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A WARNING

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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 31, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 31, No. 16.

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A WARNING.

By John Norton Loughborough

BEWARE OF PAPER COLLARS OF ALL KINDS.

I CLIP the following from the Detroit Tribune of recent date:
“Judge Bangs, of Lacon, Ill., has had a long and serious illness, caused by wearing glazed paper collars.”
I know a little how to sympathize with the above-named judge in his affliction; not in that I have had a severe fit of sickness from wearing paper collars, but I have had severe trouble with my neck and lower part of the head in shape of poison sores, and swellings, for nearly a month past, from this cause. Well, you say, you ought not to have worn the enameled collars. That is just the point I am coming at. Although I have worn paper collars about three years, I have been careful to avoid those which are said to be finished with strychnine. I have worn the linen finished, and the unglazed collars, and have made up my mind, as all will in due time, I think, that there is poison in all of them. And that the safest way is to return to the old linen collars, which I have not been slow to do on finding the cause of my difficulty. I have worn them as a saving of expense in washing, &c. But I have decided that I would willingly give many times the amount I have saved in this manner, rather than endure again the pain of paper collar sores for three weeks. It commenced with pimples on the back of the neck about as large as the head of a pin, which would soon dry up, and scale off, and they have increased to painful sores as large as a black walnut. Let others think in time, and save the affliction.
J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.
Since receiving the above, we find the following in the Methodist, of New York. Many similar warnings we have seen; and we think it duty to give them, that all may have the information, which, we think, should at least be considered. ED.
One of the physicians at a meeting in Tarentum, Allegany county, Pa., reported recently a case of poisoning of a child who had eaten the greater part of a paper collar which had been thrown away. A gentle emetic and some other remedies serving to remove the poison, caused the symptoms to subside, in not less, however, than about forty hours.
When these collars are chemically examined, some are found to be covered with zincwhite (oxide of zinc), and others with powdered heavy spar (sulphate of baryta). Both substances are more or less poisonous; the zinc preparations, however, by their emetic properties, are their own antidotes, and when we are certain that we have to do with nothing else, an emetic is unnecessary, and warm water with some butter to promote the vomiting, is all that is required. The preparations of barium, however, are mostly poisonous, and never cause vomiting, except in large doses, when also convulsions and other alarming symptoms appear. For these, emetics and the stomach-pump are to be recommended.
The wearing of these paper collars has also produced in some individuals eruptions around the neck, where the perspiration partially dissolved the white paint, and caused it to enter the pores of the skin. Knowing what some of these collars are covered with, this is not to be wondered at.—The Methodist.