Word: poison
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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City and federal poison detectives went to work in the morning, starting from the supplier for the restaurant and the market where Margaret Kleinschmidt had bought her fish. Charles McWade, 43, a former Philadelphian who might have been shopping for fish on Tuesday, was found dead on a chicken farm near Toms River, N.J.; in his refrigerator was a remnant of nitrite-poisoned flounder. Without saying how much they knew or how they had learned it, Philadelphia and Camden health officials sounded the alarm...
...Tonic or a Poison...
When Is a Poison? Nobody knows how many of the additives now in use have been fully tested. Best guess: about 150 are tried and true, will cause no problem, e.g., old familiars such as sodium benzoate (preservative in foods and many soft drinks), and other items less recognizable but long widely used-calcium or sodium propionate (mold inhibitor in bread) and butylated hydroxy anisole (antioxidant to keep fats from going rancid). Another 150 are expected to pass the tests, but 100 or more are in a medical no-man's land...
Biggest complicating factor is a basic fact of pharmacology: there is no sharp line between poisonous and nonpoisonous substances-common salt can be a poison in excess, and arsenic can be a lifesaver. Dr. Arnold J. Lehman, the FDA's pharmacology director, quotes the Swiss Alchemist-Physician Paracelsus (1493-1541): "Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy." Some chemicals are poisonous over the years even in minute doses, and these the FDA will ban outright. But in the main, under its new legislative charter to protect...
Sometimes it came deep in the earth where Borinage miners scratch out coal from overworked shafts in constant expectation of cave-ins, poison gas, flooding, fire and explosion. More often it came on the grey, slag-heaped surface as miners coughed out their lives. Emile Zola saw the Borinage in the 1880s and poured its horror into his powerful classic, Germinal. A few aged miners still remember the emaciated, stubble-bearded Dutch preacher named Vincent Van Gogh, who lived in one of their hovels, held services and sketched their bowed bodies with fever-palsied hands...