was really big as we're moving into the mid-1800s. Wallpaper was having its moment big time, right? Everybody wanted wallpaper because previously a more fashionable choice would be to have tapestries or some

sort of textile kind of thing. Like, you know, those, like old-fashioned, beautiful wall coverings and stuff. Wallpaper was really taking over, if you could afford it. And it was becoming more affordable in response to this. And then the other big problem though, is that you had to be really careful what sort of colors you put on the wall

because we're moving from the time where many houses would have been lit by candles and things like that into the oil into the oil and gas lamp time period. And prior to you having oil and gas lamps everywhere, I guess by candle light, a lot of really bright colors would look very dingy. So like in the daytime if you had like a green or blue on your wall or something

it might look really pretty, but then as the sunset and you were just lighting your house by candlelight, it looked bad. It looked gross. And so you had to be really careful what you chose to put on your walls with the use of oil and gas lamps. It all of a sudden allowed for you to use different colors on the walls. Right? All of a sudden, it was desirable to put brighter colors like these greens on the walls. And this new pigment really helped with that

because now all of a sudden you could use it. You could use this bright green. And it also, I'm saying green, but it wasn't just green. You could use this as part of blues. It was also part of yellows. There were a lot of different colors of wallpaper and dyes of wallpaper that would come to incorporate these compounds, including arsenic, because it was such a beautiful pigment, right? So anyway, you could put this in and it would look like the greens

outside. It could make yellows and blues more vibrant. It would really live in up your room. And now we have the lighting to actually see it. And this is where our next figure who ultimately would be responsible for for this becoming so widespread comes into play. I think describing him as a wallpaper designer first is probably not fair, cause he did a lot of other things that are probably a bigger deal more important than like designing wallpaper.

But I want to talk about William Morris. And I'm gonna tell you more about him right after we go to the billion department. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

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Sydney, you had a new character to start following. Who are we keeping up with now? William Morris. Now I realize that it sounded like I was throwing shade at wallpaper designers. I didn't mean to do that. I just meant that William Morris did not primarily think of himself as a wallpaper designer. He didn't like that sort of industrial design kind of stuff.

He was really more into the finer arts. He did that stuff, but he liked to be known for his poetry and his fine art and his writing. And he was a socialist who had a huge social impact on British society and culture and And so I think he would rather be remembered for those things because he didn't he particularly didn't even like wallpaper Oh really no he thought it was it was just what you did if you couldn't have fine like textiles hanging on your walls

Then I guess you could resort to wallpaper, but in his mind, it was not what you should use. So anyway, he made art and poetry, but he started this design company called Moris Marshall Faulkner and Company, and it designed fabrics and furniture and stained glass windows and tapestry, and of course wallpaper as well. And it was like a, like sort of a bunch of artists working together. And their initial goal was to sell, like, they thought that the manufacturing practices of the time, like these, of the Victorian era were kind of shoddy. And this was sort of a rebellion,

like a return to more natural things. We're gonna make handcrafted things and we're gonna use natural dyes and natural substances. Yeah, and like, he even tried to form this sort of like little kind of artist collective for a while and that was a short-lived sort of project, almost commune-esque.

But again, that was not, that he didn't really do that and he tried to run his business initially with like very socialist sort of principles. But he, but there there were some problems he struggled with that because as he said, like it was hard to run a socialist business in a capitalist economy. Anyway, so he designed these as part of all this work that they did, he did design these very beautiful wallpapers and they were very different than what was in fashion because they had these sort of like this grand scale,

something with like a very like large intricate pattern that you would put on a bigger wall, right? You know what I'm saying? They were very pretty. They were different than what a lot of people had. And even though this group that made this work kind of fancy themselves like Bohemian, these were loved, the things that they created

were really loved by the wealthy and elite. And it always the way. Yeah, including royalty. Like he would eventually design for both London, St. James, Palace, and Bail Moral Castle. Some really cool, the one about moral castle, I think is very cool. It has like their initials in the design and, I don't know.

And now I can do that in Animal Crossing, that's like, so what? He also, they did make affordable wallpaper for the people. Nice. And the people loved it. And his designs and then other companies would follow suit. Like, this would start this trend. This would really take off. He was not the only one making wallpaper.

And as I'm gonna get into, he was not the only one making wallpaper who would use these pigments and dies that contained arsenic. Many companies did this. It's just his worth the best, right? So like, he wasn't like doing anything worse than anybody else at the time. His were just the prettiest. Not unlike comedy podcast. You can look up. You can look up William

Morris wallpaper designs online. They're beautiful. Okay. Like the trellis design. One of the first ones was really famous. Anyway, there's some beautiful designs. You can see if you're interested and he did make great use of this beautiful. Right. They're interested and he did make great use of this beautiful Right they're beautiful and he made great use of this beautiful Okay, let me tell you if you're driving I'll give you a vibe and I'm like such a non-nana static person But it looks like it reminds you of something you'd see unlike When a West Anderson movie shows the text for the title of the movie, I imagine it like in front of a background like this, you know what I mean?

Yes, that is a good, yes, that is a good vibe. And the, a lot of them look like, I mean, they're very beautiful, you know, I, they're beautiful. I mean, like, I was gonna say, I always prefer like solid walls because I like, my mind is busy enough, I can't also have wallpaper patterns. But anyway, if I did like wallpaper, they're gorgeous. Maybe we could take just like a piece of it

and hang it as a piece of art. Oh, bold. As long as it's not something I can see outside. Right, or I'm guessing, I don't mean to go ahead of you or poison. Well, yeah. So at this point, so they're making all this wallpaper. I always got birds on these.

What's the point? As you guess, as you might guess where we're going, like wallpapers doing huge business throughout the 1860s and 70s, all throughout the UK, even over in the US, it was big. Like wallpapers big, his designs are huge. This pigment is in tons of different wallpapers that are being made not just his but lots They're being they're being pushed out all over Victorian homes everywhere. So

The poisonous nature of arsenic was already known like they knew what was going into the paint They knew what was going into the dies for the wallpaper like nobody nobody was ignorant to that they knew that They actually used to call arsenic inheritance powder. You get it? No. Because it was poisonous. And if you wanted to inherit something. Oh, I get it now.

Okay, I'm with you. So anyway, so everybody knew it could kill you. I mean, that was not unknown. And it, but it was everywhere. The thing is, they was thought that like, the big problem with arsenic is taking too much. As long as you limit how much arsenic you consume or whatever, you're going to be okay. Just like cashews. You have a few great, eat a pound of cashews, you're not going to feel great.

So bakers used it in food coloring at the time. You could have things that had food coloring in them and they were arsenic-based colors. It was sometimes added unknown as well as like a bulking agent, an arsenic-based compound. There were arsenic complexion wafers that you took like you ingested these wafers and they would make you, because at the time, we've talked about this before, and the Victorian era became fashionable to look very like sort of pale and sickly. And like, look like you had tuberculosis was the, that was the, we've talked about it on the tuberculosis episode. That was very much in fashion. It was a romantic look.

And this would make you look pale, because it made you anemic, probably. But anyway, so you could eat arsenic for that. There were these fake reeds of leaves and flowers that they would make for hair. And that was a very fashionable look at this moment. And they were dyed using this arsenic stuff. Actually artificial flowers were a really common source of poisoning.

The people who would make these beautiful little artificial flowers would get covered in these dyes and get arsenic poisoning pretty frequently because of that. Baby carriage fabric had arsenic in it, clothes had arsenic in them in the dyes. There was even a case of this orphanage in Boston where the babies were getting sick and they finally figured out it was because the staff wore these gorgeous blue aprons that were dyed with arsenic-laden pigment. And when they would cradle the babies next to their arsenic aprons, the babies were getting

arsenic poison anyway. So it was everywhere, right? So of course it was in the wallpaper. Of course it was being used in the dies. And the manufacturing company that made all of Morissus designs they used it to. So that was not strange, but it is fair to say that even as it was everywhere, by the 1860s, there was a growing concern that maybe we're letting the arsenic get out of control. Maybe too much of this great point of this stuff. And a lot of this started with the mining industry. So it, okay, it started with copper mining.

But when in a copper mine, I guess there are often layers of arsenic sulfide around the copper. Okay. And initially you would just leave that in place. Now this was already a problem because as you're mining the copper you're kicking up arsenic dust. And initially you would just leave that in place. Now this was already a problem because as you're mining the copper, you're kicking up arsenic dust. And so this is a problem for the miners. But then later as copper prices fell, you could also mine the arsenic, which exposed you of course to lots of arsenic dust. One such mine that did this,

and this all fits into this story, was the Devonshire great consolidated copper mining company whose founding shareholder was William Morris senior. William Morris's dad and junior would later sit on the board of this mining company that went on to mine lots and lots of arsenic. And the reason I mention all this is because the miners got sick.

I mean, this is a story that we know very well. The miners got sick. And there was no question that inhaling arsenic all day is bad for you while you're mining arsenic or copper with arsenic around it. And that also, like, they would get skin lesions from touching the arsenic all day. Like, it was very clear people were getting sick from the arsenic. And doctors started raising concern that, you know, we've seen all these miners getting sick and it looks

like this. And then they started putting these pieces together as wallpaper is everywhere and everybody's got these arsenic wallpapers like, could that make you sick? Oh, second. And then as soon as the concern is raised, you start noticing like, well, now I did have that one patient that came in the other day, and I couldn't explain why they were sick, which to be fair in the 1860s, we were rarely knew why people were sick.

We were still very early into figuring out why people, we barely know now sometimes, but they, so they didn't, they were like, just started attributing this like, oh, people are sick. I wonder if it's a wallpaper. And then lots of unexplained illnesses started to click into place, right?

Yeah. So following that, there was a doctor who published his own account of like, you know, I've got this green study and I think it's making me sick. People would like take down all their wallpaper and say like they've been miraculously cured because it got rid of their poisonous wallpaper. The Lancet published an article basically saying like, look, we don't know for sure, but

it seems bad to have arsenic in your wallpaper are all around you all day long. And like, we know arsenic is poisonous because of these miners. And so like, maybe we should not do that anymore. So this is momentous in Sabah's history. This could be the first time that a cure all is actually effective.

The cure all of the... Just take the wallpaper. Getting the arsenic out of your house. Like yeah, it fixes a lot of stuff. It really shifts me. You have to understand, this is a moment where we're shifting the idea from too much arsenic is bad for you

to really any arsenic is not ideal. And so a lot of wallpaper companies started advertising, hey, we now make arsenic free wallpaper for your home. Now that took a while for people to really care or catch on because they, if they're not as beautiful, you know, humans, they're always humans. And as one doctor wrote at the time, a great deal of slow poisoning is going on and great Britain. So there is a thought that like, as we look at this moment in history, where everybody had arsenic on their walls

for a few decades and then took it down, the thought was that arsenic dies are probably okay if the room is dry and well ventilated. It's similar to the conversation we've had about asbestos. Just having asbestos in a wall doesn't necessarily make you sick, right? It's when it degrades over time or in the removal process. These are the times where you worry about it. And this was the sort of the same idea we might have about these arsenic-based dyes in the wallpaper. If you have a room dry, well ventilated, it's probably not poisoning you.

But if you do have a room that's damp, you've got moisture in the room and the paper starts to do it like flake and degrade. The glue starts to degrade. All that, you know, like then it could definitely, and like there were cases of like kids eating flakes of wallpaper, just like we've heard with lead paint, eating flakes of lead paint and getting sick. There was also this concern that was raised later in a paper where like, if certain fungal growths

occurred on the wallpaper, then that would interact with the arsenic in the dye. And then this toxic gas could be released and they talked about rooms that smelled. Some of them they said mousey, which isn't what we usually associate with arsenic, the quote unquote, mousey smell. Mousey?

That's what they would say, it would give off a mousey smell. But then sometimes they would say, it would give you that garlicky smell. And that is arsenic. There's an arsenic gas compound that is deadly and it has a garlicky smell. So like if you smelled that in a room,

it is not unreasonable to think, it could be the wallpaper. So everybody started to get really worried and take down their wallpaper. Morris didn't buy it. It's interesting. It's this weird, because this guy was so for, like I said, he was a socialist. He fought for like workers' rights and for using like safer products, kind of like an environmentalist. But like at the same time, he really didn't think that the arsenic was a problem. He said that the doctors who claimed that honestly, the miners who were so sick and that these people with a wallpaper were so sick, he said that the doctors were bitten by the witch fever, which is like the title of your interest.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. he was wrong. But by 1883, he also said, you know, well, why don't we just get rid of the arsenic so we don't have to fight about this anymore? And he would move on to focusing on socialism at that point anyway, and kind of like devote his life to

activism and not so much to wallpaper. But for about 20 years in the 1800s, wallpaper with arsenic was really invoked. And we don't know exactly, I mean, like to this day, it's kind of controversial. Did people get sick? We don't know 100%. It's certainly possible, and we have lots of mechanisms. But there are other people who write that like all of this was sort of a trumped up concern,

and that it probably didn't make anybody sick. It was never banned, which is interesting in... We moved away from it, neither consumer pressure. Exactly. In 1903, the British government set standards on how much arsenic you could put in food and drink, which is good. That's a good thing to limit. But not in wallpaper, it's just people didn't want it anymore. This is also, I think this is interesting to note, this is part of the... This is also, I think this is interesting to note. This is part of the,

this is thought to be part of the inspiration for the story, the Yellow Wall Paper. Have you ever read that by Charlotte Perkins-Gillman? It's a wonderful story. It's not about wallpaper. Her big inspiration was her own. It's a bad title then. Well, I mean, it's not,

it is not drawing just from this arsenic wallpaper. What it's really about, it's a wonderful story about her own, she had postpartum depression and she was treated with the rest here at the time, which involved like sitting in a room quietly, sleep all the time and don't write or draw or interact with humans and stuff, which was really bad, obviously, like, really dangerous. Anyway. It's a great story that's really about the patriarchy and

it's a feminist piece and it's wonderful. I would highly recommend it. But also, the idea of poisonous wallpaper, you can see where that inspiration may have come from. And as Chris, who sent us the email suggesting this topic noted, because of this. There are books that to this day when people are studying older works of literature that they can't touch because there was a time period when arsenic was so in vogue where you could also dip your books in arsenic to keep like pests out and stuff. So there are books that to this day you can't physically handle because they're just, they've got arsenic on them. It's what I've been saying about books from the beginning folks They're there books of this wallpaper that you can't touch because there's arsenic on them, which is fascinating

Hey, thank you so much for listening to our podcast. We have a book if you are interested in that sort of thing It's called the solbans book. It does not have any arsenic in in it. Now there is, well, there is a part about arsenic, but there's no actual arsenic. Yeah, you can find out where our fine books are sold. What else said, thanks to the taxpayers for the use of their sound medicines as the intro and outro of our program. And thanks to you for listening.

We really appreciate it. It's gonna do it for us this week for, until the next time, my name is Justin McRoy. And I'm Sydney McRoy. And so always don't drill a hole in your head. Alright! Maximumfun.org Comedy and Culture Artist-Oant?

Audience-supported You're in the theater. The lights go down. You're about to get swept up by the characters and all their little details and interpersonal dramas. You look at them and think that person is so obviously in love with their best friend. Wait, am I in love with my best friend? That character's mom is so overbearing. Why doesn't she stand up to her? Oh, good God. Do I need to stand up to my own mother? We never know when we'll see ourselves

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