Why Everyone Back Then Wanted Everything to Be Green

Interview with Wiktoria Król, author of „Zabójcza zieleń”

„Zabójcza zieleń. Historia zielonego pigmentu z arszenikiem” („Deadly Green: The History of Arsenic Green”) received its second edition a few weeks ago. It’s a gripping story that reveals the darker side of history, showing how an obsession with beauty and the latest trends led to mass poisonings caused by toxic pigments. The book was written by Wiktoria Król – an author of books, short stories, and articles devoted to the history of medicine, science, and cultural curiosities.

Photo: Karolina Szal

How did you first encounter the story behind green pigment?

It was around 2012 when steampunk was in vogue. I was drawn to its aesthetics and started exploring what the Victorian era was really like. I collected various books – mainly in English since there were few publications in Polish – and kept discovering more intriguing threads. However, I was never interested in the nineteenth-century splendour, grand balls, or the queen. I just wanted to know what was going on at the bottom of society and what life was like in poorer areas. What caught my attention were opium dens and weird jobs like pure finders, who collected dog dung used to remove animal hair from hides. I was also interested in strange medicines – that’s how I once read about green pigment. I even posted a short article on my blog about it. At the same time, I was trying to writea book about something completely different.

Then came January 2020, bringing with it the beginning of a global pandemic – a year that would prove to be unforgettable. Back then, I realised that writing fiction wasn’t really for me. I lost heart while developing characters, and the world I was trying to create didn’t come together even though I’d done solid research. I thought, „Maybe I should try writing something non-fiction – maybe it will somehow unlock me”. I was considering green pigment and body snatchers, who dug up bodies from graves and sold them to anatomical schools. I thought that green pigment could be fun… And then the pandemic happened.

When you read „Zabójcza zieleń”, you have the impression that you’ve done a lot of research. You cite numerous sources – both Polish and international – and provide an extensive bibliography, even though this is quite a niche topic, and it’s not easy to find any information. Could you tell us more about how you worked on this book?

It was precisely because of the pandemic and having time on my hands. I also wanted to cope with the stress of a situation where I was afraid of losing my job, my savings, or even my life, so I started doing research. Reading about poisons is always more enjoyable than being stuck in a world facing a pandemic and lockdowns. I began by reading articles – some more academic than others. I followed the footnotes and tried to track down other sources through them. The interesting thing is that if I were writing „Zabójcza zieleń” today, with access to artificial intelligence, it would be much easier for me to find sources. These days, I can use Perplexity and type in something like, „Find academic articles on…” – I’m currently writing about radium – „…radium craze. They can be in Polish, English or French”, and immediately get links to those articles.

At the time of writing my book, ChatGPT and Perplexity didn’t exist, so looking for information felt like groping in the dark. You had to go from one footnote to another or search Google with terms like Scheele’s green and arsenic green. I came across numerous websites where you can find archival magazines. Polish sources are easily available in digital libraries, and the same goes for French ones, which can be accessed via the digital library Gallica. It gets harder when it comes to British sources as most of them are behind a paywall.

In April, the second edition of your book „Zabójcza zieleń. Historia zielonego pigmentu z arszenikiem” was published by Wydawnictwo Kobiece. How does it differ from the first one?

When my publishing agreement with Wydawnictwo IX, the publisher of the first edition, came to an end, I decided to republish the book to reach a wider audience. As some time had passed since the first edition, I started updating the sources. I soon realised if I kept doing that, I would never finish the book. Instead, I decided to focus on whether any new objects containing this toxic pigment had been discovered around the world, or whether any existing research had been expanded. That’s how I came across the wallpapers in Poniatówka – a manor house in Piaseczno, Poland. I interviewed Katarzyna Przesmycka, the conservator who discovered these wallpapers. This is something readers won’t find in the first edition. What’s more, the structure of the book and its visual layout have been slightly updated. Each chapter now begins with a beautifully framed quote from a book or press article that relates to its theme.

We’ve added a section called „According to the Press”. I came up with a similar idea in my book about body snatchers („Gang z Bethnal Green i nikczemne mordy w imię nauki”), and it went down well with readers, so I decided to do it again in „Zabójcza zieleń”. The second edition has also been enriched with new quotations and additional material from the Polish press as I managed to find more interesting sources.

You intertwine the main part of the book, which focuses on the 19th century, with interviews with contemporary experts in fields somehow related to green pigment. What inspired you to structure the book this way?

It all started when I was searching online for books with green covers and came across something called the „Poison Book Project” – a collection of books containing arsenic that had already been around for two years. I found contact information for Melissa Tedone, the project creator, and I thought, „Why not write to her? It’s not like she’d bite my head off”. I explained that I was working on a book about green pigment and asked if we could meet to talk about it. That’s how the first interview came about. Later, I decided to reach out to more people because I didn’t want the book to become just a collection of dry, boring scientific facts with a huge dose of chemistry. I didn’t know how to approach a toxicologist. Should I just make an appointment? And what would I say? „Doctor, I’m fine, I’d just like to talk about poisons”. I realised I needed to find a toxicologist who appears in the media. I went on YouTube and came across some videos featuring Dr Eryk Matuszkiewicz, who covers designer drugs and other weird substances people take. I messaged him on Instagram, asking if we could talk about arsenic. Everyone who agreed to be interviewed for my book is a passionate expert and a genuinely kind person. For example, Alison Matthews David, who appears in the chapter on dresses, sent me her entire book as a PDF, even though I told her I already had the original printed edition and that we shouldn’t engage in piracy. These are the kinds of people who help you out of the goodness of their hearts. They’ll give you access to all their scientific work with a kind of „Take it, read it, ask!”.

Do you think there’s anything contemporary in the history of arsenic green?

We keep poisoning ourselves – these days, it’s with microplastics. And that’s not going to change because every time a new chemical element or compound is discovered, people see it as a sort of miracle cure. I’m currently writing about the use of radium in cosmetics, and it’s exactly the same story. After the discovery of radium and its effects on the skin – given what was already known about Pierre Curie’s skin burns – people thought, „If it can do that to the skin, it must cure every illness and keep us wrinkle-free”. They genuinely believed it could work wonders. But after a while, it turned out that wasn’t the case. I guess we tend to get carried away by new discoveries too quickly, seeing in them all sorts of potential benefits – whether for health or practical everyday use. Time and again, they turn out not to be suited for those purposes.

So, please tell me – what exactly are you writing about radium?

I don’t yet know the exact context, but it won’t be about Marie Skłodowska-Curie. What I really want to explore is why people started seeing radium as a cure-all when the beauty industry took off in the early 20th century. We tend to think this is a modern phenomenon, but even back then, there were people – what we’d now call celebrities – endorsing products. Women were made to believe things like, „Got wrinkles? You’re ugly. Do something about it!”. So really, nothing has changed in over a hundred years. At the beginning of the 20th century, advertising and marketing specialists noticed that radium was fashionable and had huge sales potential, so they started promoting it as a miracle product. I want to show some interesting products from beauty brands. There’ll be categories like face, hair, body, and teeth. Some of the things I’ve found are so unbelievable that I can’t wait to share them with readers.

You write about chemistry in general – where does that come from? Is it your personal interest, or do you have a background in chemistry?

No, I’m a computer science engineer. I’m not familiar with chemistry. While writing my book „Zabójcza zieleń”, I started to understand it a bit better – but not too much. Unfortunately, most of what I write about is related to chemistry, so I’m constantly educating myself and understanding more and more. However, in my book „Gang z Bethnal Green”, I didn’t write about chemistry – that one’s about the history of medicine.

Was there anything that particularly surprised you about the story behind green pigment?

When you start reading about such terrible things, there comes a point when you become inured to them. Whenever I came across another case, I’d be like, „Alright, fine – how many people died? Does this fit my book?” So no, nothing really surprised me. But then, when I bought my first arsenical book, what did surprise me was how beautiful it was. That was the moment I began to understand what it must have felt like for people in the 19th century, and why they were buying all those things. You can’t see it in photos, but in sunlight the book is absolutely stunning – it has gilt edges and other golden details, and it’s just gorgeous. It made such a strong impression on me that I finally understood why everyone back then wanted everything to be green.