A generation ago or two ago, it was common for chemists to use taste and smell as a tools for qualitative evaluation of chemical compounds.
So older scientific literature is full of all sorts of knowledge that was obtained in ways that are shockingly unsafe by modern standards, including gems like the taste of all sorts of poisons and how large quantities of plutonium are warm to the touch.
So older scientific literature is full of all sorts of knowledge that was obtained in ways that are shockingly unsafe by modern standards, including gems like the taste of all sorts of poisons and how large quantities of plutonium are warm to the touch.