Heals syphilis and depression: how mercury was considered a panacea, but it turned out to be poison

There are good molecules that make our brain work. And there are villain molecules that hack it and cause cognitive impairment. Neurologist Sarah Manning Peskin talks about such mutants in his book “In the Molecule from Madness”. With the permission of Alpina Publisher, we publish an excerpt about how mercury can affect human behavior.

Like Lucifer

The State of Illinois v. “Awesome” Quinn Harrison case was extremely difficult, even for an experienced lawyer like Abraham Lincoln. In 1859, during fights at a local store, Harrison stabbed his longtime rival, the Greek Crafton. A 10 cm white-handled knife blade plunged into Crafton's body just below the ribs and ripped open his stomach to the groin. Three days later, Crafton died. Harrison was on the run from the police, hiding underground at a local college until he was arrested.

Abraham Lincoln was appointed as Harrison's lawyer, and this was his last case before the election in which he was elected president. To help his client, Lincoln began to investigate the details of this story. So Harrison was sitting at the counter reading a newspaper when an angry Crafton burst into the store. He grabbed Harrison, tried to drag him into the back room and beat him there, but Harrison wriggled out and knocked Crafton down. They collapsed on a mountain of boxes, and then Harrison, seeing no other way out,

pulled out a knife and killed the attacker.

Lincoln's defense was based on the testimony of a local priest who said that before he died, Crafton claimed responsibility for the quarrel. However, in the fall of 1859, when the priest made this testimony in court, the prosecution objected: "Death statements cannot be considered admissible evidence." The judge agreed with this.

And then Lincoln's voice came from behind the defense table. “Your Honor, we need to get to the bottom of this, in every detail!” His words sounded so unexpected and so out of the ordinary protocol of the court session that even the stenographer looked at him, her mouth open from astonishment. Always calm and the imperturbable Abraham Lincoln was on edge. By words one of the witnesses, Lincoln rose from his chair "like a lion suddenly disturbed." He rushed to the judges' bench with such vehemence that it seemed to those present that he was going to climb over the fence and pounce on the judge. Lincoln was outraged, he scolded the court and its chairman. "I've never seen such fury in my life!" - said one of the eyewitnesses of this scene.

“The deceased has a right to be heard,” Lincoln barked, waving his long arms.

- Are you done? the judge asked, hoping to regain control of what was happening in the courtroom.

“Yes, your honor. Lincoln regained his composure and returned to his seat. - Thank you.

It's hard to imagine "Honest Abe," a president who was famous for his equanimity, behaving like an angry bull. One of the White House staff later said that he "never heard any complaints from him." Others who worked with him during his tenure felt that "he had an even characternever showed displeasure." Therefore, most people imagine Lincoln as unshakable as the statue in his memorial in Washington.

Throughout most of his time in the White House, he adhered to just such a course of action.

However, those who knew Lincoln before the presidency were familiar with the other side of his character. His first legal partner wrotethat "how great was his good nature, so great was his rage." Another colleague of his recalled that "it cost him nothing to hit a man with a whip." At times, Lincoln seemed "so angry that he looked like Lucifer in unbridled rage."

In the fall of 1858, Lincoln ran for Senator from Illinois. His rival was Stephen Douglas, who then held this post. The tension between the candidates was so strong that when they agreed to take part in political debate, the public gathered not so much for political discussion as to listen to the exchange barbs. For the first three rounds, Lincoln looked majestic and calm. He was polite, thoughtful, and carried himself like a senator. And then everything changed.

During the fourth round, the candidates argued supported whether Lincoln troops during America's recent war with Mexico. Looking for someone who could vouch that he supported the soldiers, Lincoln looked around the participants and recognized among them a supporter of Douglas, with whom they sat together in Congress. Pointing a finger at him, Lincoln ordered him to testify in his favor.

However, before the former colleague could say anything, Lincoln grabbed him by the throat and lifted him up. According to one eyewitness, Lincoln dragged the man "like a kitten". His feet dragged along the floor. Teeth chattered. Lincoln's long fingers gripped the poor man's neck like a noose, crushing the white collar of his jacket. Many of those present had the idea that instead of the usual political debate, they could become witnesses to the murdercommitted in a state of passion.

Finally, one of Lincoln's bodyguards freed the victim's neck from the grip. The man sank to the floor, breathing heavily. The surprise of the crowd was replaced by laughter, as if what they saw was a pre-arranged performance and not the manifestation of uncontrollable emotions. Lincoln continued to make his case, showing the same calmness as during the previous rounds.

Explaining Lincoln's irascibility, a lawyer colleague once said that "when a man of great mind and body loses his temper, his rage is manifested in everything, monstrous and violent." However, his colleague did not think - or rather, could not even imagine, given the level of development of science at that time - that this fury could be provoked by biological level by a molecular invader. World-famous physician and medical historian Norbert Hirshhorn believes that during moments of uncontrollable anger, Lincoln's brain could be under the influence of a drug called "blue mass".

Hirshhorn first came up with this idea while reading Gore Vidal's historical novel Lincoln. In this book, Vidal describes a casual conversation between a bar owner and a pharmacy worker near the White House. Tipsy Apothecary boasts their famous clients. "Him intestines doesn’t work well,” he says of Lincoln, “so we supply him with blue mass.”

In the 1990s, most doctors no longer knew what a "blue mass" was. This remedy has long been excluded from pharmacological reference books and removed from pharmacy shelves. It is not sold with vitamins. But Hirshhorn, who by that time was already going to retire, this name was familiar. He heard it 50 years ago when he studied at medical school. And he remembered that the main ingredient of the "blue mass" was mercury.

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Mercury is amazing. At room temperature and normal atmospheric pressure, it is fluid like water. No other metal from the periodic table of elements is capable of this trick. If you separate a small piece of mercury from the main mass, it will turn into a trembling bead. And if you give it a little push, it will roll on a flat surface like a drop of water. Gold and platinum are beautiful in static forms, but the mystical appeal of mercury lies in its mobility, in the way it makes us question the laws of physics.

Mercury was used as a medicine for a thousand years before the birth of the 16th President of the United States and for many years after he was assassinated. And only in the 20th century, thanks to the achievements of epidemiology and biology, a terrible secret mercury: it turned out to be as dangerous as it is beautiful.

In 241 BC. e. first emperor of the Qin dynasty took mercury as an antidote to death. Probably, the silvery substance had the opposite effect: historians believe that the emperor died at the age of 39 precisely from mercury poisoning. In preparation for his death, thousands of people spent more than a year constructing an elaborate burial site, bathed in rivers of mercury. The outer part of this burial is famous for its terracotta warriors, but the mausoleum itself, which they guard, remains intact to this day. The tomb is so saturated with mercury that no one dares to excavate.

At the beginning of the 19th century, Lewis and Clark took with them to hike through the United States a mercury-based product called "thunder peals" (English thunderclappers). The members of the expedition were instructed to drink this medicine for all diseases, from syphilis to yellow fever. At that time, doctors believed that mercury, causing severe diarrhea, cleanses the body of toxins. As it turned out, this side effect did not bring noticeable therapeutic benefits, but it turned out to be very useful for modern archaeologists - according to accumulations of mercury, which can be found even now, 200 years after the expedition, you can determine the location of the toilet in the parking lots.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the composition of powders for teething they began to add calomel - another medicine containing mercury. Parents rubbed this powder into the gums of their babies. As a result, in children, the fingers and toes began to swell and hurt, the skin peeled off them. Doctors called it "pink disease" because of the color of the flesh in the open wound. When mercury was found to be the cause of the disease, manufacturers removed calomel from children's products. The epidemic has subsided, leaving the parents with a terrible sense of guilt.

Now most people associate mercury with old thermometers rather than with old medicines. When the ambient temperature changes by two degrees, the piece of gold will not change in volume, but the expansion of the mercury column will be visible to the naked eye. And when the temperature drops again, the volume of this liquid will noticeably decrease, and this makes mercury an ideal substance for monitoring temperature changes - until the thermometer will break.

In the absence of external influences, mercury turns from liquid to vapor at room temperature. In this aerosol form, it becomes a colorless and odorless poison that enters the body through the nostrils and mouth, bypassing its defense systems. From the respiratory tract mercury distributed by in almost all organs and tissues, being deposited in the heart, liver, pancreas, lungs and thyroid gland. It affects the salivary glands, causing such a strong reaction that as early as the 16th century, a Swedish doctor claimed that when taking a therapeutic dose of mercury, a patient secretes one and a half liters of saliva per day.

Brain most vulnerable before mercury. It leaves us at the mercy of dangerous forms of oxygen. It changes the ratio of calcium ions inside and outside neurons, due to which these cells are activatedwhen they should be silent. Some forms of mercury even destroy the structural proteins that give neurons their elongated shape, causing cells to lose their ability to communicate with each other. And, most strikingly, mercury is able to force neurons to commit a massive act of cellular suicide.

Mercury, once considered a panacea for everything from syphilis to depression, actually provokes the nervous system to self-sabotage.

The clinical effects of mercury poisoning are just as impressive. In children exposed to mercury in the middle of the 20th century, observed sudden mood swings, from complete apathy to intense anger. Many developed against this background insomniaand they couldn't sleep for several days in a row. Sometimes they became depressed and even suffered from hallucinations.

In 1988, as a result of an accident while replacing a pipe at a plant in Tennessee happened major mercury leak making headlines. People exposed to heavy metal have complained about irritability and increased fatigue. They refused to communicate and closed in on themselves. Many have experienced outbursts of aggression - the same as Lincoln more than a century ago.

These days, cases of acute mercury poisoning are quite rare in developed countries, largely due to occupational safety regulations. In 2019 less than 1% of all calls to US poison control centers were related to questions about mercury. Currently, most cases of poisoning connected with excessive consumption of tuna, mackerel and various seafood with a high content of methylmercury, the molecules of which are composed of mercury, carbon and hydrogen atoms. Since these types of fish are quite expensive, mercury poisoning has become a kind of disease. celebrities.

***

To find out if Abraham Lincoln could have been poisoned by the amount of mercury he took, Norbert Hirshhorn brought in his colleague, an expert in pharmacology. They turned to an 1879 manual for the manufacture of medicines, which gave recipes on 1,600 pages and instructions for the use of drugs no longer used in medicine, such as arsenic (for leprosy, psoriasis, malaria) and gold (from tuberculosis). Around the middle of the reference book, they came across the name Massa Hydgrargyri, or mercury mass, as well as a recipe for making "blue mass". “I think we should try to cook it,” suggested Hirshhorn.

According to the recipe, mercury made up a third of the weight of the "blue mass". To it should be added licorice root, glycerin, rose water, honey and hibiscus petals. This mixture was ground in a mortar until the metallic balls of mercury disappeared. The resulting paste was rolled into a thin sausage and then cut into pieces that could be shaped. tablets.

Hirschhorn's colleague was like a chef looking for rare ingredients: she bought mercury from a company supplying biochemical products, I bought honey at a grocery store, and hibiscus at a flower shop. shop.

In preparation for the experiment, she donned a surgical gown, gloves, and a mask to protect herself from mercury vapors that might have been released while grinding the ingredients in the mortar. She mixed the composition under hood, which prevented airborne particles from flying around the lab. And when the mercury merged with the rest of the ingredients and turned into a paste, she rolled up a thin sausage from this mixture and cut it into the form of tablets.

The pills were ready, but how do you know what will happen when a person swallows them? The task is not easy. Conduct such experiments in public was unsafe and unethical, so Hirshhorn came up with another way: the pills were crushed in a sealed vessel with an acid solution, reproducing the gastric environment, and then a special device capable of determining the amount of heavy metals measured the mercury content in the air, filling this vessel.

The results of the experiment showed that mercury vapor from one tablet of "blue mass" is 30 times higher than the known permissible limit.

Since in Lincoln's time the majority doctors prescribed to take these tablets two or three times a day, the actual exposure to mercury vapor could be even higher.

In 2001, Hirshhorn published an article titled Abraham Lincoln's Little Blue Pills. In this article, he suggested that Lincoln stopped taking "blue mass" in the first months of his presidency, because he realized that these pills "make him irritable." If this chronology of events is correct, Hirshhorn wrote, then Lincoln understood that the drug endangered his ability to run the country, and he had the strength to stop taking it until it got too late. “This could be of tremendous value in assessing Lincoln’s achievements,” said one well-known researcher of this theory. personalities and activities of Lincoln.

Hirshhorn's work caused controversy regarding Lincoln's medical condition. Today, a diagnosis of mercury poisoning is made after confirmation of high levels of mercury in the body, which in the case of Lincoln is almost impossible to do. Blood or urine samples for analysis we do not have. Strands of hair can retain traces of mercury for a year, but if Lincoln stopped taking the "blue mass" three years before his death, then the hair cut after the assassination would be useless.

Countless sources report third-party accounts that Lincoln took blue mass, but we have no evidence that he was ever prescribed the drug. In the books of the Springfield, Illinois pharmacy, there is a record that during the period from From 1849 to 1861, Lincoln purchased 245 items, but none of them were recorded as "blue weight".

According to Hirshhorn, Lincoln had reason to hide the fact that he was taking these pills, and we can't find evidence, not because they have been destroyed by time, but because someone has tried to destroy. Some sources corroborate Gore Vidal's story that Lincoln took "blue mass" for constipation, but most believe that he was trying to cope with depression with this remedy.

Lincoln was prone to despondency all his life, but his campaign portrayed him as an energetic and enterprising man, healthy as a lumberjack.

Disclosure of information that he needs psychiatric treatment, could reduce his chances for the presidency.

Perhaps Hirshhorn's suspicions are supported by an 1861 letter addressed to Lincoln from another apothecary in Springfield: "I hasten to send you the pills you asked for." The experts do not know what tablets there is a question and for what reason Lincoln bought them in a different pharmacy, which he usually used, but Hirshhorn believes that the answer to these questions is connected with the "blue mass".

There is another piece of evidence, but it is deliberately withheld. During his research, Hirshhorn discovered an article in an Illinois state newspaper about the Brownback Drug. Company, a family-owned drugstore 30 kilometers from Springfield that was rumored to make medicine for Abraham Lincoln. To Hirschhorn's delight, this pharmacy was still in existence in the 1990s.

Curious as to why Lincoln was ordering drugs from a place other than his own, Hirshhorn wrote a letter to the current pharmacy owner, asking if it was a blue mass prescription. Referring to medical secrecy, the pharmacy owner responded with a cryptic message that Hirshhorn interpreted as a veiled confirmation. “The fact that Lincoln chose to receive medical and pharmaceutical support in a place other than lived, definitely makes us approach this issue even more responsibly,” he wrote Hirshhorn. “I sincerely regret that I cannot be more helpful in your research, but I want to note that in the middle XIX century, components containing mercury were widespread and were part of many medicinal products. drugs."

More than 10 years have passed, and Hirshhorn again turned to this man. The pharmacy had already closed by that time, and its former owner worked in the college administration. Hirshhorn invited him to an upcoming lecture on Abraham Lincoln and included a link to a published article on Lincoln and the Blue Mass. He hoped that this man will tell Finally, what kind of medicine was the prescription for. However, nothing came of this venture.

The guest did not come to the lecture. Later Hirshhorn pondered: "The most exciting thing in all my research was going down different rabbit holes and finding rabbits there from time to time." As for the secret recipe, investigation is still going on.

A college graduate fights zombies and a happy lover pretends to be the President of the United States. The book Molecule from Madness consists of real stories about people with neurological diseases. It will help to understand how microscopic molecules affect our brain and change it.

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