It seems like back before modern medicine was a thing, prescribing arsenic for almost all ailments was all the rage. I’m going to assume that people weren’t just idiots in the past and that there was a reason for that.
Do small amounts of arsenic make you feel temporarily good or something like that? Is it a case of arsenic being useful for one specific illness and doctors then prescribing it for everything? Basically, why would they prescribe poison to people???
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Arsenic compounds have antimicrobial, antiviral, and antiparasitic properties and were used in cancer treatments prior to the discovery of antibiotics. You can read more here [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8860286/#:~:text=In%20the%201970s%2C%20arsenic%20trioxide,the%20clinical%20use%20of%20arsenicals](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8860286/#:~:text=In%20the%201970s%2C%20arsenic%20trioxide,the%20clinical%20use%20of%20arsenicals).
I’m not so sure about the wisdom of ancient practices. Women would commonly paint their faces with lead to achieve that alabaster pale look that was so popular back then. A deadly practice.
Most of the things that make you sick are living things themselves. So giving yourself a dose of poison that isn’t enough to kill you is likely to kill some of them, and killing even some of them is likely to make you feel better even with the effects the poison has on you. It’s not great, because you’re still poisoning yourself, but it may be better than nothing.
Can anyone eli5 why arsenic is still so popular for restless legs? It’s touted as being super effective but I don’t believe in homeopathy fundamentally- thoughts?
I’m just picturing an old timey doctor shrugging, “What? He stopped coughing up blood didn’t he?”
I’d say it’s similar to how we use chemotherapy today to kill cancer though it’s harmful to us.
A non-leathal amount to the patient, and hopefully a leathal amount to the disease.
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An important thing to remember is that for most of human history medicine was just about achieving a result, *any result at all.* If something made you vomit, or poop, or both, then they would prescribe it for a number of ailments because for most of medical history people thought that expelling something from your body was healthy, your body was ridding itself of “toxins” (or at least that’s what was believed). So, for a very long time, people would actively poison themselves believing the effects to be restorative.
I forgot, it was a cheap by-product of Tin Mining in Cornwall, as it is boiled off in a Calciner Flue when roasting Copper Bearing Rocks.
It was also used as an Insect Killer, Face powder in Georgian England, and For powdering whigs. A lot of people died of slow Arsenic poisoning in Cosmetics and long term build up as medicines and pesticides. Until the end of the sixties one could buy other similar poisons from the local chemist like Cyanide for use in the Greenhouse. I used to buy the ingredients for making Gunpowder from the Chemist for my Home Laboritory at School.
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