Generally speaking, it’s kind of amazing that our ancestors didn’t kill themselves off unknowingly and put a halt to the human race entirely.
Specifically speaking, the chemical element we call Mercury.
One of the problematic issues we have with mercury is that it’s pretty. We find it irresistible—all that liquidy silver that seems to bead up rather than wash out. Looooook! But just like so many other things in the natural world (fruit from the Manchineel tree, puffer fish, Portuguese man o’ war/men o’ war/man o’ wars, Lily-of-the-Valley, the Hooded Pitohui!), ‘pretty’ should always be viewed with a healthy dose of suspicion.
Quicksilver was mercury’s maiden name before it was named after the planet, which in turn had been named after the Greek god known for his speed, and it was the darling of the alchemy world for centuries. It was studied and frequently used in Asia and India as far back as 2000 BC, and by the early 200 BCs several of the early Emperors of the newly unified country of China, incautiously started to take elixirs that contained a mixture of quicksilver and crushed jade with the belief that it would lead them to becoming immortal. That didn’t work so don’t bother trying it.
Quicksilver was seen as being so mysterious that it HAD to be the magic key for something, and efforts to harness that elusive magic have been on-going throughout history. It had long been experimented with by countless alchemists in the process of trying to turn iron into gold, employed in the mixing of cosmetics, and early doctors used it as a way to heal bone fractures among other things. That didn’t work either.
There was also the assassination angle. Pouring mercury into the ear of the victim would, as one can imagine, kill them. As a means of doing away with someone, that would not be without its complications, in my mind. The general thought is that mercury was the poison that Hamlet’s Dad got in the ear and that killed him. Not cool, Uncle Claudius!
And of course, as time wore on, mercury was used in the process of fashioning felt for hat-making. It was the major ingredient in a solution that could removed fur from animal skins (that doesn’t surprise me) and after being soaked in said solution, the matted fur was then shaped into large cones or shrunk into a preferred shape by boiling or drying. The released vapors of mercury during this process led to an alarming syndrome common among hat-makers and milliners which was characterized primarily by the shakes, fatigue, memory loss, irritability, loss of control over one’s emotions, a pathological shyness, and hearing loss. It was this condition that led to the phrase “mad as a hatter”.
In the mid-1700s they were trying to cure “Mad Hatter Disease” with opium. Nope.
Those left alive in society persevered in trying to find a way to use this amazing chemical element and mercury found a home in thermometers (first by Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit in 1713 and then with an even better numeric system by Anders Celsius in 1742), as a wood preserver, in photography to develop the early daguerreotypes, in early interior paints, and in gold mining as a carrier for the flecks of gold that normal mining practices were unable to collect.
There were also “Blue Mass” pills. Somehow, in the early 1700s, mercury was used as part of a concoction meant to be a sure-fire way to cure syphilis, although it was also suspected by some that the ‘cure’ was far worse than the ailment. The marketing minds who were running the medical industry at the time raved about the pill’s additional abilities to deal with tuberculosis, toothaches, the pain of childbirth, constipation, and parasitic infestations in the body. The recipe can still be found on-line for Blue Mass pills but (*Spoiler Alert*) it didn’t actually help with any of those ailments. Wait! It probably worked profoundly well as a laxative…
Still, at the time it was believed to be the silver bullet in the world of curing and was handed out like candy to the very young through to the very old. In fact, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of our neighbouring country to the south, started taking Blue Mass pills for his chronic depression before he was ever elected into office. While he was in office (and thus under scrutiny of so many) he was known for his tremors, insomnia, and fierce bouts of rage. After a few months of being President (and probably after someone took him aside for a quiet word), he decided to stop taking the pills because he suspected that the pills made him “cross”. By today’s standards, the amount of mercury that he would have been ingesting daily would have been about 9,000 times the level that we have found is an acceptable and safe dose. Cross, indeed!
These days, we still have mercury in our lives. Those who have the ‘silver’ amalgam dental fillings that have been used for the last 150 years in Canada, carry some mercury around with them everywhere they go. ‘Amalgam’ actually means mixture, so the tooth filling is a mixture of mercury, silver, copper, and tin, and there is no risk of harm to the average person to have that type of filling in their mouth. These fillings are easy to put in place by the dentist, are fairly inexpensive, and they last a long time. Stop freaking out—you’re fine!
Mercury can also be found these days in some fluorescent light bulbs, in the production of other chemicals, still used in some explosives as a primer, and is called upon in those instances when a liquid mirror is needed (hmm, maybe I’m not the target market for that one). There are other compounds derived from mercury that are used in contact solution, tattooing ink, and still, after these many years, cosmetics.
The science has opened our eyes to mercury’s harmful effects on humans, although we still mine and experiment with it. If you’re like me, and I know you are, even though you know that it’s a dangerous liquid metal that needs to be respected and given a wide berth, you still have an overwhelming urge to touch and play with the quicksilver that so mesmerized our strangely lucky forebearers.
Just…..don’t.
