Usually, when people talk about dangerous books, they are referring to the content, so we think about banned books, and politically controversial books. I’m referring to books that are dangerous objects. What do I mean? Before we can talk about books, we need to talk about paint and wallpaper.
Let me take you back to Victorian times (1837-1901). It was the age of industrialization, railroads, steam printing press, political reform. Dresses were long and modest, and reading was popular (think Dickens, the Brontes, Browning, Wilde). Homes and clothing were heavily decorated.
Paint
The brilliant color Paris Green, also called Vienna Green and Emerald Green, was invented in 1814 in Germany. Beautifully vibrant, it had wonderful depth of color and became popular in paint pigments and wallpaper pigments. William Morris, a significant figure in the Arts and Crafts movement, designed immensely popular wallpaper, fabric, tapestries, stained glass, and furniture. He loved Paris Green. Monet and Seurat, the impressionist painters, used a lot of it. It was also a great insecticide and pesticide. In fact, it got its common name, Paris Green, because it was used in Paris to kill sewer rats. A paint and a pesticide? Well, the chemical name of Paris Green is copper (ll) acetoarsenite; it is an arsenic-based pigment. Victorians knew about arsenic and knew it was a poison. However, they felt it was safe in small amounts. It was ubiquitous- it could be found in candies, toys, dyes, fabrics, and textiles.
As the popularity of Paris Green increased, commercial arsenic mines dramatically expanded production; the public’s demand for Paris Green was insatiable. Surging numbers of industrial arsenic poisonings in miners, factory workers, paper flower dyers, wallpaper hangers and others were beginning to be reported, but were largely ignored by the government.
Wallpaper
Arsenic poisoning was not only a British phenomenon. In 1874, Dr. Robert Kedzie, a surgeon and professor of chemistry, wanted to raise awareness in America about the dangers of green arsenic-pigmented wallpaper. It was important; the American Medical Association estimated that 65% of all US wallpaper contained arsenic pigments! People knew arsenic was poisonous if eaten, but felt wallpaper was perfectly safe. Dr Kedzie theorized that the wallpaper shed microscopic dust particles that could be inhaled and cause slow chronic poisoning. In his capacity as a member of the Michigan Board of Health, he published a book, Shadows from the Walls of Death, and sent a copy to every public library in the state. The book included a note from the Board of Health, an explanation of the dangers of the wallpaper, a note to the librarians to forbid children from handling the book (!), and eighty-six pages of Paris Green containing green wallpaper samples (many of them were William Morris prints).
As it turns out Dr Kedzie was correct. Microscopic flakes of Paris Green pigment were shed from wallpaper, especially flocked wallpaper, and could be inhaled or absorbed through skin, leading to chronic arsenic poisoning. Additionally, in humid Victorian England, as well as in the US, moisture and mold would degrade the arsenic compound to arsine gas. This toxic gas, colorless and almost odorless, slowly leached from wallpaper over months and years. Symptoms of arsine poisoning (by inhalation) include headache, nausea, vertigo, and hemolytic anemia. Does this sound like those weak, fainting women of Victorian times, who often retired to their bedroom to rest? Perhaps they were worsening their health by breathing in more arsine in their bedrooms with their fashionable green wallpaper.
Rumors that green wallpaper had killed some people spread through the US and England. In 1880, Queen Victoria had all green wallpaper removed from the palace. The rest of England followed suit. The era of Paris Green was ending.
Books
And now we can explain dangerous books. Dr Kedzie had published one hundred copies of his book Shadows from the Walls of Death. Most copies were later destroyed, as librarians felt their arsenic content made them too dangerous. Four copies remain today. One copy, at Michigan State University’s Special Collections, is in a green (ironic?) box. Each page of the book is individually sealed in plastic, so it is now safe to handle. Other copies are at University of Michigan, Harvard University Medical School, and the National Library of Medicine. The copy at the National Library of Medicine has been digitized and can be seen online. Scanning each page was a project in itself. Workers suited up in protective gear and worked under a laboratory venting hood in a chemistry lab. Their original is now sealed, page by page, in plastic.
But the dangerous book story doesn’t end there.
Just a few years ago, Melissa Tedone, a conservator at Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library, in Delaware, was reading Bitten by Witch Fever, Lucinda Hawksley’s 2016 book about the whole wallpaper and arsenic saga. She noticed that the bright green in many of Morris’ wallpapers, photographed in the book, matched the bright green of the book cover of an 1857 home décor book she was conserving. She wondered if that Victorian book cover could also contain Paris Green. Under the microscope, she could see flakes of pigment shedding from the book cover. The University of Delaware analyzed Tedone’s green book cover, finding shocking amounts of arsenic in the pigment of the book cover! Just like the fashion for wallpaper and cloth, Paris Green was popular for book covers of that era.
Tedone and her team developed a protocol for testing other green covered books at Winterthur and created the Poison Book Project. So far, they have evaluated 350 old/rare green books in their collection, finding arsenic in the covers of 10% of them. More dangerous books! Winterthur is now expanding their research to include evaluation of old books with chrome yellow (lead containing) and vermillion red (mercury containing) pigmented covers. Don’t get me started on lead and mercury poisoning! Winterthur is now the expert in this area and gets consulted by libraries worldwide for advice on testing their older books.
So, the potential exists, that thousands of books from the 1800s, especially those with beautiful green, red, or yellow covers, are quietly sitting on library shelves, in archives, in private collections of book lovers, flaking tiny bits of arsenic, lead or mercury into the air around them, or on the hands of those who hold them. Where will it end??
Curious? Want to know more? Google these….
Bitten by Witch Fever – Lucinda Hawksley
Poison Book Project
https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/bookviewer?PID=nlm:nlmuid-0234555-bk