Chapter 10, 11

Ch.10:Fortunes from Phosphorus- Since the beginning of the phosphorus discovery, there have always been people ready to supply the need.
We met Godfrey in Chapter 2, who was Robert Boyle's assistant in the lab. When Boyle showed disinterest in the selling, Godfrey made his own and sold it, for almost 50 years he had his very own phosphorus monopoly.


Ch. 11: Unlucky Days: As dangerous as we know phosphorous to be, the flammability and toxicity seemed to be the most dangerous of days and brought on the most horrific accidents. That's where chapter 11 begins and ends with telling is more about the unfortunate souls killed and affected by these characteristics.

Chapter 9- Murder

As the chapters shown before, phosphorus can be deadly,  modified to make it a poison. The human body was made with an ability to detoxify many molecules presented in plants and natural insecticides. What it wasn't equipped with is the ability to cope with toxic elements, of which phosphorus is a grouling sample of.
Even with the knowledge of the poisonous characteristics of phosphorus it didn't keep people (in the Victorian Age), from eating it. This came with them eating match heads, with the belief of becoming "smarter", or committing suicide. A lethal dose of phosphorus for an adult is about 100 mg. In other words about a tenth of a gram, which just so happened to be the amount of phosphorus in a box of matches. For a baby, 20 mg, just about 10 match heads would become deadly. The time it takes to kill, is form hours to days. When large amounts are ingested in could take just hours.
Although many deaths to do with phosphorus were planned and done accordingly, there were also many accidental deaths.
And then there are the real murders. For example Dr Bowers, who disposed of his first and second wives, and third for sure. Then the rum and rodine cocktails, rodine being known as rat poisoning, people would easily mix these "cocktails" and give them to there targets.
Sounds chilling and unheard of.. but it happened.

Chapter 8- The ultimate evil - and a power for good

Around 1944 there was a new kind of chemical warfare. Tubun, was the name, and killing people was its game. Tubun was another deadly phosphorus compound and ten times more deadly than any mustard gas Winston Churchill could draw up. It was in the hands of a deadly weapon in itself, Adolf Hitler. But the questions lie ahead as why didn't he use it, and would it have influenced the outcome of the war in Europe. The answer to number one is we're not really sure. His advisers urged him to use tubun, but for some reason he knew that the allies must have had nerve gas as well and it would only retaliate further. He chose not to use the weapon that may have saved his then degrading empire in Germany. To number two, well, the jury rules as though it would have not influenced the outcome. Although, it would have caused panic where ever it had been used. One breath of tubun caused temporary blindness. Two breaths incapacitate, and three, well three it would have caused death.
Phosphorus in the hands of Nazi chemists was not a turn for good.

Chapter 7- Gomorah

When phosphorus bonds are dropped on cities during the Second World War (1935-45), you may wonder what the affects may be. Well playwrights and novelists took on the "dirty job" of describing the affects of burning phosphorus.
"Heisenberg: You never had the slightest conception of what happens when bombs are dropped on cities. Even conventional bombs. None of you ever experienced it. Not a single one of you ever experienced. Not a single one of you. I walked back from the centre of Berlin to the suburbs one night, after one of the big raids. No transport moving of course. The whole city on fire. Even the puddles in the streets are burning. They're puddles of molten phosphorus. It gets on your shoes like some incandescent dog-muck - I have to keep scraping it off - as if the streets had been fouled by the hounds of hell. It would have made you laugh, my shoes kept bursting into flames. All around me, I suppose, there are people trapped, people in various stages of burning to death".  This from Act 1 of Copenhagen by Michael Frayn.
Describing the power and horror phosphorus bombs create can be hard. Some authors have tried to capture the moments of incredible terror.
"But the worst has yet to come ... a large phosphorus bomb fell directly outside ... the people nearest the door now gave way to an indescribable panic ... Terrible scenes took place. since all of us saw certain death in front of us, with the only way out a sea of flames. We were caught like rats in a trap. Doors were thrown on the canister by screaming people and not smoke and heat poured in ... some collapsed and never woke up again. Three soldiers committed suicide. I begged my husband to beat back the flames with our blanket but he was un able to do so. My hair began to singe..".
Not all versions are written in books, or playwrights. The one above was a real account from a woman who survived a phosphorus bombing.
Phosphorus was only used in bombs when it could be produced in rather large quantity. Large scale production became available in 1882 when electric furnaces were produced which allowed phosphorus to be extracted from phosphate ore. This industrialization opened the world to bigger and badder warfare.
Lastly, you must all be wondering... What is Gomorrah, and why is the chapter named after it? It is an  operation and otherwise known as operation Gomorrah. The operation was scheduled for July 1843. it lasted 8 grouling days and destroyed the population of Hamburg, Germany.
People killed at the least- 37,000
Property destroyed
253,000 apartment blocks
35,500 houses
2,632 shops
580 factories
379 office blocks
277 schools
83 banks
77 cinema and theatres
76 municipal buildings
69 post offices
58 churches
24 hospitals
1 zoo
Water mains broke- 850
Shipping sunk- 180,000 tons
Rubble- 40 million tons

Chapter 6- The cost of a box of Matches

Unfortunately the cost of a box of matches wasn't just a few cents. In some cases it was the bones, gums and teeth of the girls who worked with the phosphorus. This was called phosphorus necrosis, it is a corrosive condition, in which it eroded their teeth and gums and sometimes all the way through to the bone.
On one account of a young female who started working at the Bryant and May match factory when she was just 18 years old. The work was tough, but the wages, before and after the strike that she brought home were a blessed addition to her family. She was married when 22, and welcomed her first baby boy, a year later. When she was 24, her wisdom tooth began to ache, so bad that she visited a local dentist. He saw it had been so eroded, the cavity it left behind refused to heal, and days later, it began to discharge a pus, which became so bad it started oozing from her nose. Her jawbone became exposed and one day a piece of it came away. What finally happened to her is undescribed, but you can only imagine what happened next.
Phossy jaw, or phosphorus necrosis was not new. It was a hazard of the phosphorus industry.
As stated before, money wasn't the only expense, but also the liveliness and health of those working with it.

Chapter 5- Strike!

The chapters of this book are incredibly long and detailed, with much consideration, I decided to tell you about the great year of 1888, which is included in this chapter. 1888, the British Empire included a third of the world's population; Victoria was Queen Empress and Marquess of Salisbury was her Conservative Prime Minister; Leo XIII was Pope; and Grover Cleveland, a democrat, was President of the United States; Jack the Ripper was stalking the streets of London, murdering and mutilating; and in July of 1888, a threatening event occurred in the same city, the girls who worked at Bryant and May match factory came out on a strike, and won.
The strike at Bryant and May's was actually rather unexpected. Bryant and May had been motivated by the highest ideals, and other than the set backs mentioned last chapter, there business seemed to flourish thoroughly. What caused the strike was the horid economic depression of the late 19th century, which had driven down the price of lucifers.
Bryant and May, had become a public company in the year of 1884. It employed roughly 3,000 people, majority working at home making match boxes and about 1,300 working in Bow factory itself. The employers were actually extremely worker loyal. When a tax was imposed and they fought for it to be levied. Unfortunately Bryant and May and other nanufacturers were furious, and began a public campaign to stop it. We can take it as them being against the tax, and as the campaigns and riots increased authoritative powere tried to stop it. Eventually the unliked tax on matches was lifted, when Queen Victoria expresses her non-amusement of the tax.  As loyal as they were to their workers, it wasn't enough and when wages and hours were cut, the strike began.

Chapter 4- Strike a Light

In chapter 4 it begins with the phosphorus lucifer. What is the phosphorus lucifer? I am asking myself the same question. It turns out that the phosphorus lucifer was a match, originally discovered by Robert Boyle. He first discovered it by coating a piece of paper with phosphorus and a piece of wood with sulfur and rubbing it together and creating a fire. Later on, chemists like John Walker made advancements to the original experiment and created the match. After eighty years of being on the market it was the world's best selling match, but in 1910 it had been outlawed. The phosphorus lucifer was very popular in the war era, as they used them to light fires and much more. The matches were made with white phosphorus, until in the 1850's when the first safety matches were made. They relied much less on red phosphorus. People relied on the matches for everyday tasks like cooking, heating, and lighting there homes. The phosphorus made it very easy to light matches, and were extremely cheap. A person could by 1,200 matches for just the price of one penny.

Matches have been around since the Roman Empire, usually consisting of a small wooden stick and covered with sulfur on one end. How did one get a flame on a cold winters night? Flint and tinder. Knocking the flint against a piece of metal of  some sort would knock of incandescent sparks and like the tinder on fire.
In 1825, a new match was developed, called the Eupyrion feuerstoffe. The problem with these although was that one must have carried around a bottle of concentrated sulfuric acid to ignite the matches.
Phosphorus was always referred to as an instant flame device, the problems that occured included low control over the flammability and its high cost. 

Chapter Three- The toxic tonic

Chapter 3 begins with the warnings and benefits of Dr. Ashburton Thompson on phosphorus. Those consisting of the effects of phosphorus ointments and more to do with that subject.
Thompson's book Free Phosphorus, was published in 1874 and more than devoted to extolling the benefits phosphorus could bring to the relief of suffering humans. The use of phosphorus as an ointment was never really popular, but when used fascinated the patients by making them glow in the dark. At this time looking back it seems weird to us that such a poisonous element was used for medical treatment, but back then there was no bar as to what they used it for. Paracelsus was born in 1493. He was one to oppose the ancient idea, of disease being caused by an imbalance of "humours" in the body. His idea was that each disease that arose had a specific cause and therefore a chemical remedy. It was his idea and novel that caused many sorts of chemicals to be used as medical treatments, such as mercury treatments for syphilis; antimony for treating fevers; and bismuth for upset stomachs. The fact of them being deadly poisons didn't prevent them from being prescribed by physicians. Therefore, phosphorus being extracted from urine and glowed with its own source of light added to the attraction of it, the certain glow it had gave more evidence towards being the 'flammula vitae', or the vital flame of life.
The first person to sell phosphorus as a pharmaceutical treatment was Johann Lancke. He ran into a problem when he realized that phosphorus was extremely flammable and it needed to have a protective coating. He found he could use silver or gold for the coating. The metals could provide protection to prevent a pill from rapidly oxidizing and catching fire, but they were incapable of preventing its slow oxidation and thankfully converted most of the deadly poison into harmless oxides and acids. He began to sell the pills as 'Kunckel's pills' which increased popularity. Every pill weighed about 200 mg and was reputed as a beneficial treatment for colic, asthmatic fevers, tetanus, and gout. Of course, they were really useless in treating any of the above conditions, and if they were to really contain 200 mg of phosphorus they would have been severely poisonous. In some reported cases there were pills which contained 800 mg of phosphorus, and would have inevitably killed whoever took them. 'Kunckel's pills' ceased to be manufactured and he never revealed how to make them. The pills were unavailable until a French pharmacist rediscovered the means of producing them. He then too ceased making them once he found one pill could become fatal.
Treatment with phosphorus really seemed to spark with a discovery made by Professor Johann Thomas Huesing, in 1719 he discovered phosphorus in the brain tissue and the numbers were unexpectedly high, and the amount was higher than in any other body part. His findings implicated that phosphorus was rather important to the brain. This link between phosphorus and the brain was strengthened when a Dr. Kramer announced it was a remedy for epilepsy and melancholia, which is also known as depression. Later researchers and scientists began provide explanations for why humans differ so much in terms of mental ability, and that being: levels of phosphorus in the brain. A philosopher Friederich Nietzsche thought that chemicals in the body might have a determining influence on personality, etc.
Phosphorus acquired an undeserved reputation as a treatment for TB in 1796. It became considerably beneficial to the nervous system, and treating neuroglia, and bone conditions. It is still used as a nerve tonic to this day. It is proven that phosphorus is overall inevitably harmful, and less beneficial which is where the tweaks come in  and phosphates are known more to be used, being less harmful.


P.S. Incredibly sorry that this post is so long, but this chapter was filled with great information and answers to questions I've been asking myself of treatments of phosphorus, and its harmfulness.

Chapter 2- The alchemist and his apprentice

As we step into chapter two, we take a look into the alchemist Robert Boyle's life. Robert Boyle was part of the Royal Society and had retained a life long search for the philosopher's stone, just like many other alchemists and chemists some being included in the first chapter like Kraft, Kunckel, and Brandt. The Royal Society was first created by King Charles II, in 1660 to promote the study of science. Boyle did a lot of work in the transmutation of base metals into gold, and many of his papers are cited in the chapter as well. As he experimented with many elements such as Mercury, he looked towards the good things about it, and eventually the bad caught up to him and King Charles II. Acute mercury poisoning seemed to be the cause of his chronic illness, and King Charles II's death.
When Kraft, who was discussed in chapter one, arrived in London, Boyle invites him to display his findings of phosphorus. Boyle was so fascinated with phosphorus that he knew he had to make his own and discover the properties of phosphorus. To trim things up a bit, Daniel Kraft shows his stuff and Boyle wants to know of the "recipe." Kraft only gave him clue, "it belonged to the human body," and Boyle's personal investigation began. Throughout Boyle's papers, the change from secretive alchemist changed to scientific chemist around 1680. Boyle wrote his papers full of his observations, experiments, and tried to explain everything in plain English, but not only that but so the ordinary person could read them. The chapter continues on with Boyle's experiments and the road to the discovery of his own phosphorus.

The 13th Element: The Sordid Tale of Murder, Fire, and Phosphorus- Blog 1

John Emsley begins the book, The Thirteenth Element: The Sordid Tale of Murder, Fire, and Phosphorus, with an intriguing introduction of phosphorus. Phosphorus is man made, and not a natural element, but a chemical element. Phosphorus is a derivative of phosphates when oxidized. The name phosphorus derives from the ancient Greek words phos, meaning light, and phorus, meaning bringing. The chemical element, is known for murder, spontaneous human combustion, graveyard ghosts, and mysterious lights.
Beginning in the first chapter, Emsley informs us of the multiple "founders" of phosphorus. Although it may have been around for a long time before, the story begins with Henning Brandt. On a cold, dark night this alchemist was having no luck with his recent experiments, and was on the road of searching for the philosopher's stone. Like many before him, he was studying the gold stream, also referred to as urine, and heating the residues from which he had boiled down to a dry solid. Stoking at his fire, he recognized a pale green lighted flame and hour after hour the light never disappeared. Indeed, he had phosphorus. As this goes on, Brandt, calling himself Herr Doktor  Brandt, creates many friends and foes at the same time. Like many alchemist, money was tough and that's where the other founders come into play, including Johann Kunckel and Daniel Kraft. Daniel Kraft became the one who bought all of Brandt's phosphorus and traveled around palaces, showing off and entertaining the rich. When Kunckel was denied access to the phosphorus from Kraft and Brandt, he went on to do his own work.
The story turns toward Johann Kunckel, when he successfully produces phosphorus on his own and not only that but successfully turns lead into gold which Brandt could not do. With his many fortunes, came great opportunity and the book continues. Kunckel was given the name of discoverer, and died in 1703. While Kunckel and Brandt at home, Kraft continued making his progress showing off the phosphorus he bought off of Brandt, making a name for himself. Time continues, and Brandt became in need for more money. Eventually he became the resident alchemist in the Court of St. James, requested by the Duke. The alchemy of phosphorus is deeply discussed and shown and that's where the fun begins.
Throughout the books, simple and hard questions are asked and answered. Such as, what is phosphorus? Why does it glow in the dark? How can it be produced from urine? And the journey begins.