Rensselaer Republican, Volume 24, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1891 — SUICIDE BY AMMONIA. [ARTICLE]

SUICIDE BY AMMONIA.

Tho Terrible Agony Does Not Pro* vent Its Use. J' ' No poison brings death with more madeniug agony than ammonia, but that fact does not seem to discotirage the suicide. The man Har rowitz, who deliberately swallowed a fatal dose of the drug in New York recently, is only one of the many who have gone the ammonia route to death in spite of the excruciating pain. Dr. Blyth has recorded thirty cases of ammonia poisoning in the small London district of which he is health officer; Professor Mitchell mentions twenty-two cases, and four have occurred during the short time Dr. Jenkins has been connected with the coroner’s office in New York. Cases of slow poisoning from ammonia are of constant occurrence among men who work in its manufa?ture, or even in decomposing substances which give it off in considerable quantities. Ammonia, slowly and from day to day taken into the system, causes the complexion to lose its freshness, and the skin of men who get heavily impregnated with it has a disagreeable blotched and discolored appearance. Taken into the stomach from day to day in even the small quantities used to adulterate food, such as baking powder, it not only injures the complexion but attacks the lining of; the stomach, and is the source of much general ill health. , The recent rapid increase in the use of ammonia for various purposes, and the consequent increase in its manufacture, have. madeit one of the most easily obtained poisons and. although everybody is familiar with it in some form, there is a surprising amount of ignorance of its dangerous qualities. Its use as an adulterant in any food preparation is simply a crime, and as a crime should be punished.