Calcutta, July 7 :     Twenty five cc of it can kill you. And you can walk into any shop stocking homoeopathic medicine and walk out with it. Without a prescription. Some drugs based on arsenic compounds ? prescribed freely by homoeopaths ? and bought and taken by unsuspecting patients for a variety of ills, are potent enough to leave a patient dead. At best, taken over a period of time, it can cause arsenic poisoning, something which had hitherto only been associated with a contaminated source of drinking water. About 20 persons have already been affected by the first stages of arsenic poisoning ? pigmentation, coarsening of the skin and lesions on the hand and feet ? from all over the city. All of them had taken arsenic-based homoeopathy drugs prescribed either by a friend, an amateur homoeopath or by themselves. A 44-year-old accountant, who saw the first signs of leucoderma on his body, was prescribed Ars. sulf flavum by a friend who was an amateur homoeopath. One year on, his leucoderma is slightly better. But he is showing advanced symptoms of arsenic poisoning. A 40-year-old woman, who had a high insulin level which had to be brought down for a gall bladder operation, was given Ars. brom (arsenic bromide) by a homoeopath in Ranchi. She was asked to take a couple of drops of the medicine twice daily for a week. The medicine worked, but the lady ? who had earlier been prescribed an arsenic-based drug also ? is now down with arsenic poisoning. The sample the lady had was analysed at the School of Environmental Studies (SES), Jadavpur. It was found to have 26 gram of arsenic/litre. The drug that she had was the mother tincture, known as 1X. So were two other samples bought in Calcutta and found to have 32 mg/litre and 10 mg/litre of arsenic. ?We diluted the sample by 100 times and then tested. I have never seen such a huge peak on the machine. The recorder almost got paralysed,? said Dipankar Chakraborti, director SES. The Homoeopathic Pharmacopoeia of India, published by the ministry of health, says that arsenic preparation should not be prescribed below 3X, a much diluted version of the mother tincture. In fact, 3X contains about one lakh times less arsenic than the 1X mother tincture. However, the 1X version is being freely prescribed and even more freely available. ?We make the mother tincture. No manufacturing guideline bars that. We supply it to shops according to the specifications they demand. If shops are selling mother tincture, it is up to the government to cancel their drug licences,? said D. Mukherjee, manager (products and purchase), Hahnemann Laboratories Ltd. The government does not seem to be aware of the problem. The mother tincture is available in most shops. For that matter, the 3X version ? made by taking a known amount from the mother tincture and diluting it many times ? is more difficult to come by. ?Prescribing 1X arsenic-based drugs is the doing of quack homoeopaths. They have neither qualification nor expertise. A registered homeopath will never prescribe a drug which has such high levels of toxicity,? said Ashok Das, associate professor, National Institute of Homeopathy, Salt Lake. ?If taken at a time, about 120-125 mg of arsenic can be fatal,? Das said. Arsenic, one of the definitive studies on the subject, published by the National Academy of Science, Washington, bears him out. ?The average estimated fatal dose of arsenic trioxide for humans is 125 mg for a man weighing 70 kg,? the book says. The amount of a liquid arsenic based-drug that may be a killer may, therefore, vary. For instance, merely 5 cc of the sample in which 26 gram/litre of arsenic was found would have proved deadly for the Ranchi-based woman who took it to lower her blood sugar level. The amount of intake that might prove fatal varies with the concentration of arsenic in the drug. Das said seven arsenic-based drugs are prescribed by homeopaths: arsenic bromatum (arsenic + bromide), ars. sulf flavum (arsenic + sulphur), ars. iodatum (arsenic + iodine), arsenicum metallicum (the metal arsenic), arsenicum hydrogenisetum (hydrogenised arsenic) and arsenicum album (arsenic trioxide). These drugs are used for the treatment of diseases, including bronchial asthma, diabetes, leucoderma, jaundice and duodenal ulcer. Das said it is up to the state government to regulate the sale of arsenic-based drugs and insist on medicine being sold only against the prescription of a registered homoeopathic practitioner.