Scrofulous?
Well, that’s it, folks. No more biscuits, cornbread, cookies, cakes, muffins, nothing with chemical leaveners for me. Dire warning follows:
Bloodless, wan, dyspeptic, care-worn, scrofulous, and consumptive people, and ye who are not insured against becoming such, beware of the use of alkalis! Plunge your hand into a caldron of caustic potash of soda, and see it in a few minutes eaten and dissolved away to the very bone; and then hesitate before you daily introduce such a foe of organization and vitality into your stomachs, into every drop of your blood, and into every fiber of your flesh! When will simple-minded creatures stop destroying their own substance and energies, their manly power and womanly beauty, and shortening the term of life, by the docile, daily, needless use of known poisons? “The Staff of Life,” Emerson’s magazine and Putnam’s monthly, vol. 5 (1857), p. 742.
Much as I love science, nothing beats pseudoscience for sheer human interest value. Nobody ever gets this entertainingly hysterical about facts.