From peter-green-1@uiowa.edu Wed Mar 8 19:37:33 2000 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id TAA10628 for ; Wed, 8 Mar 2000 19:37:32 -0800 Received: from ns-mx.uiowa.edu (ns-mx.uiowa.edu [128.255.56.78]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW00.02/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id TAA19643 for ; Wed, 8 Mar 2000 19:37:31 -0800 Received: from DialupEudora (IDENT:CLImodem358-721515WedDec3118000119690telnet_cmd23735@portal-1.weeg.uiowa.edu [128.255.56.101]) by ns-mx.uiowa.edu (8.9.3/8.9.1/ns-mx-1.7) with ESMTP id VAA23354 for ; Wed, 8 Mar 2000 21:37:29 -0600 X-Sender: pegreen@blue.weeg.uiowa.edu Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <200003090107.UAA01205@darwin.helios.nd.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 19:48:41 -0600 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: Peter Green Subject: Re: carbingestion and "beautiful" words .. > >Janice Siegel mentioned lye (NaOH usually, KOH sometimes), and that too >would burn, as she notes. However, rat poisons usually do not contain >lye, because enough to kill would be enough to burn the soft moist tissue >of the mouth, so the rat wouldn't willingly eat it for very long. Instead, >rat poison is a tasteless seasoning (I think the standard is "arsenic" -- >really arsenic trioxide) added to some bait the rat willingly scarfs down. > Actually a favorite rat poison is coumarin, which innumerable sufferers from mild strokes or extra-high blood-pressure also scarf down (in diluted form, be it said) as a reliable blood-thinner. PMG .