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?
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?