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April 4, 2015
p169 He had an unusual appearance for a customer. To our humble and enterprising laboratory, hiring us to analyse the most disparate materials, came all sorts of people, men and women, old and young, but all members of the large, ambiguous, and cunning network of commerce. Anyone who has the trade of buying and selling is easily recognized: he has a vigilant eye and a tense face, he fears fraud or considers it, and he is on guard like a cat at dusk. It is a trade that tends to destroy the immortal soul; there have been courtier philosophers, lens-grinding philosophers, and even engineer and strategist philosophers; but no philosopher, so far as I know, was a wholesaler or storekeeper.
This seems to contradict the example of Alberto only a few chapters before. Though perhaps I’m giving the term “philosopher” a looser meaning than Levi.
I received him, since Emilio was not there. He could have been a peasant philosopher: he was a robust and rubicund old man, with heavy hands deformed by work and arthritis; his eyes looked clear, mobile, youthful, despite the large delicate bags that hung slackly under the eye sockets. He wore a vest, from whose small pocket dangled a watch chain. He spoke Piedmontese, which immediately made me ill at ease: it is not good manners to reply in Italian to someone who speaks in dialect, it puts you immediately on the other side of a barrier, on the side of the aristos, the respectable folk, the “Luigini,” [“A term coined by Levi to denote a political lacky who inflicts cruel treatment on the poor and weak, while fawning upon the wealthy and powerful” -Source] as they were called by my illustrious namesake [Footnote: “In other words, the respectable, subservient middle class. The ‘Illustrious namesake’ is the writer, Carlo Levi, who expresses himself on this score quite eloquently and vividly in the book The Watch”]; but my Piedmontese, correct in form and sound, is so smooth and enervated, so polite and languid, that it does not seem very authentic. Instead of a genuine atavism it seems the fruit of diligent study, burning the midnight oil over a grammar and dictionary.
p170 So in excellent Piedmontese with witty Astian tones he told me he had some sugar he wanted “chemistried”: he wanted to know whether it was or was not sugar, or if perhaps there was some “filth” in it...
p171 ...I dissolved a little in distilled water: the solution was turbid -- there was certainly something wrong with it. I weighed a gram of sugar in the platinum crucible (the apple of our eyes) to incinerate it on the flame: there rose in the lab’s polluted air the domestic and childish smell of burnt sugar, but immediately afterward the flame turned livid and there was a much different smell, metallic, garlicky, inorganic, indeed contra-organic: a chemist without a nose is in for trouble. At this point it is hard to make a mistake: filter the solution, acidify it, take the Kipp [Here?], let hydrogen sulfide bubble through. And here is the yellow precipitate of sulfide, it is arsenious anhydride -- in short, arsenic, the Masculinum [?], the arsenic of Mithridates and Madame Bovary.
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p172 The man returned the next day. He insisted on paying the fee, even before knowing the result of the analysis. When I told him his face lit up with a complicated, wrinkled smile, and he said to me, “I’m glad. I said it would end up like this.” It was evident that he only waited for the slightest solicitation from me to tell the story. I did not disappoint him, and this is the story, a trifle faded due to the translation from the Piedmontese, an essentially spoken language. [But I’m going to summarize it: He was a cobbler working on Via Gioberti for thirty years. An ambitious competitor set up a shop nearby but was having a hard time making a living. Our cobbler heard from the old ladies of the neighborhood that the new cobbler was telling lies about him, “That I resoled with cardboard. That I get drunk every night. That I made my wife die for the insurance...” When the package of sugar showed up one day “with the day’s shoes” (how do they do business there?) he was suspicious so he gave a little to the cat and to himself and his daughter (?!) and everyone vomited; so he finally brought it in to be tested.
p173 [Levi] “Do you want to bring charges? Do you need a declaration?”
“No, no. I told you, he’s only a poor devil and I don’t want to ruin him. For this trade, too, the world is large and there’s a place for everyone: he doesn’t know it, but I do.”
“So?”
“So tomorrow I’ll send back the parcel by one of my little old ladies, together with a note. In fact, no -- I think I’ll bring it back myself, so I can see the face he makes and I’ll explain two or three things.” He looked around, as one would in a museum, and then added, “Yours too is a fine trade: you need an eye and patience. And he who hasn’t got them, it’s best that he look for something else.”
p174 He said goodbye, picked up the parcel, and walked down without taking the elevator, with the tranquil dignity that was his by nature.
“The main use of metallic arsenic is for strengthening alloys of copper and especially lead (for example, in car batteries). Arsenic is a common n-type dopant in semiconductor electronic devices, and the optoelectronic compound gallium arsenide is the most common semiconductor in use after doped silicon. Arsenic and its compounds, especially the trioxide, are used in the production of pesticides, treated wood products, herbicides, and insecticides. These applications are declining, however.[7]
A few species of bacteria are able to use arsenic compounds as respiratory metabolites. Experimentally, tiny quantities of arsenic are an essential dietary element in the rat, hamster, goat, chicken, and presumably many other species, including humans. However, the element often causes toxicity to multicellular life due to its presence in quantities far larger than needed. Arsenic contamination of groundwater is a problem that affects millions of people across the world.”
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“When heated in air, arsenic oxidizes to arsenic trioxide; the fumes from this reaction have an odor resembling garlic. This odor can be detected on striking arsenide minerals such as arsenopyrite with a hammer. ”
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“Arsenic sulfides (orpiment, realgar) and oxides have been known and used since ancient times.[30] Zosimos (circa 300 AD) describes roasting sandarach (realgar) to obtain cloud of arsenic (arsenious oxide), which he then reduces to metallic arsenic.[31] As the symptoms of arsenic poisoning were somewhat ill-defined, it was frequently used for murder until the advent of the Marsh test, a sensitive chemical test for its presence. (Another less sensitive but more general test is the Reinsch test.) Owing to its use by the ruling class to murder one another and its potency and discreetness, arsenic has been called the "poison of kings" and the "king of poisons".[32]
During the Bronze Age, arsenic was often included in bronze, which made the alloy harder (so-called "arsenical bronze").[33][34] Albertus Magnus (Albert the Great, 1193–1280) is believed to have been the first to isolate the element from a compound in 1250, by heating soap together with arsenic trisulfide.[35] In 1649, Johann Schröder published two ways of preparing arsenic.[36] Crystals of elemental (native) arsenic are found in nature, although rare.
Cadet's fuming liquid (impure cacodyl), often claimed as the first synthetic organometallic compound, was synthesized in 1760 by Louis Claude Cadet de Gassicourt by the reaction of potassium acetate with arsenic trioxide.[37]
In the Victorian era, "arsenic" ("white arsenic" or arsenic trioxide) was mixed with vinegar and chalk and eaten by women to improve the complexion of their faces, making their skin paler to show they did not work in the fields. Arsenic was also rubbed into the faces and arms of women to "improve their complexion". The accidental use of arsenic in the adulteration of foodstuffs led to the Bradford sweet poisoning in 1858, which resulted in around 20 deaths.[38]
Two pigments based on arsenic have been widely used since their discovery – Paris Green and Scheele's Green. After arsenic's toxicity became widely known, they were less often used as pigments, so these compounds were more often used as insecticides. In the 1860s, an arsenic byproduct of dye production, London Purple – a solid consisting of a mixture of arsenic trioxide, aniline, lime, and ferrous oxide, which is insoluble in water and very toxic by inhalation and ingestion[39] – was widely used, but Paris Green, another arsenic-based dye, was later substituted for it.[40] With better understanding of the toxicology mechanism, two other compounds were used starting in the 1890s.[41] Arsenite of lime and arsenate of lead were used widely as insecticides until the discovery of DDT in 1942.[42][43][44]”
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“Arsenic was also used in various agricultural insecticides and poisons. For example, lead hydrogen arsenate was a common insecticide on fruit trees,[48] but contact with the compound sometimes resulted in brain damage among those working the sprayers. In the second half of the 20th century, monosodium methyl arsenate (MSMA) and disodium methyl arsenate (DSMA) – less- toxic organic forms of arsenic – have replaced lead arsenate in agriculture. With the exception of cotton farming, the use of the organic arsenicals was phased out until 2013.[49]
Arsenic is used as a feed additive in poultry and swine production, in particular in the U.S. to increase weight gain, improve feed efficiency, and to prevent disease.[50][51]”
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“In subtoxic doses, soluble arsenic compounds act as stimulants, and were once popular in small doses as medicine by people in the mid-18th to 19th centuries.[10]”
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