William Blake
dblum | April 21, 2010In an earlier post, I wrote about the possible copper poisoning of the great British poet and artist William Blake. The very simple lesson inherent in that story is that a strong dose of metals on a regular basis is generally bad for a person's health.
But one could argue that this is too simple a lesson. That not all metals are equally dangerous. In support of that caveat, in today's post, I'm featuring a short excerpt from my book, The Poisoner's Handbook, which concerns a human circus exhibit and a steady diet of silver nitrate:
In the chilly January of 1924, scientists at the New York…
dblum | March 30, 2010A couple days ago, I wrote a post (Tyger, Tyger, Copper, Copper) about the theory that the late, great British poet William Blake (1757-1827) and been killed by copper poisoning due to years of acid-etching copper plates as a print maker.
One chemist promptly wrote to raise the possibility that it might instead have been acid poisoning. Blake used nitric acid to etch his plates and exposure to that corrosive compound, he pointed out, turns the skin yellow. One symptom of Blake's final illness was his deeply yellowed skin.
Nitric acid - sometimes called engraver's acid - has a long and…
dblum | March 25, 2010Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
William Blake, the brilliant British poet, published "The Tyger" in 1794 and it's always been one of my favorite poems. I studied him during a brief period when I thought I might want to be a poet, a career plan undone by the fact that I hated it when others actually read my poetry.
Blake, obviously, didn't have that problem. But he had plenty of others. He struggled for recognition during his lifetime. He was plagued by chronic illness and also by apparent hallucinations. He…