In 1902, the newly formed U.S. Air Force Medical Corps designed a pattern, they used the ancient Roman legend of Asclepius as a symbol of healing, his scepter is a snake wrapped around the stick, but because of mistakes, when designing the pattern, using two snakes wrapped around the stick Mercury, the latter is the patron saint of commerce and money.
On the left of the picture above is the guardian of health, and on the right of the gold coin is the patron saint of wealth and commerce, the main difference between them is a double snake and a single snake. After the Design of the U.S. Army, the pattern quickly became popular in many places, and Mercury's pattern was posted everywhere as a patron saint of health, and it was not until 1932 that The Science Monthly published an article pointing out this low-level error.
However, it still mocked the designers and the medical ethos of the time: many doctors or charlatans at that time could argue the worst things as the best outcome with their clever mouths, and then make a windfall, so it was in line with the meaning of mercury's patron saint of business and wealth.
This story of this episode in Science Monthly shows that the original unreliable jianghu langzhong medicine scammers also have Western medicine, and are not the patent of traditional Chinese medicine. Even in the United States, when the illness is rushed to the hospital, most people still can't distinguish between true and false claims and prescriptions.
Legend has it that the tomb of Qin Shi Huang artificially created the galaxy, lake and sea, the main tool or prop used at that time was mercury, he was in order to be able to enjoy the sun, moon and stars after death and before death, so mercury was used as a tool for immortality, this kind of silver that can flow is considered to be alive, and in the eyes of Taoists and alchemists, mercury is a very magical thing.
In the West, mercury was not pulled down, and was once endowed with many functions, from strengthening the body to laxative detoxification to treating syphilis, and it was planned that all the incurable diseases in the West at that time were treated by mercury and its derivatives, and the result of the treatment was that there was no improvement except for death from mercury poisoning and other induced diseases. However, mercury is still considered a cure because there is no alternative.
In the 1920s, many children had an outbreak of a disease named acromegaly, the symptoms were cold hands and feet, swelling, redness, severe flesh and blood shedding, crying, because the whole body pain was unbearable, this situation is because these children are all mercury poisoning, they ingested a thing called calomel, there was also calomel in a popular tooth powder at that time, which was used to treat toothache. The toothache does not heal, but causes general pain.
Earlier, mercury was used as a potent medicine, and during the American Revolutionary War, there was a famous doctor Benjamin Rush, who was also one of the signatories of the Declaration of Independence, who believed that mercury could be laxative and could also treat psychiatric diseases, and for this reason he prescribed mercury to many people, and finally, successfully poisoned many people, in exchange for the reputation of a quack, and then stopped practicing medicine.
Even though Rush himself was no longer practicing medicine, his theories and doctrines still had a strong ability to survive, and more than half a century later, Lincoln, one of the famous presidents of the United States, suffered from constipation and still adopted the popular treatment method of the time, using mercury pills to defecate, the main ingredients of which were mercury, licorice, rose water, honey and sugar.
This recipe alone, looking good, should be very sweet, if there is no mercury, it should be a very sweet sugar, but because of mercury, it became a deadly pill, Lincoln himself later stopped taking it, because he found that after taking it, he was emotionally unstable and getting worse and worse.
Going back in time, mercury was once considered the savior of syphilis. Syphilis is terrible, the terrible thing is not the disease itself, but people with syphilis often lose their male function, which is more insulting than death, so that these nobles have no place to be self-contained, all exhaust all means to find a cure, the nobles who are not bad money quickly find a cure, and mercury therapy soon appears.
In the 14th century, france invaded Genoa and Naples in Italy, and soon the Italians expelled them, losing Naples and Genoa, but always brought syphilis into France, and then introduced to Britain during the Hundred Years' War, this new virus made many French and British people die, because the privacy of the route of infection made it difficult for infected people to talk about it, plus this is generally a high-class nobleman, let alone free to publicize.
For the nobles at that time, the face was more important than life, so they had to seek various elixirs to treat, while venting their anger, in order to vent their anger, France called this Italian disease, while Britain called it French willow disease. Out of survival instinct, medical researchers quickly put a lot of energy into overcoming this new difficulty, and at the same time, these not-short-lived masters quickly attracted the favor of all kinds of charlatans.
After 200 years of torture, in the 16th century, the famous alchemist Paracelsus claimed to have discovered the ultimate solution to syphilis, and this explosive news made the nobles of the time a treasure, believing that sulfur, mercury and salt had the characteristics of geography, physiology, and astrology, and that they could cure all kinds of diseases encountered by people when they were mixed together.
Soon after paracelsus was announced, a new salt appeared on the market: mercuric chloride. The main ingredient is mercury, which can be dissolved in water, drink it more easily absorbed by the body, and then because of salt, it will leave a large amount of saliva, which is considered to be a normal phenomenon of eliminating toxins in the body. Of course, similar treatments are thought to have worked and then continued to be used until the patient dies of mercury poisoning or syphilis.
If mercuric chloride didn't have the desired effect, it didn't matter, there were more advanced treatment options at the time: a mercury package, a sauna in a wooden barrel filled with mercury. Only the head is exposed, the whole body is soaked in mercury, and the heating below makes the mercury become steam, so that the body can absorb the mercury faster and die of poisoning faster.
Because of the privacy of the transmission route, after mercury was used to treat syphilis, there was a popular saying in Europe at that time: spend a night with beautiful women, spend a lifetime with mercury! This is because it was already known at the time that even the mercury medical kit that was said to be mysterious could not be completely cured, whether using mercuric chloride or mercury vapor therapy later.
Even if it could not be cured, the whole society believed that it could be cured, and it was the only recognized treatment at that time, so once everyone got this terrible disease, they had to undergo mercury therapy for a lifetime until he died.
In modern times, mercury has basically introduced the field of medical treatment, the non-dry medical thermometer is still very accurate, which is probably one of his remaining main functions, people are also very clear about the toxicity of mercury, fortunately, with the help of modern medicine, many of the above diseases can be completely cured.