Rome’s Ruin by Lead Poison [Extracts]

By S. Colum Gilfillan, PhD (1889–1987)

Book published 1st Nov 1990 by Wenzel Press, PO Box 14789, Long Beach, California USA

CHAPTER 2, PAGE 8

Some History of Lead and Its Ancient Uses

Isotopes of LEAD

Leads heaviness is eleven times that of water, and its atomic weight 207 times that of

hydrogen. Its chemical symbol is Pb, from the Latin plumbum. It has eleven isotopes,

numbered 203 to 214, of which four are radioactive, Numbers 210, 211, 212, and 214. Pb

210 changes to Polonium 210, which is radioactive and apparently helps produce the lung

cancer of cigarette smokers.

Saturn

Lead came to be associated with Saturn because there were seven “planets” known and

seven metals, and because molten lead has the capacity to absorb other metals, including

its own product silver, which reminded the Greeks of their myth about the Time god

Cronos (Saturn to the Romans) devouring his offspring.

First Uses of LEAD

Lead was perhaps the second of all metals to be discovered and used. Like most metals it

was used first for jewelry. (Gold was probably the earliest discovered because of its

attractive shine and because it used to be fairly abundant in certain streams.) Metallic lead

is not found in nature, so it was the first metal to be extracted from an ore.

Reference: studies by Dr. Geo. Wetherill et al. At Univ. of Calif. At Los Angeles in 1974.

Also Science, Sept. 9, 1966, pp. 1259, 60.

CHAPTER 3, PAGE 17

Greco-Roman Medical Views of LEAD

The Diagnosis of Lead Poisoning

The ancient physicians seem to have had no idea of Encephalopathia saturnina, insanity

from lead. Yet the common folk seem to have had some notion of it, because Tu plumbarie,

“you crazy lead-worker,” was a term of contempt, doubtless from a perception that the very

numerous workers in hot lead were inclined to be crazy. Similarly when Gilfillan was a boy

there was a proverbial expression, “crazy as a painter.”

CHAPTER 5, PAGE 52

Other Ways to Get LEAD

Pigments

The emperors Nero, Trajan, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, Elagablus, Valentinian, and

Alexander Severus were all painters. With lead paints this is a dangerous occupation, if, as

likely, they ground their paints in mortars and mixed them on their pallets, as did

Francisco Goya. That great Spanish painter (1746-1828), who had been thot to be

syphilitic, who suffered a great mental crisis, and who lost children in rapid succession, has

been diagnosed by the modern physician Niederland as suffering from lead poisoning. He

mixed his own paints, largely lead-based, and worked tremendously. Fetal deaths are one

symptom of paternal plumbism.

Ramazzini in his 1713 book on the diseases of workers commented on the ill health of

painters, including “those of great fame.” Even at that date he concluded the ninety to one

hundred percent of all plumbism from handling white paints went undetected. In Roman

times perhaps superior Greek slaves and upper class artists were especially affected and

afflicted.

Cosmetics

Cosmetics were especially harmful when leaden, because they affected women, the child-

bearers and the sucklers and holders of infants. And of course cosmetics were used only by

the upper and middle classes, not by the poor; so they were aristocidal.

Ceruse, the previously mentioned combination of the carbonate and hydroxide of lead, was

the favorite white cosmetic in ancient times. It was used as a face powder, and sometimes

for the hair, or to cover blemishes. In Europe ceruse continued in occasional use into the

eighteenth century; in Oman it continues to modern times. Its somewhat variable

composition has been discussed by Stevenson and others; but in any case it was leaden,

and the ancients seem to have had no idea of harm from using it externally on sores and

wounds and to cover blemishes, even tho they knew it was poison if taken internally.

But there can be no question that the use of these cosmetics would lead to some of them

getting into the eyes or mouth, or worse, being inhaled by the woman or her nursing baby.

Among Japanese in Manchuria in 1925 ceruse was the fourth greatest cause of infant

mortality, and it was still common in Japan in 1933. Ovid recommended this ceruse in his

pleasant poetry, and Martial and Athenaeus speak of it.

The fine ladies of Greece were so fond of ceruse (tho sunlight turned it yellow) that they

were sometimes entombed with a covered container (a Pyxis) of it beside them.

Minium rouge on the lips would be sure to be swallowed. On the forehead it is still used in

India. But sometimes the ancients substituted harmless red ocher, an iron ore. The dark

lead ore galena (PbS), or poisonous antimony, are both still used in Egypt and Pakistan, to

darken the eyelids and eyebrows.

CHAPTER 7, PAGE 83

The Nature of Lead Poisoning

Brain Atrophy

The symptoms of plumbism, such as violence, crime, and short attention span, would seem

to spell a weakening of the person’s character, will, and self-control. These virtues are

functions of the frontal and lateral lobes of the brain, where all our life’s purposes are brot

together and worked out in suitable actions. It would seem worthwhile therefore to assay

the frontal and other lobes of the brains of deceased individuals who had been violent or

erratic, to see if those lobes were not especially poisoned by lead. So the study of lead

encephalopathy by Okazali et al found highest lead in the frontal and the hippokampal

(lateral) cortices, while another study by Hamilton et al on healthy brains, found the

frontal lobe about average in leading. Also might be cited the work of Kato. A study by

Niklowitz found a bulging of the soft parts of the frontal lobe of leaded infants.

Niklowitz points out that lead poisoning creates symptoms in the brain similar, if not

identical, to those of Alzheimer’s disease, a form of premature mental senility. But we so

not seem to be dealing merely with mental deterioration and grand mal seizures. For

example: the son of a painting contractor, who had chewed lead paint and suffered

convulsions, had to be hospitalized at the age of three. Irritability and tantrums, combined

with mental defect, brot about his institutionalization at age 26. An autopsy his death 19

years later revealed that the brain was shrunken, there was a marked loss of neurones and

neural sheathing, and neurofibrillary tangles were massively present. The diffuse brain

atrophy found was most conspicuous in the temporal (lateral) lobes.

On the basis of his analysis of the destruction of higher control levels of the brain by

lead poisoning, Dr. Niklowitz calls plumbism “the silent epidemic.” Other work now in

progress is searching for a link between the rising epidemic of crimes of irrational violence,

and lead poisoning. Niklowitz believes that the basic processes of brain damage and

destruction caused by TEL injections into rabbits can be applied to the massive lead

poisoning which especially the Roman intellectual and political elite suffered. If so, this

would provide a clue to several phenomena. One would be the apparent madness of

emperors such as Caligula, Nero, Commodus, and Elagabalus, some of whom seemed in

their youth to be admirably fitted to rule. Another would be the sadism of the Romans,

with their addiction to spectacles in which, for example, men and women were on occasion

offered to famished wild beasts. A third piece of evidence would be the apparent disastrous

decline of Roman intellect, mainly in the second and third centuries A.D.

Genetic poison

Lead as a possible gene poison has been claimed by many. They argue that lead can alter

the genes, the packets of heredity, and thus perhaps permanently alter future descendants,

naturally changing them for the worse. Koinuma found that husbands exposed to lead in a

storage battery factory had 24.7 percent sterile marriages versus 14.8 percent for non-lead-

workers. Stillbirths were 8.2 percent versus 2.7 percent, and infant mortality 24 percent

versus 19. But in most lead trades and likely this one too, the father can bring home lead on

his clothes that will reach his family; and so can a breeze from a lead works.

Arthralgia

Tanquerel des Planches observed that leads arthralgic pain attacked any of the joints, but

more frequently those in the lower limbs. He described it as a sharp, burning, boring or

simply numbing pain, that could radiate out and encompass the overlying tissue. He made

an important differential diagnostic point when he explained that unlike rheumatoid

arthritis (with which this might be mistaken) lead arthralgia causes no swelling nor

redness. In addition, the leaded patient is constantly moving around, trying to find a

comfortable position, something never seen in arthritics, who prefer to remain still.

Another of the most characteristic signs among lead workers today is the “wrist

drop” a motor paralysis observed among lead workers. But it is hardly ever seen in children

Atmospheric LEAD

With Waldron, the same author shows connections of lead poisoning with violence,

hooliganism, and crime.

The Metabolism of Lead

Another article tells of the deaths of four women in one modern family from using a lead-

carbonate-based face powder (“Flaky White”), the ancients’ ceruse, while their husbands

and relatives who lived with them showed no signs of lead intoxication.

When lead enters the lungs and is implanted on the walls of the alveoli, cells move out

from the tissue and phagocytize (ingest) the lead. It is then transferred directly to the

general circulation, thus avoiding passage thru the purifying liver. All nutrients absorbed

thru the gastrointestinal tract drain via the portal system to the liver, where the lead is

taken up and largely excreted in the bile. Hence lead breathed is far more harmful, gram

for gram, than the same amount eaten.

Lead eaten or drunk follows closely the physiology of calcium absorption. In fact, because

of competition between these two elements, it has been noted that lead taken with large

amounts of calcium will not be so well absorbed, but more fully excreted. As calcium

metabolism, an increased level of vitamin D, which enhances the absorption of calcium,

also heightens that of lead. Hence comes its far greater severity for children enjoying

summer sunshine.

Once absorbed into the bloodstream, the lead is transported, like calcium, by complexing

with the blood albumin or with the red blood cells. From the blood, lead may be excreted in

the urine, sweat, or bile, or deposited in the bone as a lead fosfate. However, the chemical

properties must be very precise for bone deposition; the blood pH must be between 7.4 and

7.8. A pH of 7.4 is normal for the blood, so under normal conditions lead goes into the

bones. If the blood pH falls below 7.4, a condition known as acidosis is present, and under

these circumstances the lead may be mobilized from the bone and back into the

bloodstream.

Such a condition as acidosis can occur under many different disease states (especially

infections), after prolonged, severe exercise or work, or by alcoholism. So if a person

chronically exposed to increase amounts of lead goes on an alcoholic binge, as the Roman

wealthy men often did, an acute attack of lead poisoning becomes likely.

References:

K. Kato: Lead Meningitis in Infants: Amer. Jol. of Diseases of Children, 44:569-91, 1932, p. 580

H. Okazaki & Aronson, DiNatale & Olvera: Acute Lead encephalopathy: Trans. Of Amer. Neurolog. Asn., 88:

248-50, 1963.

E.I. Hamilton, M. J. Minski & J. J. Cleary: The Concentration and Distribution of Some Stable Elements in

Healthy Human Tissue: Science of the Total Environment, I: 341-74, 1973.

Kato, supta.

W. J. Niklowitz: Lead, a Cause of Neurofibrillary changes: Jol. of Neuropathology and Exper. Neurol. Jan.

1976. P/ 103.etc/

S. Koinuma: Japan Letter, Jol. Amer. Med. Asn. 86; p. 1924 in 1926, quoted by Alice Hamilton & Harriet L.

Hardy; Indus. Toxicology , 2

ed. 1949.

CHAPTER 8, PAGE 103

Their Bones: the Proofs by Clinical Necromancy

So in 1959 the German necromancers W. Specht and K. Fischer called up Pope Clement II,

who had died in Rome in 1047, after only a ten-month reign, and was buried, in a stone

coffin. They found so much lead, 500 ppm (parts per million of dried bone) in his one

surviving bone, a rib, that he must have died of lead poisoning. This tends to confirm old

contemporary suspicions that he was poisoned “by a person or persons unknown” because

the emperor Henry II had forced him on the college cardinals.

When two Russian necromancers Prozorovsky and Kolosva called up Tsar Ivan IV, the

Terrible, who died in 1584, as well as his two sons and a concerned nobleman. They found

enough lead in Ivan to explain the crazy cruelty of his later reign. His sons were even more

heavily leaded, which could explain the insanity of his successor Fyodor, and the prior

death of Ivan’s elder son. His father who loved him had killed him on impulse, by repeated

blows with his iron-tipped staff, when the son asked to lead an army. Earlier that day the

Tsar had beaten this son’s pregnant wife for a most trivial error. There were also

considerable mercury and arsenic in the elder son.

Other cases include finds of entombed skeletons of fine ladies of ancient Athens and

Corinth, with lead in their bones, still guarding their beauty secret, ceruse face powder, in

lumps of the lead salt in a graceful pottery pyxis.

The Problem of the Which –Bone Factor

For it tends to settle first in the porous bones (including ribs, vertebra, sternum, cranium,

and ends of long bones), which all have a circulation of blood, and later to migrate into the

dense, tubular, shaft bones, and accumulates thruout life.

CHAPTER 9, PAGE 114

Temporary Sterility Thru Heat

The Role of Hot Bathing

The pool’s bottom there was paved with lead, but that was probably unimportant.

Once again lead apparently enters the picture. One symptom of lead poisoning is itching,

which may be painful. One’s sweat contains the same proportion of lead as one’s urine.

And bathing would alleviate the itch, I am assured by Detlev Stofen.

Reference:

1. R. Fatzer: Anzeeichen von Bleivergiftung?: Schweiz. Med. Wschr. 83:631-8. 1953. (Itching or stinging over

the whole body is a symptom of lead poisoning.)

2. H. A. Waldron & D. Stofen: Sub-clinical Lead Poisoning; Academic Press, Lon. & NY 1974,p.58.

CHAPTER 12, PAGE 147

Decline of Genius and Culture

Roman Attitudes toward Science and Invention

The story of the unfortunate inventor of “an unbreakable type of glass,” who demonstrated

his discovery to the emperor Tiberius in the hope of a munificent reward. After receiving

assurances that nobody else knew of this invention, Tiberius ordered the man’s head cut

off, on the theory that his improved glass, if put on the market, would cause a catastrophic

fall in the price of metals and thus precipitate an economic crises. The story is told by

Petronius, repeated by Pliny, and garbled by Dio Cassius.

Mathematics and the Physical Sciences

The greatest achievements of Roman engineering date from the earlier centuries, before

much lead poisoning had sapped intelligence.

Frontinus (A.D. 49-103) was superintendent of Rome’s water supply, and wrote a

definitive work on the system, as well as a basic volume of Roman engineering. One of his

discoveries was that impurities in drinking water can be filtered out thru sand.

APPENDIX A, PAGE 182

Explanation of Bone Analyses

Effects of Lead from the Soil on Roman Bones by Clair C. Patterson

In terms of significant poisonous effects on the main segment of human populations

thruout time, lead is probably the world’s most ancient environmental poison, extending

back in time for thousands of years.

New Interpretations of History

The cold fronts which entail thunderstorms and sudden drops of barometric pressure,

bring our air from underground that has been negatively ionized, a newly discovered

factor, especially stimulating to children.

APPENDIX B, PAGE 189

Bones Assayed

Group A: Bones from the Roman Empire, 150 B.C. to 476 A.D., and Identifiable by Social

Class

Totals and Averages for Group A

46 people were analyzed for Group A, beside 6 additional bones analyzed from 3 of these

people, for a total of 52 bones. These exclude Emporion’s poor lead workers.

Our social class averages, computed from their class medians (for the reason explained in

Chapter 8 which is to avoid undue weighting by a few individuals who have an overkill

dose of lead, especially young people computed according to their age factor), show

rationalized, median average leading of 80 ppm of lead in our 15 rich people, 27 ppm as the

median average for our 7 middle-class folk, and 43.5 ppm as the median average for our 24

poor, excluding the Emporion group.

Those 10 Emporion bones from 9 people in the lead-working town, all poor but not very,

had a median average of 205. If it be proper (as the writer inclines to think) to include in

out Empire’s poor median average 1 or possibly 2 Emporion average (median) cases, to

represent the unquestionably numerous lead workers among the ancient poor, this would

take the Empire’s poor median average to 36 with the addition of one Emporion median

case, or to 42.6 with the addition of 2 Emporions.