Toxic Literature (no, I don't mean vicious propaganda....)
tl;dr: The pretty colors of Victorian book-binding often came from poisons. One woman read an article about such, and realized an old book she'd bought thirty years before looked just that colorful. When she sent it to the Poison Book Project at the University of Delaware,
The Project developed after a library conservator was repairing a book, and noticed something curious about the way the pigment was flaking.
tl;dr: The pretty colors of Victorian book-binding often came from poisons. One woman read an article about such, and realized an old book she'd bought thirty years before looked just that colorful. When she sent it to the Poison Book Project at the University of Delaware,
Quote:“Congratulations,” the email she received said, “you have the dubious honor of sending us the most toxic book yet.”
The Project developed after a library conservator was repairing a book, and noticed something curious about the way the pigment was flaking.
Quote:“It was a serendipity moment. I thought that maybe we should test this pigment and make sure it’s not full of arsenic.”
It turned out the book was full of arsenic. “Really quite a lot of arsenic,” she says.
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"The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that this was some killer weed."
"The Lady of the Lake, her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water, signifying by divine providence that this was some killer weed."