Arsenic!
How would you like to eat anything you want and still be able to lose weight? Tempting, right? Selling diet pills and tonics has always been a lucrative industry, not just in our time. But, back in the day, diet pills had some pretty dangerous ingredients in them, like arsenic and strychnine.
Historians say that apparently, these ingredients were meant to speed up your metabolism, much like amphetamines do. Even though these pills only contained small amounts of arsenic, they were still very dangerous, even more so because many women would take more than the recommended daily dose in an attempt to slim down their figure.
