By the Book

not the seven hundred thousand residents. With the influx of people moving in droves from other countries and various corners of America, the streets were pretty much as they are today. Packed To a aviate congestion, the city employed street cars and omnibuses drawn by draft horses in teams of six. Even then, traffic moved at a crawl. Horses balked or spooked with the noise and crowds, and carriages broke down. A smell of leather and horses and manure was overwhelming.

Tired and frustrated people's tempers grew thin. Fights began to break out, and then one cold February morning, New York had a subway system, as in overnight you see. Alfred Eale Beach and a team of men worked while the city slept. Over a two month period, they tunneled underground, carving out a three twelve foot section between Broadway and Warren Streets. Men above ground loaded up carts of dirt

while others unloaded equipment. It wasn't that no one heard the carriages, but everyone thought that construction was for an underground mail and package delivery system. At least that's what Beach applied for. The design called for pneumatic tubes to move parcels between the two streets, use in the power of air pressure, much like those canisters at bank drive throughs,

just on a larger scale. While the city approved the plans, that wasn't what the inventor and crew ever intended on constructing. Sure that design was exactly as proposed, but the railway tube was built to seat people, not packages. Was it a loophole? Sure, but Beach knew his real plan would

have been turned down. His biggest opposition was Senator William boss Tweed, who also headed up a group of less than scrupulous investors called the Tweed ring The Senator and his gang were counting on becoming rich from creating an elevated railway system, and an underground version would be in direct competition. After the tunnel was complete, Beach informed the newspapers, and when over four hundred thousand excited and dismayed New Yorkers arrived at the entrance, he was there to meet them.

The grand opening was nothing short of a gala event. The station had been decorated with a grand piano, brightly lit chandeliers, a fountain stocked with goldfish, and find furniture for the waiting commuters. Although there was only one shuttle car, people lined up for a cent fair. Within a week, ten thousand fares had been sold. Beach assured the public that a future version could whisk twenty passengers to Central

Park in under five minutes, and the crowd rejoiced. While the public was enamored with the subway system, the city officials were not. The station had been built right under their noses, directly across from City Hall. Officials discussed sealing the tunnel, while others called for tossing the inventor in jail. Enraged, Tweed spent the next three years blocking plans to extend

the subways route from Battery Park to the Bronx. Despite the Senator and his gang's efforts, though, Beach surprisingly prevailed, although the venture never got past the planning stage. When the financial crisis known as the Panic of eighteen seventy three hit, it left the project without further funding. At the same time, Tweed and his associates were found guilty of odd and embezzling money from the city. The Senator was sentenced to prison, where he died in eighteen seventy eight.

With his nemesis gone, Beach tried to revitalize his dream by raising funds from wealthy associates, but they shunned him. Now almost penniless from years of lobbying, he was just another inventor begging for money. To them, the idea of an entire city traveling underground was absurd. After that, Beach slipped into depression and obscurity. By the time he passed away in eighteen ninety six, he and his pneumatic railroad had been long forgotten. Later, though, New York revisited the

idea of a subway. In nineteen twelve, a construction crew uncovered the original tunnel. Today, a plaque now hangs at the station, acknowledging Beach as the father of the modern day subway. Oh and that original line between Broadway and Warren is part of the larger system transporting over five million people a day. Inventors are typically refer two as visionaries, and oftentimes that's true, but they're always seems to be opposition to progress, spurred on by individuals suffering from a

case of tunnel vision. A good book can fill us with all kinds of emotions. Uh steamy romance might have us feeling amorous toward a partner. A spy thriller can send our adrenaline into overdrive. And if we're reading a little known book by Robert Kenzie, we might want to have a will prepared. Kenzie was born in Delhi, New York. In eight When he was three years old, his family up and moved halfway across the country to Lenaway County, Michigan,

where they put down roots. Kenzie started attending Oberlin College in Ohio at the age of seventeen, working his way toward a medical degree from the University of Michigan. He had the honor of graduating among the very first class of the university's new Medical College in eighteen fifty one. He stayed in Michigan after graduation, practicing medicine until his

services were called upon during the Civil War. He served as a surgeon in the Union's twelfth Michigan Infantry for just one year, after which he returned to civilian life due to illness. Unable to continue his medical practice, he turned to teaching, becoming a professor at Michigan Agricultural College in eighteen sixty three. Even though he'd stopped practicing, Kenzie still took his Hippocratic oath seriously, especially the do no

harm part. He served on the Michigan State Board of Health, the American Public Health Association, and numerous other committees as well. He was partly responsible for a state law requiring all commercial fertilizers to be inspected, as well as the creation of a Food and Dairy Commission. Robert Kenzie might have only served for a year in the Civil War, but when it came to keeping people safe, he never left the front lines. He also fancied himself something of an author.

In eighteen seventy four, he published a book. Only one hundred copies were ever made, but It was said that anyone who spent too much time flipping through its pages would fall ill and may in some cases die. It was quite a turn for Ketzie, who had been beloved by his students and neighbors for keeping them safe. However, he didn't write the book to hurt anyone. In fact, he hardly wrote it at all. Except for the title page and the preface, there were almost no words anywhere

else between its covers. Instead, it was comprised of eighty six wallpaper samples, each with a different color or pattern. Kenzie had published his book titled Shadows from the Walls of Death as a warning. The wallpaper of the time was often dyed with colors made by mixing elements such as copper with another substance, arsenic. By the late eighteen hundreds, roughly fifty six percent of wallpaper sold in the United States was made with arsenic, and it wasn't as though

Americans did know how dangerous it was. Over the ocean. In Victorian England, impatient errors were known to sprinkle what they called inheritance powder in a drink before serving it to an older family member sitting on a vast fortune. In the US, though manufacturers didn't think their wallpapers were that dangerous since people wouldn't be ingesting them. They just didn't count on homeowners inhaling poisonous particles that had flaked

off and were now floating in the air. Kenzie wrote about women in the home who would become sick, only to retreat to their bedrooms and feel even worse, not knowing that what was killing them was all around them. He called it an air loaded with the breath of death. To get his message across, Kenzie sent every copy of his book to public libraries all over Michigan, along with a note, do not let children touch it. Many librarians didn't want his Death Book on their shelves, so they

disposed of them permanently. Only four copies still exist today. One is kept by the University of Michigan, while another is boxed up in m s u's Special Collections department. Each page is held in a plastic sleeve to prevent microscopic flex from contaminating the air when the book is handled. Those who do touch it with gloves, of course, are advised not to lick their fingers when they turned the page.

Harvard Medical School has a third copy, while The last is owned by the National Library of Medicine, which went through the arduous process of digitizing it for public use. Archivists who scanned the pages were required to wear hazmat suits, dust masks, and nitral gloves while they were in close proximity to the book. Thanks to the National Library of Medicine, people all over the world can now safely read a book that was so dangerous it was nearly wiped from existence.

Now I'd call that a page turner. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show, and you can learn all about it over at the World of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious. Yeah,