Posted on 09/13/2009 7:56:13 PM PDT by neverdem
To mark the 200th anniversary year of the birth of Abraham Lincoln Britain's Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) wants to analyse the mercury-based medicine thought by some to have been responsible for the President's notorious bouts of rage in the decade before the American civil war.
But the society first needs to track down some of the legendary Victorian "Blue Mass" concoction and to that end is offering a reward of £200 for information that results in some of it being pinpointed by the end of November.
Blue Mass, sometimes known as "Blue Pills", was used widely, often ineffectively, for a range of 19th century ailments, including toothache, constipation, childbirth pains, parasitic infestation and tuberculosis.
The president was known to have used the remedy in pill form to relieve what was described as melancholy, as he lived in what a contemporary described as a "cave of gloom".
During the 1850s Lincoln, by nature a friendly and balanced person, was known for flying into towering rages which sometimes took on a physically violent manifestation, on one occasion grasping and shaking a politician until his "teeth chattered".
At the outset of the war he determined to abandon the blue mass pills because, he said, they "made him cross".
Thereafter, while running the country torn by war, he became renowned and respected for his unflappability and calmness under pressure.
The main ingredient of Blue Mass was mercury, now know to be toxic but it also contained glycerol, rose honey, and Althea.
If anybody or any organisation has Blue Mass or 19th century Blue Pills they should notify the RSC, which would arrange for safe collection of the material.
Alan Dronsfield of the RSC's Historical Group, who was one three authors of a paper concerning arsenic and mercury as cures for the "Great Pox" (syphilis) says of mercury being taken up by the body: "Various routes were used: skin absorption, vapour inhalation, injections of 'grey oil', mercury dispersed in lanolin and liquid paraffin, and by mouth, as "Blue Pills", consisting of a suspension of the metal in liquorice, but having remarkably little positive effect.
"In the second half of the 19th century there was a move towards the use of compounds of mercury, administered by injection, so painful that the Hg2Cl2 solution was normally injected alongside morphine: even so, few patients had the stamina to persist with such a regime."
The 16th century humanist writer Ulrich von Hutten described one of his experiences: "Patients were shut in a 'stew', a small steam room, for 20 or 30 days at a time. Seated or lying down they were spread from head to foot with a mercury-based ointment, swathed in blankets and left until the sweat poured down.
"They often fainted from the heat. Disgusting secretions issued from their mouths and noses; sores filled their cheeks and lips.often their teeth fell out. Everything stank."
Brian Emsley
Media Relations Manager
Royal Society of Chemistry, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BA
Tel: +44 (0)20 7440 3317 or +44 (0) 7966 939257
Fax: +44 (0)20 7437 8883
And, of course, ED. Bob Dole was already advertising those pills in 1855.
Funny that a British society studying Abraham Lincoln is asking Americans to give them samples of 19th century medications. Wouldn’t it be more appropriate for Americans to contact somebody like the Smithsonian Institute?
Blue mass was recommended as a remedy for such widely varied complaints as tuberculosis, constipation, toothache, parasitic infestations, and the pains of childbirth. It was a magistral preparation, compounded by pharmacists themselves based on their own recipes or on one of several widespread recipes. It was sold in the form of blue or gray pills, or syrup. Its name probably derives from the use of blue dye or blue chalk (used as a buffer) in some formulations.
The ingredients of blue mass varied, as each pharmacist prepared it himself, but they all included mercury in elemental or compound form (often as mercury chloride, also known as calomel). One recipe of the period included (for blue mass syrup):
33 parts mercury
5 parts licorice
25 parts Althaea (possibly hollyhock or marshmallow)
3 parts glycerol
34 parts rose honey
Blue mass was also used to treat syphilis, in the form of ointments, gargles, and eye washes.
“Disgusting secretions issued from their mouths and noses; sores filled their cheeks and lips.often their teeth fell out. Everything stank.”
You mean, they became ultra liberal Dems? That’s horrible!
Calomel was known to decompose with exposure to heat and light to mercuric chloride, Hg2Cl, with the release of chlorine gas. Mercuric chloride is acutely toxic.
To think that both doctors and patients put up with this kind of nonsense.
at the time it was a “best practice”, just like 0 wants to use best practices to save on HC costs today.
One of the consequences of this diagnosis is that Lincoln almost certainly was dying of thyroid cancer when Booth shot him. He'd lost a lot of weight recently and poor Mary Lincoln had actually bought mourning clothes a month before he was shot! I take great Schadenfreude in the thought that when Booth arrived in Hell he was promptly informed by the Devil that he'd spared Abe a miserable death from cancer over the next few months! I highly recommend the book to Freepers interested in both history and medical mysteries.
“at the time it was a “best practice”, just like 0 wants to use best practices to save on HC costs today.”
I don’t know. Maybe this would be a bright spot in socialized medicine. The bureaus could decide that mercury saunas were too expensive and refuse to pay for them. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
My 1854 Universal Formulary of Medical Recipes gives the basic recipe of 1 ounce Mercury, one and a half ounces of Confection of roses, one half ounce Powdered licorice root to make four hundred and eighty pills, it then follows with a lot of recipe variations for various ailments.
Hubble is back, and it's seeing fine If you like pics, click on the link in comment# 15.
Genome of Irish potato famine pathogen decoded
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Thanks for the formulas.
Thanks for the history and links.
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