this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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Someone mentioned the explosion of radium...everything that took place between the discovery of radium and the discovery that radiation is bad for you. Well I've got another deadly stupid historic fad: Scheele's Green.
Scheele's Green is a pigment invented in 1775 by Carl Wilhelm Sheele. I's a vivid slightly yellowish green color, which became all the rage throughout Europe in the early 19th century. It was used in paints, candles, wallpaper, to dye cotton and linen, even to paint children's toys and as a food dye.
Scheele's Green is acidic copper arsenite. CuHASO~3~. It's very toxic. Numerous reports exist of children "wasting away" in "bright green rooms," women "swooning" wearing green dresses, and instances of acute poisoning around burning green candles. The publicity of the 1861 death of a 19 year old named Matilda Scheueur as a result of her job painting artificial plants with the dye, along with her autopsy showing her eyes and fingernails were turning green from the pigment, led to its decline.
Scheele's Green was used as an insecticide in the 1930's.