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From: "Don" <g@crcomp.net>
Newsgroups: sci.electronics.design
Subject: Re: The Einstein Effect
Date: Wed, 8 Jan 2025 14:55:59 -0000 (UTC)
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Martin Brown wrote:
> Cursitor Doom wrote:
>> Martin Brown wrote:
>>
>>> OTOH his alchemical interests meant breathing mercury fumes and other
>>> noxious gasses from time to time probably didn't help either.
>>
>> ISTR inhaling mercury fumes was a 'cure' for constipation in those days.
>> Supposedly. Not terribly effective and with possible side-effects that
>> today would be unacceptable to say the least.
>
> Not quite. Drinking a small amount as liquid metal was though and had
> been used since Roman times. Possibly better than the alternatives.
>
> Before antibiotics it was also used as a dangerous "cure" for syphilis.
>
> https://pharmaceutical-journal.com/article/opinion/syphilis-and-the-use-of-mercury
>
> Calomel as mercurous chloride did slightly work for some skin infections
> but soluble mercury salts are all deadly poisonous.
>
> Breathing mercury fumes makes you go mad - hence the Mad Hatter's Tea
> Party in Alice in Wonderland. World's largest zenith telescope in Canada
> used a spinning mercury mirror (it self passivates with an oxide coat so
> isn't anything like as dangerous as it sounds).
>
> https://interestingengineering.com/science/largest-liquid-mirror-telescope-earth-large-zenith

Many medicines are poisonous, chirally modified to make them less
potent.

    In drug development, enantiomeric selection to maximize
    clinical effects or mitigate drug toxicity has yielded
    both success and failure.

    <https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/article-abstract/110/1/4/1668162>

Danke,

-- 
Don, KB7RPU, https://www.qsl.net/kb7rpu
There was a young lady named Bright Whose speed was far faster than light;
She set out one day In a relative way And returned on the previous night.