14. Arsenic, a hazardous and carcinogenic element, was frequently used in early cancer treatments, often merely giving patients additional cancers and pains rather than solving the existing conditions.
Arsenic is a metallic element known primarily for being immensely hazardous to humans due to high levels of toxicity. Despite this defining characteristic, Victorian England employed arsenic generously, believing that the whiter a person’s face, the more it showed they had never worked in the fields. Mixing the poison with vinegar and chalk, arsenic was eaten, as well as rubbed into the skin, by high-class women to whiten their facial complexions. Wallpapers also included the toxic substance to brighten the color schemes, whilst in 1858 approximately 20 people died as a result of the Bradford sweet poisoning when arsenic was included in peppermint humbugs.
More astoundingly, not only used by ignorant members of the English aristocracy, arsenic was employed by medical physicians as an early treatment for cancers. In 1786, Thomas Fowler proposed the use of a 1% potassium arsenite solution, prescribed in tonic form, as a treatment for leukemia. Adopted by the medical profession, by 1845 arsenic was widely used to combat cancers and would expand in usage to also treat syphilis, psoriasis, and ulcers. However, as arsenic is itself extremely carcinogenic the practice merely gifted patients with side effects including liver cirrhosis, bladder cancer, skin cancer, and heart disease.