A journeyman joiner in Kelso, having procured some arsenic for poisoning rats, mixed it amongst oatmeal, and laid it in his tool chest. His wife accidentally finding it, and not knowing the meal contained poison put it into their porridge on Monday morning last. Her eldest child who was about three years of age, upon taking the porridge, said they were bad, and would take no more, but she and a child she was nursing took a few spoonfuls of them, which they had no sooner done, than they were seized with violent reaching [sic] and vomiting, attended with a heat and pricking pain in the stomach. The husband coming in soon after for his breakfast, she told him what she had done, when he exclaimed, “You are all poisoned!” He immediately run [sic] for a doctor, who made use of every proper means to expel the poison, which was happily effected, as they are now in a fair way of recovery.
— from The Pennsylvania Packet Friday, Nov. 18, 1785, courtesy of Jeff Burks