I just finished the chapter about arsenic and what fascinates me the most is how people have used arsenic for a variety of different reasons, whether to get a better complexion, to get a beauifully coloured wallpaper or to use it as a means of enhancing physical strength.
And after having read about the "Arsenesser" (arsenic eaters) in Styria I stumbled upon this articel in the Austrian newspaper Der Standard. Besides the men, who took the arsenic to strenghten their bodies and make them more fit to work in the thin air of the alps, Styrian women used arsenic, inserting it into their vagina during intercourse, as a form of birth control and to terminate possible pregnancies. This has to be the most horrifying way of using this stuff, tbh.
Oh, btw, I will be skipping the two chapters where I haven´t read the accompanying book just get. I will be reading these chapters as soon as I have read The Labours of Hercule and The Pale Horse, that way I won´t get spoiled. And I´ll still be over the 200 pages read threshold for the Snakes and Ladders game.
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