Word: arsenicals
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...hands jump, he cannot turn or close his eyes without falling. Faced with madness or paralysis, he is generally willing to undergo any heroic measure to set his world straight again. One of the best treatments for neurosyphilis (including tabes dorsalis, general paresis) is injections of tryparsamide, a penetrating arsenic compound. Tryparsamide has one tremendous drawback: it sometimes injures, sometimes destroys, the optic nerve, produces flickering vision, a narrow range of sight, even blindness. Yet doctors dare not do without the drug, because in cases of advanced syphilis it is one of the best safeguards against insanity and death...
...Philadelphia judge & jury last week awarded the electric chair to Herman Petrillo, 40, spaghetti salesman and "brains" of a murder-for-insurance syndicate alleged to have done away with four victims of arsenic poisoning on whose lives they had insurance (TIME, Feb. 13). After hearing the verdict, Herman Petrillo tried to slug the jury's forewoman, was dragged cursing from the courtroom. Judge Harry S. McDevitt ordered the arrest of Paul Petrillo (cousin) and the widow of a poisonee (two other widows were already in custody), and investigators began exhuming 70 bodies in graveyards of Pennsylvania, New Jersey...
Ferdinand Alfonsi did die, of arsenic poisoning. So did one Philip Ingrao, 18. So, the Government contended, did at least ten other Philadelphians, whose grasping relatives had insured them for a total of nearly $100,000, and given Herman Petrillo the job of making the policies pay out. Thoroughly professional, Mr. Petrillo, said witnesses, shopped around for cheap killers, worked not only with arsenic but with sandbags, faked hit-&-run accidents, a lead pipe so ingeniously designed that it could bash in a skull to look as if the victim had fallen downstairs...
...Cancer may be started by syphilis germs, certain viruses and tapeworms, or by application to the skin of simple chemicals (arsenic, chloride of zinc) and coal tar substances. But continued irritation does not cause cancer...
...antidote, but they had already turned pale, were staggering and clutching their throats. Two died, and one lay dangerously ill. They had all been given large doses of powerful arsphenamine (salvarsan, or 606, best treatment for early stages of syphilis) instead of the weaker derivative, neoarsphenamine, which contains less arsenic...