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Short Stuff: Scheele's Green · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: there's Chuck and Dave. Ce's here and Spirit. Jerry's here
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: in Spirit, And let's go. Let's start talking about a color,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a really interesting color.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the first of a two part series.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: On color, an accidental series, really, that's right.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: And this one we're gonna be talking about Shields green
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: s E H E E L E or Schloss green.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Schloss is pretty obviously spelled.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I think, do you know, is that just another name
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: for shield or something, or was that Carl Wilhelm Shield's
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: hotel name? Like, how did it come to be Schloss
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: as well?
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: Oh, I don't know. I thought you knew.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: I have no idea.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Actually, well I spilled the beans, Chuck. It is named
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: after Carl Wilhelm Shiel, who was the guy who discovered it,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: so it's appropriate that it would be named after him.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: That's right. He was a German Swedish chemist, a pharmaceutical chemist.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: And here's the deal. He created this amazing kind of
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: accidentally created this amazing shade of green that kind of
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: took the world by storm. But the big problem with
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: it is that it killed people. Yeah, it is a
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: big problem and it killed that's not funny. I laughed
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: because the way I said it.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Well, it happened a long time ago, so you can
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: laugh now. But it killed a lot of people in
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: some really horrible ways. I was just kidding about laughing
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: at misfortune. That's appropriately old anyway.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Well, tragedy is our comedy is tragedy plus time. Right.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Oh man, that's great. You should you should market that.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I just made it up.
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it was a terribly toxic color. Paris Review
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: wrote a really interesting article on it, and in it
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: they called shields green blisteringly toxic. Yeah, and the thing
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: that was toxic about it was arsenic, as we'll see.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: But Carl Wilhelm Shiel, he came up with it supposedly
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: almost accidentally, according to Victoria Finley, who's a historian who
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: wrote a book called The Brilliant History of Color and Art.
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: God blessed Victoria Finley for not using a colon, but
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: she said it was almost accidental. I don't know what
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: he was doing. But he heated some sodium carbonate, he
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: added some arsinious oxide, gave it a good stir, and
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: then he added some copper sulfate, and when that happened,
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: he found that he had a really, really brilliant green.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: That's right, it was brilliant. But he knew that it
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: was toxic, and about a year before it was released
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: to the public, he, as legend goes, wrote to a
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: friend of his and said, Hey, I'm kind of worried
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: about this stuff being toxic. And apparently it didn't matter,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: because people went nuts for the stuff. Arsenic had been
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: around for a long time. People knew it was poisonous
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: because it was a great murder poison for many, many years,
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: because it has fairly unspecific symptoms as far as poisoning
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: people goes. So up until eighteen thirty when the Marsh
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: test was invented by James Marsh, which basically roots out arsenic,
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: there was you know, it was a pretty good way
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: to kill somebody.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like you said, I mean you could attribute the
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: the symptoms of acute arsenic poisoning to a lot of things.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: You've got vomiting, abdominant pain, diarrhea, I mean, a lot
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: over things can do that. Sure, what are you drinking arsenic?
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: And then later on you've got numbnessing, tingling of the extremities.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: You could have been like I've been sitting too long,
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: maybe muscle cramping and then you die. You go curpplots.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: That's right, And that's acute poisoning. The long term exposure
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: and we're talking you know, over the order of you know,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: three to five years kind of thing. It can also
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: be really bad. And usually find that in the skin,
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: like you might have lesions, the color of your skin
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: might change. Apparently, you can get very patchy, like hard
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: patches on your feet and your palms, like the bottoms
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: of your feet. Yeah, and it can give you cancer.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: It's you know, it's a known carcinogen. Now, I don't
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: think it was at the time. I think they just
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: thought this is a heck of a good poison.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the thing. Even though I'm not sure if
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: it's clear that Sheiel spilled the beans himself, but somebody
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: did because it was common knowledge that Siel's green was
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: toxic with arsenic and yet as we'll see, people used
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: it all the time. It took off like gangbusters basically
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: the moment it was available as a pigment. And it's
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: not because the people of the age were dumb or
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: didn't care about dying. In their experience, arsenic was kind
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: of hit or miss. Some people it seemed to poison
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: very acutely. Other people seem to be fine as far
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: as a cute poisoning goes. And there wasn't an a
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: awareness yet of long term exposure poisoning exactly. And what's
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: ironic is it turns out it seems to have been
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: Shields Green that introduced the Victorian public to the idea
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: that you could suffer really horrible consequences from long term
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: exposure to arsenic, even though along the way you don't
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: seem like you have acute poisoning exactly.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: Uh, maybe we should take our break here, maybe, And
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: we've kind of hinted around about how this stuff took off.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: We'll talk more about that right after this.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Jo so ask you should know.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: So we promised talk of Shields Green really take the
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: world by storm, and boy did it. It was in
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: all kinds of clothing. I mean, they went nuts worth
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: because it it was like this natural green that they
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: had never seen before, no one had ever been able
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: to replicate, like this really gardeny vegetable green. Yeah, and
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: so they went nuts worth. It was in soap, It
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: was like in stuff they ate. It was in beauty products,
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: it was on stamps that you know, posted stamps that
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: you licked like Costanza. What else. It was on wallpapers,
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: it was in toys, like children's toys.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: On behalf of all the pedants out there. I want
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: to point out that she wasn't a Costanza yet she
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: died licking the envelopes that were going out as a
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: wedding invitation. So she wasn't a Costanza yet never made
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: it to Costanza. You think someone would have emailed that totally.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: I can name, like at least a handful of people
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: by name who would.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: Have right, You're probably right. So again, it's taking the
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: world by storm. It's in everything, and especially in sort
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: of depressing smoggy Revolution Victorian London. All of a sudden
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: they had this brilliant green all around and they love
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: the stuff.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because, like you said, the industrial Revolution had already
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: happened and its full smoggy effects were being felt, and
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: people had moved to the city. But yet they were
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: not so far removed from the country that they had
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: a real affinity and fondness for country rural life. Right,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: So all of a sudden there's this green here that
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: again I got to go to the Paris Review because
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: they this article he wrote out. It was so great.
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: They said that it was not too yellow, wasn't too teal.
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: It was a middle green, and it had full saturation.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: It was very vibrant, because up till then, the greens
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: that they'd come up with, I think that were based
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: on copper, they were not vibrant. It was green, but
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: it was a kind of a dumpy green. This was
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: suddenly like a green and everybody just loved it. And
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: like you said, they used it in every way they
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: possibly could.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like when they went to Sherwin Williams, they're like,
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: what kind of greens you got, and they're like, they're
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: all dumpy.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, don't you have that schloss green? You mean sheields green?
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So reports all of a sudden, after you know,
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: this becomes the color of the season, start to roll
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: in a little bit. Children were quote wasting away in
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: their green rooms. People these women that wore these dresses
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: were falling ill. Apparently there were these they would wear
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: them in these elaborate hats that color green. And there
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: was a doctor, doctor A. W. Hoffman, who was an
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: analytical chemist that did some testing and he found that
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: the average head piece with schloss green had enough arsenic
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: to poison twenty people.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so people are starting to become aware, like, Okay,
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: this stuff is really bad. Like we knew it was toxic,
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: but it's really really bad. So there was actually a
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: public push that centered on the death of a nineteen
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: year old artificial flower maker named Matilda Sure, and she.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Was Sure a real jerk.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I said that in my head, Chuck, I'm glad
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: you put it out there. She died in November of
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: eighteen sixty one, and she had I don't remember how
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: long she'd worked, but she'd worked for many years in
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: a little, tiny, cramped workshop dusting artificial flowers with a
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: shields green pigment, and so she inhaled it. It was
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: all over her fingers and her nails. So she ate it,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: and by the time she died and was autopsied, it
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: was in her stomach, it was in her liver, it
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: was in her lungs. Before she died, her eyes had
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: turned green, and she reported to her doctor that everything
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: she looked at had a green tint to it. That's
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: how arsenic laden this poor girl was.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the direct quote is that she vomited green waters.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't want to see that.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: You don't want to see that. So, like you said,
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: the prescott behind this finally because there was an actual,
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: you know, real human death to point to, and Parliament
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: got involved, and you know, this is sort of one
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: of the first first big regulatory acts for something like this.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: This kind of thing wasn't that common back then, so
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: I think in less than ten years Parliament said all right,
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: this is we're going to do something. It's called regulating
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: and limiting arsenic in food. And everyone went what.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: And all of the wigs stood up and said, nanny state,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: ny state exactly.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: And then the little button on top of this episode
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: is that some people believe that Napoleon died of a
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: stomach cancer that was perhaps brought on by this green
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: poisoning because when he lived in exile in Saint Helena
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: on that island, he loved that color and he had
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: that wallpaper in his room and apparently was breathing this
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: stuff in because of the moisture.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Right yeah, Open Culture wrote that he so he loved
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: his baths and the wallpaper was in his bathroom, and
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: they said that anytime it was damp from you know,
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: a hot bath, or apparently Saint Helena itself was pretty
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: damp and moldy as an island. The arsenic dust in
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: that shields green would become vaporized and Napoleon would breathe
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: it in. And it's not just some random theory like,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: it's actually fairly widely considered at least possible that that's
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: what he died of. We just don't know what he
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: died of. Napoleon thought he was being poisoned by British agents.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: I think someone else said he probably died of stomach cancer,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: but it's entirely possibly died from inhaling shields green from
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: his wallpaper in his bathroom.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Well, they could have very well led to the stomach
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: cancer for sure.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: And there is a documented case of somebody becoming ill
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: from their shields green wallpaper. Right.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah. There was an embass in the nineteen fifties to
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Italy named Claire booth Luce who had arsenic poisoning, and
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: just like Napoleon thought someone was poisoning him, the CIA
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: got involved and thought, well, the Soviets are poisoning this
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: woman who was an ambassador for us, and they went
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: in did some investigating, and sure enough, her ceiling in
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: her bedroom had arsenic in it, and apparently the washing
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: machine from the floor above would would rattle and shake
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: and that would release arsenic dust and she would just
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: breathe that stuff in all night when she slept and
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: it killed her.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: Pretty nuts, huh, pretty nuts? Well, big thanks to Open Culture,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: Paris Review, artist Network, Jezebel, and my dear wife you
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: me for suggesting this one in the first place.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Oh, is that her idea because of her schloss green headdress.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she's into Schwass screen antiques. I love it, well,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Chuck said, he loves it everybody, And you know what
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: that means? Short? Stuff?
• 12:59
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• 13:05
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