Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 64, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1899 — Wall Paper and Diseases. [ARTICLE]

Wall Paper and Diseases.

“Dr. Charnel of Cornell University,” sbserves the Kansas City Times In an editorial article March 8, “haa made an announcement which la calculated to cause a slump in the market for stock of the .wan paper trust. The doctor says that he has made chemical analysis of a large number of samples of wall paper, and in nearly all of them has found arsenical poisons, in some of them the poison existing In surprising quantities. Ete was led to make the investigation by having brought to his attention a number of cases of sickness which were traced to paper covered rooms. It is. to be presumed that, in the future, houses, in order to be classed as ‘strictly modern,’ will have to have frescoed walls. “While on the subject of waU paper, the CorneU scientist would confer a favor upon mankind by pursuing his investigation furtner. It would be interesting as well as instructive to know what per cent of the inmates of insane asylums owe their mental condition to their having been compelled to live in rooms whose walls were covered with realistic portraitures of an opium smoker’s dream. Some of the designs which are alleged to make living rooms cozy and homelike resemble nothing so much as the efforts of a dissipated artist to reproduce the experiences of an attack of the delirium tremens.” Alabastine, the rock-base cement for coating walls, is free from these objections. It is sanitary and costs less than wall paper.