Discovered by Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1775, this brilliant green rapidly became one of the most popular decorative colours of the 19th century. Victorian homes were wallpapered with it, children's toys were painted with it, sweets were coloured with it, and fashionable women wore dresses dyed with it. The dressmakers and hat-makers who worked with arsenic green dyes suffered terrible health consequences.

The ultimate paradox of toxic beauty. Scheele's green was fashionable precisely because it was so vivid and beautiful — a green more brilliant than anything previously available. The Victorian era's embrace of this colour despite mounting evidence of its dangers represents a troubling pattern: aesthetic desire overriding rational self-preservation. The colour carries a historical weight of beautiful danger.

The theory that Scheele's green wallpaper contributed to Napoleon's death on St. Helena (1821) has been debated for decades — analysis of his hair has confirmed high arsenic levels. The "arsenic green" problem became a public health scandal in Victorian England when the medical establishment finally connected the fashionable colour to widespread illness and death. The "Green Fairy" (la fée verte) association of absinthe with dangerous allure echoes this Victorian green danger mythology.