Medical history - arsenic symptoms

Maythe

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My MC is a scientist/chemist in late Victorian England, but she is not a doctor. She suspects an individual has been poisoned with arsenic. It's chronic poisoning so that the symptoms of gastric problems, cramping legs and thinning hair have developed over some time. The victim has clearly actually died from an accidental blow to the head but she wants to find out if he was being poisoned. If she writes to a doctor friend asking if there is anything else that produces these symptoms simultaneously, what is he likely to answer?

I know that acute arsenic poisoning was often mistaken for other diseases with gastric symptoms (e.g cholera - which then, of course, produces a cholera panic) and chronic poisoning could be any number of illnesses which give vomiting and diarrhoea but are the cramping legs and thinning hair a bit of a giveaway?
 

Marlys

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Here's how I would tackle this: go to Google Books, use Tools and choose 19th century for results (or set to specific range if that would be more helpful), and search symptoms arsenic poisoning. You'll get a ton of results from medical journals and books with in-depth discussion of what was known at the time, including how to distinguish arsenic poisoning from other illnesses. Assume that your MC's doctor friend has these books and journals on hand, and use them to shape his advice to her.
 

Maythe

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Thanks that's useful. A normal google search isn't much use for this - it gives me a reasonable overview of the symptoms but not much about the 19thC view.
 

Susannah Shepherd

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If you can get hold of this book easily, it may give you some ideas - I read it some time ago, and IIRC, some of the legal cases quoted go into other causes that could be confused with arsenic poisoning:
The arsenic century : how Victorian Britain was poisoned at home, work, and play / James C. Whorton

It might also be worth searching the online proceedings of the Old Bailey, to see what defences people might have put up when accused of poisoning? https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/
 

Maythe

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I had no idea that those Old Bailey records existed. That's brilliant, thanks! I'll check out the book too.