Acid has been used in metallurgy and for etching since ancient times. The rhetorical and theatrical term "La Vitrioleuse" was coined in France after a "wave of vitriolage" occurred according to the popular press where, in 1879, 16 cases of vitriol attacks were widely reported as crimes of passion perpetrated predominantly by women against other women. Much was made of the idea that women, no matter how few, had employed such violent means to an end. On 17 October 1915, acid was fatally thrown on Prince Leopold Clement of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, heir to the House of Koháry, by his distraught mistress, Camilla Rybicka, who then killed herself. Sensationalizing such incidents made for lucrative newspaper sales. Similarly, multiple acid attacks were reported in the UK in the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. Again, these were seen as a crime carried out by women, although in practice perpetrators were as likely to be male as female.
The use of acid as a weapon began to rise in many developing nations, specifically those in South Asia. The first recorded acid attacks in South Asia occurred in Bangladesh in 1967, India in 1982, and Cambodia in 1993. Since then, research has witnessed an increase in the quantity and severity of acid attacks in the region. However, this can be traced to significant underreporting in the 1980s and 1990s, along with a general lack of research on this phenomenon during that period.
Research shows acid attacks increasing in many developing nations, with the exception of Bangladesh which has observed a decrease in incidence in the past few years.