Dark History
The assassin dressed in green: the colour of death
In 1775, the Swedish chemist Karl Wilhelm Scheele created a bright green pigment, copper arsenite, which in 1814 the German entrepreneur Wilhelm Sattler perfected and transformed into an industrial product: "Paris Green". Gaudy, covering, stable and cheap, that green conquered the nineteenth century: it covered wallpapers, clothes, gloves, candles and even children's toys. But it hid a silent assassin: arsenic. In humid rooms, the pigment released toxic vapours that poisoned those who breathed them. In 1862, in London, there was scientific proof that a little girl died from the arsenic present in the wallpaper of her bedroom. For decades it was even believed that Napoleon had been killed by that green on Saint Helena, but in 2007 it was discovered that the real assassin was stomach cancer. "Paris Green" was the most elegant assassin in history: a colour that promised spring and instead brought death.
