Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Napoleon Bonaparte (Napoleone Buonaparte,1769-1821) sneaked back to France from the exiled island of Elba in 1815. In time during the expedition, he followed his old subordinate, the famous mathematician Jean-Baptiss Joseph Fourier (Jean-Baptiste Joseph Fourier,1768-1830), but opposed his comeback. Napoleon sent someone to arrest Fourier and scolded him, but still appointed him chief executive of Rhone (prefect of the Rhone) with an annual salary of 6000 francs.

However, Fourier never received the salary, because just two months later, frustrated and discouraged, Napoleon accepted the fate of exile. Napoleon died on the South Atlantic island of St. Helena controlled by the British East India Company. Some studies say he died of arsenic poisoning.

Arsenic has been known as a poison since ancient times. Before the chemical detection of arsenic appeared, it could be called a "perfect poison".

White arsenic (arsenic, arsenic trioxide) is tasteless, and when dissolved in water, it only makes the water a little sweeter. The symptoms of arsenic poisoning are easily ignored and confused with other diseases, such as diarrhea, vomiting, etc., so it was also known as "white cholera".

Arsenic trisulfide (arsenic trisulfifide) is a yellow ore that has been used as a pigment since ancient times.

Source of arsenic trisulfide structure: another pigment in Encyclopedia of Chemical Industry is arsenic disulfide, which is used for hair dyeing. Arsenic trioxide is the first arsenic compound used medicinally. It was first obtained as a by-product of copper smelting 5000 years ago. Although Paracelsus believes it is effective in treating cancers, ulcers and wounds, he warns that arsenic is too toxic.

The industrial revolution has seen a sharp rise in demand for all kinds of metals, and so has the production of arsenic trioxide, a by-product. Many enterprises make profits from these cheap arsenic into rat poison, insecticide and other products. Arsenic is so readily available that it has led to a sharp increase in cases of arsenic poisoning. It is known as "heir powder" as a poison.

In 1832, a suspect was accused of poisoning his grandfather with arsenic in his coffee. Because of the large amount of property involved, the court asked the famous scientist Michael Faraday (Michael Faraday,1791-1867) to analyze the contents of the victim's stomach and coffee residue. Faraday was professor of chemistry at the Royal military College of Woolwich from 1830 to 1851, which was near the scene of the crime.

Faraday, who was preoccupied with electromagnetics at the time, entrusted the task to his assistant James Marsh (James Marsh,1794-1846). Marsh worked at the Woolwich Royal Armory and was trusted by Faraday as a part-time assistant to Faraday in 1830-1846.

In 1830, Marsh developed spiral time fuzes and impact tubes for mortars. As a result, Marsh was recruited by the prosecution. He mixed the suspicious sample with hydrogen sulfide and hydrochloric acid for a standard test and got yellow arsenic trisulfide, indicating that the sample contained arsenic. However, when Marsh showed the arsenic trisulfide to the jury, they had deteriorated for a period of time, and the suspect was eventually acquitted.

Marsh was so annoyed that he came up with a better test by mixing samples containing arsenic with sulfuric acid and zinc to produce hydrogen arsenide. When heated, the gas breaks down into arsenic, which presents a silver-black deposit when it encounters a low-temperature surface. The sensitivity of this method is 0.02 mg.

Marsh published the test in the Edinburgh Journal of philosophy in 1836. The Marsh detection method provides a solid forensic technical support for arsenic poisoning. However, the number of arsenic poisoning cases did not decline until the British government decided to control arsenic chemicals.

In 1899, the German chemist Robert Wilhelm Benson (Robert Wilhelm Bunsen,1811-1834) systematically studied arsenate and arsenite. He found that ferric trioxide could combine with arsenic to form ferric arsenite, forming compounds that were neither soluble in water nor in body fluids, so he thought that hydrated ferric oxide could be used as an antidote to arsenism.

Arsenic has long been a pharmaceutical preparation, the most famous of which is the Fowler's solution solution invented by Thomas Fowler (ThomasFowler,1736-1801).

Fowler, a British doctor, reported on the role of arsenic in the treatment of malaria, fever and periodic headaches in 1786. He invented a 1% potassium arsenite solution that bears his name on the basis of an arsenic-containing "tasteless malaria drop" popular in Lincoln county.

In 1865, Berlin doctor Lissauer used Fowler solution to improve the condition of a young woman with acute leukemia. Since then, Fowler solution has been used in the treatment of leukemia until the 1940s, when the first cytotoxic drug was introduced.

In 1873, the Scottish doctor and missionary David Livingstone (David Livingstone,1813-1858), who explored much of Central Africa, recommended Fowler solution to treat the symptoms of sleeping sickness, trypanosomiasis transmitted by tsetse flies.

Throughout the 19th century, Fowler solution was widely regarded as a cure for malaria, dermatosis, chorea, edema, rabies and glandular obstruction. Even in the 1940s, Fowler solution became a tonic for the treatment of malignant anemia.

In 1851, there was a poisoning lawsuit in the then Austro-Hungarian Empire, which sparked controversy about "drug addicts." A Swiss doctor and naturalist John Jacob von Trudy (Johann Jakob von Tschudi,1818-1889) published an article on the matter in the Vienna Journal of Medicine. In his article, he introduces arsenic eaters in the Stilya region (today Austria) who have been taking small doses of arsenic for years and seem to use the poison as a health product. Their goal is either to get a moisturized complexion and a healthy appearance, or to adapt to the physical effects of high-altitude mountains.

The morphological toxicity of arsenic is low and it is not easy to be absorbed by human body. However, the oral median lethal dose of arsenic trioxide in rats was only 14.6 mg / kg. For an adult weighing 50 kilograms, 0.1 grams can be fatal. Therefore, arsenic eaters immediately attracted the attention of the scientific community. In particular, some British scholars have questioned the authenticity of arsenic eaters. After a decade of controversy and continuous research, the scientific community has generally recognized the existence of this special group of arsenic eaters.

With advertisements made by arsenic eaters, arsenic has become a popular beauty product, and many companies have launched arsenic-containing cosmetics, such as arsenic-containing soap. At that time, a variety of skin beauty arsenic tablets (arsenic complexion wafers) were popular, and users could take small doses in order to whiten the skin by ingesting arsenic, such as Dr. Sims's Dr. Simms' Arsenic Complexion Wafers and Dr. Campbell's Dr. Campbell's Arsenic Complexion Wafers.

Arsenic was usually added to the proliferation of patented drugs in the 19th century. Both arsenic and mercury can be used to treat syphilis. Others mix arsenic with iron to treat heart disease. German scientist Paul Erlich (PaulEhrlich,1854-1915) discovered Salvarsan, also known as arsphenamine, in 1910. It is used to treat syphilis and is known as the "magic bullet".

Paul Erlich until the 1990s, some organic arsenic was still used for intestinal parasite infections, but arsenic preparations have been withdrawn in the United States, Europe and elsewhere because of their carcinogenic effects.

In the 1980s, Zhang Tingdong and others reported that intravenous injection of arsenic can alleviate the condition of patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia. In 2001, the United States Food and Drug Administration (Food and DrugAdministration,FDA) approved a patented formula for injecting Fowler solution into promyelocytic leukemia. In 2003, arsenic trioxide (Trisenox ®) was reused to treat specific hematological malignancies.

Wen Yuan: "History of New drugs: from panacea to the Frontier of Life Science" by: Peng Lei, Editor: Zhang Runxin, the picture in the article originated from the network copyright belongs to the original author all this article comes from Wechat official account: Origin Reading (ID:tupydread), author: Peng Lei, Editor: Zhang Runxin

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.