The allergen is not present in the castor oil itself. In popular culture
In the 1922 film, Nanook of the North, Nanook gives one of his sons a spoonful of castor oil, and he enjoys it. In the 1934 Silly Symphony short "The Wise Little Hen", Donald Duck and Peter Pig pretend to have bellyaches to get out of helping the titular hen plant and harvest corn. When she grows wise to their ruse, she invites the two over for dinner and, rather than corn, gives them a bottle of castor oil for their "bellyaches". In the 1939 film The Great Man Votes, an early scene establishes the loving relationship between the single father played by John Barrymore and his two young children. “Socrates and his hemlock!” Pop declares as he downs the cup of coffee laced with a spoonful of castor oil prepared by his daughter (12-year-old Virginia Weidler), following doctors orders. In the 1943 Tom and Jerry cartoon short "Baby Puss", Tom Cat, dressed as a baby, is given castor oil by a child as a punishment. In the 1949 MGM Tex Avery cartoon The House of Tomorrow, the house is shown to have individual medicine cabinets for each member of the family, with “Junior’s” containing a large bottle of castor oil and a spoon. In the novel It Cant Happen Here, castor oil is used by American fascist paramilitaries in a reference to the Mussolini regime.
The New York Times editorial column noted words such as "Westinghoused" (after the Westinghouse Electric alternating current equipment that was to be used), "Gerrycide" (after Elbridge Thomas Gerry, who headed the New York death penalty commission that suggested adopting the electric chair), and "Browned" (after anti-AC activist Harold P. Brown). Thomas Edison preferred the words dynamort, ampermort and electromort. The New York Times hated the word electrocution, describing it as being pushed forward by "pretentious ignoramuses". Medical aspects
Fish & Geddes state: "Contact with 20 mA of current can be fatal".The health hazard of an electric current flowing through the body depends on the amount of current and the length of time for which it flows, not merely on the voltage. However, a high voltage is required to produce a high current through the body. This is due to the relatively high resistance of skin when dry, requiring a high voltage to pass through. The severity of a shock also depends on whether the path of the current includes a vital organ. Death can occur from any shock that carries enough sustained current to stop the heart. Low currents (70–700 mA) usually trigger fibrillation in the heart, which is reversible via defibrillator but is nearly always fatal without help. Currents as low as 30 mA AC or 300–500 mA DC applied to the body surface can cause fibrillation. Large currents (> 1 A) cause permanent damage via burns and cellular damage. References
Bibliography
Brandon, Craig (2009). The Electric Chair: An Unnatural American History. McFarland. ISBN 978-0786444939. Moran, Richard (2007).