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After a lifetime of licking brushes and breathing paint fumes, famous artists such as Michelangelo and Caravaggio developed “painter’s colic” and even “painter’s madness” from lead poisoning.

Lead′-glance, lead ore, galena; Lead′-mill, a mill for grinding white-lead: a leaden disc charged with emery for grinding gems; Lead′-pen′cil, a pencil or instrument for drawing, &c., made of blacklead; Lead′-poi′soning, or Plumbism, poisoning by the absorption and diffusion of lead in the system, its commonest form, Lead or Painter's Colic; Leads′man, a seaman who heaves the lead.—adj.

More important still than the insight that Franklin obtained into the Painter's Colic was the insight which he obtained into the salutary effect of the custom which is now almost universal, except in the homes of the ignorant and squalid, of sleeping at night in rooms with the windows up.

The doctor said it was painter's colic; I said at the time it was disappointed ambition, for the booksellers had looked very coldly on my poetical proposals, and the managers to a man had refused to read my play; but at this present writing I believe the sole cause of my malady to have been Wretchedville.

Painter's colic is rare now that the hazard of paints containing lead is recognized in industry.