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61 " That is the bane of speakeasy life. You ring up your friend the next morning to find out whether he is still alive. "
― Deborah Blum , The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York
62 " In 1847 three English children fell seriously ill after eating birthday cake decorated with arsenic-tinted green leaves. "
― Deborah Blum , The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
63 " Plus, truthfully, he was bored by a job that consisted of little besides paperwork, meeting with other government officials, and harassing the mayor. "
64 " The U.S. government spends billions of dollars on disasters after they happen, but it pinches pennies when it comes to preparing for them. "
― Deborah Blum , The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2014
65 " In the early twentieth century it had been used to remove the hair of children with scalp infections, such as ringworm, so that doctors could see and treat the fungus. But that practice had been abandoned when too many of the toddlers died. "
66 " We and all the others and everyone—regardless of the lives we’d led, and more than anything else, and beyond the agonies and dangers that attend every act and action of ours in this life, we all wanted to live. And that desire, if not the result, is something to think about. "
67 " Imagination enlarges us—as though our nervous systems could be made vast and at home in the world, if not at ease with its cruelties and losses. Comfort is dangerous. You can be overwhelmed by suffering, as relief workers sometimes are, and your ability to imagine and engage is finite—as anyone who deletes all those e-mails urging us to act for prisoners or polar bears or disaster victims knows. "
68 " At the present time I am spending nearly $300 a month from my own personal funds for work which in my opinion has absolutely to be done to keep up the work of the office, "
69 " Human life must be cheap to the one who can place the dollar above it" -John Ruston "
70 " The nature of love is about paying attention to the people who matter, about still giving when you are too tired to give. Be a mother who listens, a father who cuddles, a friend who calls back, a helping neighbor, a loving child. "
― Deborah Blum