The Arsenic-Poisoning Epidemic of 1900

THE renowned epidemic of arsenic poisoning that occurred among beer drinkers of the Manchester-Salford—Liverpool district of England in the autumn of 1900 remains a historic instance of mass poisoning by mechanisms of special concern today. Two sources were incriminated, the one fairly obvious and easily discovered, and the other an obscure background factor that must have been operative but unrecognized for many years. This underlying factor might indeed have persisted indefinitely if the ingestion of arsenic at relatively asymptomatic levels had not been alarmingly aggravated by access of larger doses of the poison from the more obvious source.As long . . .