And, 3, by changing the cause of our patient’s complaints and fixing them wholly upon his sore mouth. ![]() Mercury acts in this disease, 1, by abstracting morbid excitement from the brain to the mouth. He suggested this for the treatment of hypochondria: He pioneered the humane treatment of psychiatric patients, but unfortunately thought that mental illness was best treated with a dose of calomel. Rush advocated for women’s education and the abolition of slavery. A founding father who signed the Declaration of Independence, Dr. And so, at a time when overflowing privies and gallons of loogie were the answer to a multitude of ailments, physicians found their drug of choice in calomel.īenjamin Rush was one such physician. If the bad stuff was expelled via copious salivation, that was good, right? In the sixteenth century, Paracelsus believed that “effective” (i.e., toxic) doses of mercury were achieved when at least three pints of saliva were produced. ![]() A calomel consumer could give a rabid dog a run for its money. The “purging” occurred elsewhere, too-in the form of massive amounts of unattractive drooling, a symptom of mercury toxicity. And if the insides of the bowels were dark and slimy, wasn’t it better to rid the body of such toxins? Allowing bile to “flow freely” was in harmony with keeping the body balanced and the humors happy, a theory that harkened back to the time of Hippocrates and Galen. ![]() Some believe the “black” part of its name evolved from the dark stools ejected, which were mistaken for purged bile. Credit: Science Museum, London/ Wellcome Images/ CC BY 4.0 This packet of calomel tablets was supplied by the 11th Army Corps of the German Army to its medical and personnel and soldiers. Packet of mercurous chloride tablets, known as calomel, from Kassel, Germany, 1914. Constipation had long been associated with sickness, so opening the rectal gates of hell was a sign of righting the wrongs. Taken orally, calomel is a potent cathartic, which is a sophisticated way of saying it will violently empty out your guts into the toilet. But don’t be fooled: It’s as harmless as your khaki-clad next-door neighbor who hides a basementful of bone saws. By itself, calomel seems fairly innocuous-an odorless white powder. Despite what it sounds like, calomel is nothing like caramel, though it sometimes carried the stomach-churning monikers “worm candy” and “worm chocolate” for treating parasites. Calomel: Purging It All Awayĭrawing from the Greek words for good and black (named so for its habit of turning black in the presence of ammonia), calomel was the medicine from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century. Calomel-also known as mercurous chloride-fell into the latter category and was used by some of the most illustrious personages in history, including Napoleon Bonaparte, Edgar Allan Poe, Andrew Jackson, and Louisa May Alcott. Mercury was used ubiquitously for centuries, at all levels of society, in its liquid form (quicksilver) or as a salt. Melancholy, constipation, syphilis, influenza, parasites-you name it, and someone swore that mercury could fix it. ![]() For hundreds of years, mercury-containing products claimed to heal a varied and strangely unrelated host of ailments. Related Segment Medical ‘Cures’ That Did More Harm Than Goodīeyond the creepy promise of Hansel and Gretel-esque results, there was something else sinister lurking within calomel: mercury.
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