Shadows from the Walls of Death

Source - 99% invisible

There has long been question as to whether Napoleon was killed by the arsenic in the green pigment in his wallpaper. Modern analysis of the wallpaper shows that there was arsenic in it but that it likely wasn't enough to kill Napoleon by itself. Lifelong arsenic exposure did probably hasten his death but probably wasn't the final nail in the coffin.

What might kill you though, could be flipping through one of the four remaining copies of the book Shadows from the Walls of Death, two of which can be found in the University of Michigan library's rare book collection.

A hundred copies of the book were produced, showing off arsenic-containing wallpapers and not a whole lot of text - health warnings and a few Old Testament warnings about plague, apparently. Most of the copies were destroyed, but four exist - two at U of M, one at Harvard, and one at the National Library of Medicine. The Michigan copies are apparently stored with the pages inside plastic covers.

The photo with this post isn't of Shadows from the Walls of Death but rather from a non-arsenic-containing reproduction text called Bitten by Witch Fever: Wallpaper & Arsenic in the Nineteenth-century Home (available from Amazon).

You can check out the entirety of Shadows... as a pdf download from the National Library of Medicine. The safe scanning process was apparently rather laborious and is described here. 

More about Shadows... can be found in this article, as well.