{"id":2466,"date":"2011-07-27T06:53:37","date_gmt":"2011-07-27T12:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asylumeclectica.com\/grim\/?p=2466"},"modified":"2011-07-27T06:53:37","modified_gmt":"2011-07-27T12:53:37","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-july-26-2011","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=2466","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour For July 26, 2011"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Today&#8217;s Flatly Incredible Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In 1863, poisoner Lydia Sherman was able to easily procure an ounce of powdered arsenic from a drugstore near her home in Harlem.  The druggist who dispensed the poison would not have raised an eyebrow at Lydia&#8217;s request.  Arsenic was a popular over-the-counter item at the time, sold in various forms and used &#8211; bizarrely enough &#8211; as both a pesticide and a beauty product.  A homeowner whose premises were infested with rodents might deal with the problem by sprinkling his floorboards with an arsenic compound called &#8220;Rough on Rats.&#8221;  At the same time, his adolescent daughter might hope to improve her complexion by dosing herself with &#8220;Bellavita Arsenic Beauty Tablets&#8221; &#8211; absolutely guaranteed (according to the newspaper ads) to eliminate &#8220;Pimples, Blotches, Freckles, Sunburn, Discolorations, Eczema, Blackheads, Roughness, Redness, and to Restore the Bloom of Youth to Faded Faces!&#8221;  That American women would eagerly ingest rat poison for its supposedly cosmetic properties seems flatly incredible to us &#8211; equivalent to treating a bad case of acne by swallowing a few shots of Raid.  But it was typical of those wildly unregulated, pre-FDA days, when the marketplace was flooded with medicinal cure-alls concocted of everything from cocaine and chloroform to morphine and mercury.  <\/p>\n<p>Culled from: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0671014501\/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=theasylumeclecti&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=217145&#038;creative=399349&#038;creativeASIN=0671014501\">Fatal : The Poisonous Life of a Female Serial Killer<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=theasylumeclecti&#038;l=as2&#038;o=1&#038;a=0671014501&#038;camp=217145&#038;creative=399349\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important; margin:0px !important;\" \/><br \/>\n<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s Flatly Incredible Yet Truly Morbid Fact! In 1863, poisoner Lydia Sherman was able to easily procure an ounce of powdered arsenic from a drugstore near her home in Harlem. The druggist who dispensed the poison would not have raised an eyebrow at Lydia&#8217;s request. Arsenic was a popular over-the-counter item at the time, sold [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2466\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}