Arsenic Culture

Arsenic Bread: The Hong Kong Mass Poisoning Scandal | Ep. 119

• Arsenic Culture • Season 4 • Episode 119

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In 1857, nearly 10% of Hong Kong’s European population was poisoned by bakery bread laced with arsenic. Was it political sabotage, racism-fueled hysteria, or just one hell of a bakery blunder?

In this episode, we dive into the chaos of colonial paranoia, courtroom drama, and the wild trial of Cheong Ah-lum, a baker who offered to behead himself and his entire family in court.

🔥 Exploding tensions from the Opium Wars
 🥖 Mass poisoning, bizarre trials, and wrongful banishment

When imperialism and hysteria collided over a loaf of bread


#EsingBakery #ArsenicCulture #HeavyPour

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During court, uh, Cheung offered to behead himself and his family if found guilty until, holy law, this boggled my mind. Yeah, it is just basically like his version of Seppuku. Welcome back to Arsenic culture where beer don't count. bad decisions do on. Matt, I'm I'm Jason. I was just waiting for the third. We we've been doing three, and I was just sitting there waiting for her. I was like, say you're live, But there's nobody here. No I know Kendra. Uh, yeah. My wife, Kendra's actually been on the past like four or five that we've done. Four or five. Right. She just got back from Italy, so. She was like, fuck that. I'm taking a nap. Um, she was there for like 36 hours straight. gonna dock her pay? Uh, yeah, I'm going from $0 to $0. So, but she brought back a bunch of gifts, uh, which is really cool. We're gonna do some quick shots. We, like gifts still coming. Um, she brought me back, uh, I got a leather belt, like a real, it's not this one, but like, uh, I'm not, I'm not wearing it. That's kind of a insult to her, but, um, yeah, like an actual Italian leather belt. That's pretty nice. Which is awesome because like. When you talk about leather, it's like, oh, is that a real Italian leather? It's like, yeah, motherfucker is made in Italy. So I assume it's Italian. leather Mine's Italian too. It's just from Walmart, I'm pretty Yeah. Made in, made in Vietnam, but Italian leather. Um, but yeah, she brought me back a, a bell that says, you know, one of those like little like bells for like, um, servants. Yeah. And it says Ring for beer. I like that. Which is. Probably the single worst decision she's ever made in her life.'cause I've used the fuck out of it already. Uh, but yeah, and a bunch of upcoming quick shots, um, that's gonna be really cool. So, but she's not here. Fuck it. Let's just roll. Uh, today we have a really interesting story. This the first mention of actual arsenic. In any content that we've done considering the name of our brand is Arsenic Culture. to think back to esos, but I don't think we've done any we ever talk about it. No. Yeah. Um, but yeah, this is, this is kind of a crazy story. Uh, And it centers in China. right? I mean, It's China. Right. Okay. know, I look, I look back and forth on this and honestly I couldn't exactly tell, but yes, I think it's in British, Hong Kong actually is where it's Yeah. And I'm assuming it's the same as like today Hong Kong, but this was like hundreds of years Yeah. 1857 where we're talking, so a few years back. Just, just a couple, yeah. But to, uh, we're gonna talk about the story. It's the, um, the, the husing. Bakery poisoning. pronounce it. Okay. I I just thought it was ing. Yeah, I, I'm, it's E-S-I-N-G. I had to, uh, Google all these pronunciations and I'm gonna forget 'em all. I didn't Google any, so it'd be great when I talk. So we're just gonna go with whatever I say. Um, but yeah. To kind of commemorate this, this episode, we're gonna open a bottle of Ming River, uh, Siwan Baiju. Baiju is a distilled spirit, Chinese distilled spirit. Um, I thought about doing like a spill on this a while back, but. we've done so many Asian spirits, like I'm actually not familiar with that term at all. Like what Baijiu? Yeah. B-A-I-J-I-U. It's, It's, it's, kind of like, um, chu have yet that, uh, yeah, yeah. Japanese stuff. Um, it, there, it's so similar. I didn't really see it. warranting another, No. But, uh, I've never actually had it, so I, guess We'll, I haven't either, to my knowledge, gonna let you open that. I. Gotcha. But, um, this event, uh, like Jason said, start centered back around 1857 in Hong Kong. Again, I'm assuming it's it's the same area as current day Hong Kong. but it was British occupied at the time, or European occupied. But, um, there was a contingent of Europeans there because it was a colony back then. Um, but basically what happened is a bunch of people got poisoned and it kind of went down in history as a possible. Mass murder plot, uh, that was very racially biased, very racially based. Um, you just smelled that. How does it smell? Sorry. It smells great. It's a hell of a bottle too. I didn't realize the bottom of It's like a little, little pedestal. it is kind of cool. Isn't liquid all the way down there. It smells very, very fruity. Like, uh, soju, like you were talking about. Mm-hmm. Well, you thought I said soju. I said Oh, say, yeah, that's what I meant. all, it's all. the same though, right? Yeah. So, let me start, let me start this story off. Um, back in 1857, amid the second opium war. Mm-hmm. Did you know that there was two opium? wars? the one. think I was taking a nap during the first one. Yeah, yeah. Um, the opium Wars apparently, uh, centered around opium. Opium. I know I don't know if you knew that. Uh, but yeah, quite literally they were fighting over like the opium trade and it was between. I think, um, China and, uh, the Western colonies. like, like the European powers, uh, for obvious reasons, because it's a hell of a drug opiums a hell of a drug. you look like the movies. I remember like opium dens, you know, people in there just always passed out and smoke like a hookah, you know, the opium Oh yeah, exactly. That, that was like, that was their like crack rock. Back then. I mean, Pretty much. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. So, but um, during the second Opium war, which lasted between 1856 and 1860, Um, there was this event, the Husing husing, uh, bakery poisoning. Um, on January 15th and 1857 between 300 and 500. And tell me if you have something. different there. Mostly European colonists got sick. Um, they were, there was nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, dizziness, all after eating bread from one bakery. E-S-I-N-G and I think it's pronounced Husing Bakery. What kind of, um. Drew attention to it was that all the loaves of bread that were seen to have been poisoned were quote unquote European style loaves. Um, I Yeah. So like, uh, Chinese people would make bread, but their bread was, um, softer and it was sweeter. It's almost like a cake light. consistently. the European style is kind of like what we're used to. You think of like a French baguette or something like that? Yeah. It's crispy. Um, it's, it's a little bit more dry. Probably like fluffy like that. That's the bread that. we are used to, those were all the loaves that were poisoned. So, uh, back the Hong Kong or the Qing Dynasty was uh, I guess the dynasty in power in China at the time. But, I. uh, European colonists were settling in Hong Kong and since there was a contingent of European people, a lot of businesses were catering to Europeans. They were producing bread that they're used to Over in Europe and Britain. And charge 'em a little bit more probably, you know, Oh yeah, sure. Yeah. And Apparently. they were putting a little bit of arsenic poison in there. Yeah, that's why you charge more. Yeah. You gotta pay extra. for That kinda shit ain't free baby. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so between 300, 500 people were sick and almost purely European colonists, um, that were in there. The bread contained between nine to 10 parts per thousand of arsenic trioxide, which is enough to force vomiting before any actual lethal Effects. Um, which. it's Probably a good thing. Well, I read some, like a little bit more down the story, and I'd never heard of this until we started getting into research on it, but they were saying even like, I guess they sent this off after the fact to be analyzed in labs and the levels were so high that I guess they hadn't seen that before in any like item, because they were like, why didn't these people die? And then they figured out it was so much you couldn't even digest it really. Like as soon as it went down, it just like up, just came back up. Yeah. I guess there was so much Too much poison. Exactly. Yeah. what, that's what it looked like. That's what looked like. That's interesting. So like if you're going to. murder somebody with arsenic. too much. Don't put too much. You can go overkill and, uh, they will be under killed. Hit us up in a dark web and we'll, we might hook you up. I don't know. Yeah, exactly. Uh, lemme see here. Surgeon General, Aurelius, Harland and others quickly issued warnings and instructing, instructing people to induce vomiting and also eat raw eggs, which I thought, which is weird. I, I, did you just figure out why I couldn't, had to look into it. So the way this is, arsenic Trioxide is also known as white arsenic, And there are apparently like five or six different types of arsenic. And I researched that too. We'll go into that in a second. But white arsenic is super, super toxic. The way it can kill you is that if you ingest it, um, it gets absorbed into the stomach lining. Oh wow. And then it will, um, and then from there, it'll just kind of proliferate into your organs, the rest of your system and just shut your body down. Uh, and I think you die of like organ failure. and Stuff like that. So a puke it up, obviously it's just, same with like alcohol. You get alcohol poisoning, you puke it up, your body's rejecting it. But b, apparently eating raw eggs, the consistency in the chemical structure of the raw eggs I. absorbs the arsenic. So if there's some left in your body, um, this is a little tip in the future, if you accidentally eat a bunch of arsenic powder, um, yeah, the raw eggs will like soak it up and actually help pass it through your system. So that way it doesn't get absorbed. Pretty binds to it Yes, exactly right. Yeah. So smart. Yeah. Um, in, and I didn't sound convincing that. Yes. Sure. Yeah. Whatever you say, man. Uh, newspapers in London had called this an unparalleled treachery, likened it to uh, and likened it to mass murder by dynamic demonic wild beasts in human shape. Obviously racism was pretty rampant back then. Just based on that. Calling Chinese people demonic. wild you went back and forth. Like later on I could see you're reading through it there, like each side was like kinda demonizing the other side of like, this is them, this is that, you know, all these things. So, and, and, uh, we'll I'll talk about like the population situation there, but um, that leads us to the actual bakery and the guy that was in charge of the Yeah. Chong Lum, I think. Uh, okay. So I think it's ung Lum, yeah. Close. Yeah. I like Chong. It's spelled C-H-E-O-N-G. But it is like Sh Chung Chung. I think it's like Chung Makes sense. Yeah. I try so hard to pronounce these right, and I know I'm fucking 'em all up. But yeah, it is what it is. All right, so what they're saying is this dude, the Proprie proprietor of the Esing Bakery, the Chong alum, I think that's dude. You're like, you're fucking, you might as well be living in another country. I could. I could definitely make it over there. I'd say what? without a doubt, like they. Would mistake you for a Oh for sure. I'd just, you know, I'd just point to the menu and I'm ordering things, you know, yeah. you order it like yeah, get this, uh, burger and fries, uh, Chinese style for that very white looking Chinese guy out there. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Um, alright, so what happened when they figured out, Hey, this is what's going on? So there's different stories about this like. There's different tales from different perspectives. If you look this up online, there's probably 12 different resources. A lot of them take you to a dead end, or you have to pay for like the article, which is what I found. So the article that I found here is that Sean and his family had left from Macau the same day of the poisoning. Oh, okay. So January 15th, 1857 is when it occurred. Oh, wow. I thought it was like a day. After it was, same day. Same day. So they left him and his family left, you know, for Macau that same day. Uh, allegedly, just coincidentally. Right. So So Macau was a Portuguese colony across the Pearl River Delta from Hong Kong. So I guess they were looking for like extradition. Yeah. Like it's not a, a British colony. It Oh. So it's They were trying to like, Yeah. Yeah. It's like fleeing the country, basically. to another territory. Now his account says that. That day when they're on this boat, when they're going to Macau, that him and his family ate some bread, some of their servants too. So it makes you wonder though, this guy owned a bakery, right? And I guess you're rich enough to have servants back then. That's kind of odd, right? Maybe they were just on the boat. Maybe they're just like workers. They called the I don't know. So I think back then, I think a lot of people were indentured. Okay. Um. When was the, when was the slave trade? I honestly don't know. You're asking the wrong guy. asking, but Yeah. I mean, and we've actually talked about that on our rum episode, but like, yeah, I think it was normal to just kind of treat a certain people as a lesser class. Gotcha. And they would just be like, indentured servants like Yeah. It wasn't like a financial thing'cause they didn't get paid. It was like they were kidnapped and forced into servitude. Okay. Okay. Um, and I, and it's not just like a black and white thing. like No, no, no. This, It's like Chinese doing it with the yeah, exactly. because somebody like, fucked up. You know. so what they were saying though is that him and his family and some of these servants, some of these people on the on the boat actually ate some bread and everyone became sick vomiting. So he told his family, Hey, something had to have been done to this bread. He wanted to return to Hong Kong again, this is his account, right? So we're thinking other people are thinking he's trying to get the hell outta Dodge. He's saying in his account back then that, oh no, I was trying to get back because, you know, I, I realized the bread was Yeah. of course. yeah. that sense. Makes sense. So then when he arrived in Macau, he asked the captain to take them back. He said, okay. So the captain said, we cannot turn around right now and take you back. He offered the captive money, he turned it down. He's like, won't you stay? He said, can I stay here overnight in the boat and we'll go back tomorrow? He said, well, I can't take you, but I'll get you on a steam liner back then. I guess it's faster transportation, so while they lay down and sleep that evening, I. He gets a knock at the door and then this is when they come in and arrest him. Now it doesn't really say who arrested him. I kept looking through this and stuff like it all in the same day. Same day. God literally the same day. It's a hell of a day, right? An action day for this I mean, I guess though you think a bakery, you're probably up at 3:00

AM 4:

00 AM trying to bake bread.'cause everybody's eating at 6, 7, 8 in the morning. Right. And it's gotta be It's gotta be fresh. It's gotta be fresh. Yeah. So he's probably gone out the door by 10:11 AM Yeah. Then they're on a boat and they say they went to bed about seven. He got woken up.

This guy at seven, 8:

00 PM Yeah, so, well it's, we have a local bakery Spaldings. Oh yeah. And they do, uh, really good donuts. and It's like, and okay. I didn't actually didn't know they did cakes, but yeah, they'll open from like. What,

6:

00 AM till, Like they close, till they run out. Yeah. Yeah. Like they, oh, they, close it like Yeah. till they run out. But hell, they're like 11 or four in the morning. Like they're making, you know. Like They're up like super early, so. Yeah. I get it. So from there, I mean, some of the conspiracy theories of this attack, so they, they say it's an individual act of terrorism. Could have been from just Tim, could have been some commercial sabotage. Maybe another bakery was doing that for Framing them for Yeah. Could have been a war crime orchestrated by the Qing. How you, the government who was Qing Dynasty. Qing Dynasty, That's right. And it's could have been purely accidental. So they say though, if this would've been successful, the scale and the potential effects of this poisoning could have wiped out the entire, or most of the British colonists in that community. Right. So based on that, that's pretty fucked up. So, um, population wise, I think there was only. I think there, there the amount of European colonists In that part of China was measured in the Yeah. So they're saying, from what I could tell, I think between mine your numbers were three to 500. So somewhere in between there saw three to 500 people. were I, I saw three to four, so, yeah. Yeah. So, well, that's what I'm saying though, though, if all those people would've died, it would've crippled You're exactly makes you think they would've had like six, 700, maybe, if that Yeah, Um, but the actual population of that area for indigenous people was like, I mean, tens of thousands. I. believe so, yeah. It's not like the Europeans were taking over. And again, this is assuming that it was, it was a nefarious plot. Um, it was basically just racially motivated. If that's the case, but that's kind of what they're saying or that's what they were like implying that, you know, it it wasn't nefarious plot where they're just trying to say like, Hey, are you white Honkeys? we don't want you here Get out of our country. I that's probably the most plausible though, right? Like, they probably felt over ran if you're them over there. I they weren't. Wanted there in the first place. Yeah. The only reason they were there was because of the opium war. I mean, they're basically inserting themselves to take over. So, I mean, I get it. You know, we don't want anybody to die, but that's where they're coming from and you know, they all hate each other back. then. So Did you, so what do you, what do you think of this Chinese beverage baiju? Did you, It's, it's actually very, it's good. It's sweet. I was not I was, I was thinking it was hot. It's 90 proof. Yeah. Like, that's, that's quite a bit. Packs a punch. I wasn't expecting it to be this aromatic. Oh, super. It's like, it's like, um, this borders on gin. So it's, it's got botanicals for sure. There's botanicals in there. I mean, I don't know if it says it, but I mean, I'm getting it from that. I Even like on the flavor, like Yeah. It almost like tickles the tongue. It does, it does. that's not the proof. That's like, there's something in there. Maybe there's arsenic in this. They use the finest sorghum grain or arsenic and purees water. It is distilled in traditional Chinese pot steels and placed in ceramic for a clean finish. I mean, I get like adjuncts on it, you know what I mean? All kinds of shit. I'm actually really, so I thought this was gonna be pretty plain clean. Yeah. is really stupid, flavorful. It's good. I don't, I can't past those flavors though. like, what is that, like peppercorn? and like gin juniper or something like that. Like It's like a spicy gin. That's crazy. That's interesting that I kept thinking about that as I, we were talking here, it's like really throwing me off, you know. Weird. We were gonna pick, that's like a pink peppercorn. I know. It's weird, but that's what I think of, like spicy kind of peppercorn in there. So, Uh, back to the story though. Um, so the actual trial for Shung, Lum and others, uh, began on Oh, that's right. I guess I should have finished my part up. So when they got his ass on the boat, they actually took him back. Right. So then they imprisoned him and then the trial Right. And then the trial starts. Um. That whole entire period, apparently they detained 57 Chinese men, um, putting them in what they called black hole cells. Did you see I did see that. I, I couldn't understand exactly what I was talking I tried to look it up. So black hole cells were these like, like jail cells, these holding cells. That were like super dark and I think they're windowless. I would assume. what I was just saying. 16 feet by 15 feet, which is big. That's big But they would cram up to 42 people in there. Like they're just like sitting there laying on top of each other. I dunno if you could lay down. They know. Might be. You might be like this Yeah. and Assuming they don't have lights in there, there's no windows. That's why they call it a black hole. like what this room, you think? 15 by 16 could be just less beer. No. We like. We keep the beer. If we go to beer. Keep the beer. You can, you can keep me in here. All all we ever get arrested, we'll just say, can you put us in house arrest here? I have a lock on that door. Just flip it around You. lock me in. I'm fine. Throw us here for the next two years. bucket or two? I a bucket over there. good. We're good. We're good. We're fine. Bucket. So, Nice. So, uh, but yeah, the trial began on February 2nd. Um, Shung and nine others were tried for poisoning. Uh, colonial surgeon. Dempster. Mm-hmm. Um, I thought I wrote down his full name, but I may not No, I, I, I saw that too. I don't think it was, I didn't get the full name. I thought that was kind of weird that they charged him for poisoning one, person. But this one guy was a prominent figure. In the community, in the European community in Hong Kong there. So they're thinking a, it's gonna be a cleaner trial. It'd be less messy. It'd be easier just to kind of focus on one attempted murder or attempted poisoning or whatever. And, uh. B, he's so well revered. That people are gonna try to People had a probably a higher respect for people back then that were in power, like had had money, whatever, you And here's the thing, he was basically tried in like a Western style court. Okay. Like the, the jury that was, uh, that was doing the deliberation, and stuff like that, they were all white. They. I don't, I can't remember how many, wasn't his peers, No. six. It looks like there's six people on the jury and they were all whites. So you're immediately like. this guy's Fucked It doesn't matter if he did it or not. Yeah. Right. Um, uh, UHS colonial surgeon Dester was a Scottish doctor who oversaw a public health and hospital administration. there. Um, the defense, uh, tried to cast Chung as prosperous and wait. Oh yeah. The defense tried to, uh, cast Chung as prosperous and framed, um, the prosecution tried to portray him as a Qing uh, sleeper agent or just an agent, um, working against the European colonists. During court, uh, Chung offered to behead himself and his family if found guilty until, holy law. this boggled my mind. Yeah, he is, he's prostrating himself to the jury. Okay. And he's saying, I'm so ashamed of all of this. Um, what, what did the, what did the Japanese semis do? Uh, Seppuku, yeah. It's just basically like his version of Seppuku. He's saying like, my honor has been threatened. I will cut off my head and my family's head. I think it was posturing. It's prostrating himself, but it's posturing. I think he's just saying this. To appeal to the jury being like, oh, I feel so bad. I'll kill myself if you tell me to. Yeah, don't tell me through, but I will. that's kind of what I was getting out of it. So this trial goes on for a few days on February 6th the jury. Uh, so just think how quick that is. It's under a month from when the poisoning happening. Till, till the jury where they come back verdict. Yeah. After the it'd be a year at least, you know? Yeah. It'd be fucking year just to even go to trial. You know what I mean? Um, so the six person jury verdict came back five to one, not guilty. Like it's a That's a, that's a huge shocker too. It was largely a European jury. Again. Um, what they're speculating is that. Maybe he offered 'em like free bread for life if they get Honestly. Yeah. Free Poison. not the Not the poison, the I'm the poison shit. like, just don't eat from the left side over here. Just take the stuff on the right. I'll give you a wink Yeah. He is like, No, no, Yep. that one you get that loaf. Yeah. Yeah. don't eat any of the loaves with a big red Exxon.'em. Uh, but like what they're suspecting is that all the people that were on the jury were ingrained in Hong Kong. Like their lives are there now. Um, so it's like this case became just like this political epicenter of uh, Of European and, and Chinese relations. And these jurors are like, our names are attached to this verdict. If we say guilty, uh, and we live here, what's gonna happen to us? Yeah. You know, we, there's a few hundred Europeans here in a nation of tens of thousands of Chinese people like. We might be fucked. Yeah. And honestly, I would think the exact same. Yeah. Unless you wanted to go back home, go back to where you Yeah. And just flee. yeah. But I mean, if you've already got your life uprooted brother, it's Definitely not worth it. So, um, yeah, they came back five to one, not guilty, and he ended up getting off, uh kind of scot free. Um, yeah. So, so even though he is acquitted, the public opinion among Europeans in Hong Kong remained hostile. They say very hostile. So it was determined during the trial that he would be detained. Regardless of the outcome. Uh, and then what they did right after it, when he got not guilty, they actually arrested him a constitution there. at the true. That's true. So they arrested him under emergency legislation of being a suspicious character. That was what he was charged with. Yeah. You're a suspicious character. don't like the cut of your Yeah, that's right. In right. And whatever that is. in Chinese hat too low with sunglasses. No. No sir. You're gonna have to take your hoodie off. Nope. Too late. You're. being arrested. So then after that, he was also sued by William Tarrant, the editor of the Friend of China publication, which is weird. And he was awarded 10, $1,010. Who awarded $1,010. Tarrant, William Tarrant. Okay. See you, you sent have notes that he was, I don't see anything See, I got, see that's, that's the resource that I saw and maybe there's. A discrepancy here. Well, Let's, we'll talk about both of them. and then We'll, there's some, there's definitely some for sure. That's, I mean, the rest of mine is the aftermath, so if you wanna step in with what you So what I had seen, and this is a long time ago. it's not a super publicized story. So maybe there were Well, I think it was, but the problem is you had Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was definitely a big deal back then. Um, but, um, the thing is this whole thing went down. Hundreds of people were poisoned during that time. During that time. Nobody died. And I think that kind of like, not lightened the case, but didn't, like, there wasn't as much severity placed on the, on the whole act. Um, people did end up dying, but that's kind of like attempted murder is less than, than real I know. Yeah. But um, yeah. So the article that I saw, it said, um, Chung was acquitted. Um, he later civilly sued. He later sued civilly. uh, And was banished, but he received$1,010, which I think is about $25,000. in us. exactly the opposite of what I saw. So it might be just a crossing of maybe I even fucking read it wrong. I don't know. Well, no, no, it could be, it could be two different publications. Think of it then they're still crossed up. Right. So Some of the aftermath there. So in Britain with this, you had outrage, it fueled support for the war and what it ended up being was. This guy named Thomaston won an election. He won the election based on this. Like they didn't know how he was gonna do in it. Mm-hmm. But he's like, you know, damn it, we're gonna fix this. This is ridiculous. This is awful. And it won him the election. So it was, was he the British Prime Prime Minister? Prime Minister. That's what he won an Yep, yep, Yep. Yep. So that was in Britain. And then Hong Kong, the bakery closed. Uh, then the bread started being supplied by English entrepreneurs, so they moved in there and kind of swooped in, took that arsenic less. right. That's right, that's right. Now our boy, Chong Chong Chong, he made a living in Macau in Vietnam, and then later became a console for the Qing Empire. Yeah. Qing. Qing Empire in I hope I'm, now, I'm, hoping I'm pronouncing that right. Qi, NG. Queen. Qing. Say the Q Empire. you think of that though, like he went there. He became a console, like he's, you know, giving advice and all these people, these, the government. Mm-hmm. Uh, I don't think you get that position unless maybe you were doing a little something for him. Maybe you like poisoning people with their bread. I don't That's true. So that's like, kind of like the, the whole like Diddy or didn't he do it? Mm-hmm. is kind of up in the air. I think for all intents and purposes, people are assuming that it was definitely intentional. Yeah. Oh, I think Yeah. And just like you just said, like, somebody's like, yeah, you know what? We need you to go I don't, I don't think you give this guy position in government for your side if, unless you know, I mean, hell, he got, he got off on No, definitely not. No. The, uh, contaminated bread, some of the contaminated bread samples were preserved At Chief Justice, at the Chief chief Justice's office until the 1930s. Um, over time there were three people that died. Did you see that? No, I see that. Um, two other people, I don't know. The most notable death was governor Bow ring's wife, who was the. European governor placed in Hong Kong. Oh, his wife was one of the only three people that died. That's kind of crazy. had a lot of bread. She must have beat a shitload of bread. Maybe she had too much opium that day or something. Maybe it was a combination of the two, but, um, yeah, that was kind of crazy. It, it was just complications. Later where it couldn't get out of a system and like it was organ failure. So. it was many years down the road, but it's still kind of sad, I Yeah, for sure. I mean, back then, I mean, modern medicine wasn't really modern, so they're probably leaching bloodletting. I know. Just like keep bloodletting until she like stops breathing. It's like, oh, she's cured. Oh, Take, a little more blood out. Yeah. But now She's got no blood. so She's gonna die. So, uh, yeah. Fucking crazy story. Do you have anything you, no, I've never heard about this story though, until we brought it up and found topic, so very interesting. Check it out online Um, I, I did a little research on arsenic because That is our namesake, that's our name. Yeah. So there are, let's see, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. 5 different types of arsenic, There's white arsenic, which was in the story we just talked about. Um, and, uh, it's called arsenic trioxide. Um, tasteless. Odorless deadly, and even very small amounts, Um, but that it's like a powder form. Um, historically known as inheritance powder. because it was so good at making people disappear discreetly. Um, There's elemental arsenic, which is, uh, on the periodic table. Oh, okay. Different, different kind. Oh yeah. It's like a magic. Yeah. It's like fire, water, Arsenic. Yeah. Uh, it's symbol on the periodic table is the as. Um, it's actually not very toxic in its pure form, um, because it's not absorbed into the body very well. Uh, there's arsenic compounds, organic and inorganic. Um, the inorganic is super toxic. It's like mining runoffs, uh, pressure treated, older types of pressure treated wood. Uh, It's just like a chemical uh, agent from it. And then the, uh, organic arsenic is actually found natural in the wild, in like seafood. Oh wow. Yeah. Like we eat it like in shellfish seafood poisoning. poison. Yeah, I guess. you could do. Yeah, But it It is apparently it's, it's harmless to people. Um, and then there's Paris Green which is copper sounds fancy as acid torson. Okay. Um, and this is used in dye, Hmm. so people were putting this in like paint. and Like painting the rooms. put lead and paint. Yeah, exactly. They were dying from like arsenic point, just like they would like from, like lead poisoning. Yeah. Um, and then there's also arsenic gas. So which one did you put in this for us today to try? I use a combination of five. it tastes really good. Yeah, I know. I wanted to see which one overpowers the other one. So, uh, I'm assuming that the organic one is not taking front and center here, but, uh, yeah. Fucking crazy story, man. Now you know how to, if you accidentally ingest arsenic. you know, if you Eat egg, eat raw a bunch of raw eggs. just go rocky style puke. Puke before you eat the raw eggs. I would say puke, then eat the raw eggs. Yes. Yes. But the Raw eggs make you puke and eat more raw Yeah, that's, that's fair, that's a fair point. That's, that's the only reason we did this story is to teach you, how to survive If you accidentally eat a bunch of bar and drink a little bit. I mean, you know. drink a little bit. Yeah. Thanks for your version of the story. That was It was, it was kinda lined up with yours. Yeah. And this bis you is kind of fucking me up. I don't know what I, think it is, I'm gonna have to revisit it I think. I think it needs to be in a cocktail, but honestly, I mean, I think this is something I could see it being on your bar just to enjoy, like Yeah. Have, have over it. I wouldn't have three bottles of it, but No. It tickles my tongue. It's weird. does. Yeah, Spray the arsenic. I think it's definitely arsenic. So Guys, thanks for tuning in. If you liked it, then please share. it. If you didn't, then just keep drinking until you do. For More arsenic culture. 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