SOME POTENT DRUGS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2250, 15 April 1897, Page 49

SOME POTENT DRUGS.

Packed away behind a wilderness of gigantic warehouses and tnmble-down tenements, in a remote suburb of South London, is one of the strangest establishments in the world. It is a factory — but what a factory ! From morning till night its great chimneys are continuously belching forth cicada of fetid-smelling smoke. Occasionally a great column of steam will shoot high into the air ; not honest, white steam, but purple an<3 green and yellow, reminding one of coma bloatr.d and gigantic serpent. Daring the hours of darkness its location is betrayed to the most casual observer by the red glare in the sky from its innumerable furnaces. Tin massive gates leading to this strange establishment are locked and jealously guardol, for inside them lark danger and DEA^H TO THE UNWARY TRESPASSES. Poisons of such terrific strength as would suffice to send an army of men to eternity in the fractional part of a second lie around loose, and. are handled with as little apga?

tent care as if they were the moot harmless substances in the world. As baß already been intimated, this factory Is a dangerous place to visit. It is not enough for the casual comer to be careful where he steps and to refrain from touching. He must in addition refrain from using bis ', olfactory powers without special permission, j for there are poisons there which it is death even to smell. One of these is the pure or anhydrous prussic acid— a terrible preparation, which is seldom or never seen outside a chemical laboratory. The original discoverer of this, the deadliest oE all known poisons, was etricken dead through accidentally in- i haling its fumes, and scores of other deaths have happened from the same cause. It is this anhydrous acid from which the ordinary jind infinitely weaker pruesic acid of commerce is made, by diluting it with from 95 bo 97 per cent of water. Even in this form, however, it is BTJFFICIENILY STRONG TO CAUSE ALMOST j INSTANT DEATH, j Even when taken in exceedingly small 1 -doses. " Nest to anhydrous acid," remarked the proprietor of the works in question while piloting the writer round the tactoryoneday recently, " the most deadly stuff we make is cyanide of potassium. Last year we turned i out over 1000 tons of it, and, five grains be- [ ing a fatal doße, it follows that our output of this chemical aloee would have been sufficient to kill two millions and a- half of people. Altogether we manufacture, in the course of each twelvemonth, enough deadly poison to depopulate the United Kingdom. This may seem a somewhat startling assertion, but it iB, nevertheless, well within the truth." While we were conversicg we had entered ono of the workroom?, where a number of men were engaged round a sort of gigantic vriteb's. cauldron, containing over a hundredweight of molten cyanide. It was a picture such as would have delighted the heait of a Rubens or a Titian. The glare reflected from THE SEETHING MASS OP AVHITE-HOT LIQUID POISON; the lambent play of the furnaca fires ; and ever and anon a phantom face, enveloped in an uncanny-looking glass mask, peering through the thick, unctuous fumes, right Into the heart of the horrible mixture. ! In anotopv room wera tons upon tons of the finished product, looking for all the World like white crystallised sugar. " It lookß good enough to eat,' I remarked jocularly. " Ah," replied my guide gravely, " that is just one of the dangers we have to guard against. Tor some inexplicable reason cyanide of potassium exercises a remarkable fascination over the men engaged in its manufacture. They are haunted by a constant and ever-recurring desire to eat it. They are perfectly alive to the fact, however, that to give way to the cravicg would mean Instant death, and sre consequently üßualiy able to resist it. But net always. During the time I have been here three of our best and steadiest workmen have committed suicide in this strange manner, impelled thereto apparently by no cause save this mysterious, horrible longing. I myself have felt the same strange lust when I have been locg exposed to the cyanide fume?, and have baa to leave the works for a time in consequence. So well is this curious fact recognised that there are always two men at work together in thia branch of our business, and a jar of ammonia, which, as you may know, ii the antidote to the poison, is kept constantly near at hand." Apart from this remarkable infatuation, which may be likened to the desire experienced by many psople when standing on the brink of a precipice to throw themselves down, the manufacture of potassium cyanide is not particularly dangeroas. Neither is it unhealthy. In fact, it is asserted that men have gone into the cyanide house ill and debilitated, and in a short time have been restored to robust health. The same cannot, however, be said of COBHOSIVE SUBLIMATE. This fiigbf ul poison, in common with almost all the mercurial preparations, is exceedingly treacherous, and prolonged exposure to the fumes is often attended by very dangerous consequences. To persons unaccustomed to its proximity, even a comparatively short sojourn in that part of the works devoted to its manufacture sometimes give rise to various unpleasant symptoms, as the writer can testify. In my case, 10 minutes' exposure to the fumes sufficed to induce profuse running at the eyes, noae, and mouth, accompanied by a constant desire to expectorate, and followed by shivering, nausea, and headache. The room in which this particular poison is prepared, with its vast collection of strangely shaped stills, and its mazss of pipes and retorts, resembles an alchemist's laboratory. . Of course, not all the products of this weird factory are poisonous. Neither are all the smells nauseous, nor all the sight 3 uncanny. In one apartment, for instance, my nostrils are soluted with an exceedingly sweet 3avour, reminding me of "peardrop3," sweets beloved of my yoatb. It i« acetate of amyl, the precise drug used to give to the confection in qaestion its peculiar flavour. Another smaller chamber, from which emanates a etrong odour of camphor, is A VERITABLE FAIRY PALACE OF PUBE WHITE CRYSTALS. Facsimiles of palms, ferns, and masses of tropical vegetation droop in graceful festoons from the roof, and completely cover the vralls. A reproduction of the interior of this wondrous chamber on the stage of Drury Lane would be sufficient to assure thß success of next year's pantomime. Of course, the flowers and ferns are composed of neither ice nor^ snow, bub pure white camphor crystals. Some of the substances are so exceedingly volatile that, during the process of manufacture, they must never be permitted to come into contact with the outside air. A typical case is that of ether, which is passed from still to still and from retort to retort by means of long copper pipes, until at last it emerges the finished article of commerce. It produces, when swallowed, an almos; immediate exhilaration of spirits, followed by unsteadiness of gait, thickness of utterance, conf mion of ideas— in fact all the typical symptoms of ordinary intoxication. The effect passea away quickly, however, so that an ether-drinker can get drunk three or four times in an hoa&

My last visit, before quitting the works, was to the testing room, where, surroundedby hundreds of samples of THE DEADLIEST POISONS KNOWN TO SCIENCE, sat a tall, slender, and pretty young giil. Banged in front of her was a collection oE tubss of various shapes and sizss ; thermometers graduated to the one-hundredth part of a degree centigrade ; and scales so delicately poised that an eyelash laid upon one of the balances deflected the indicator nearly half an inch. By the aid of these and other strange and beautiful pieces of apparatus she was enabled to record the exact strength of the various products of the factory.