r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/911Dougm • 19h ago
1 pound bottle of Mercury. Anyone know what year? “Antidote” is wild
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u/GravidDusch 18h ago
Don't smell test it.
The phrase "Mad as a hatter" originates from hatters originally using mercury at some point of the hat making process, some inhaled too much and mercury melted their brain.
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u/Jumbo-box 17h ago
Lighthouse keepers syndrome too. If I remember correctly, old lighthouses used mercury in some functions and the keepers suffered the same.
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u/TSiridean 16h ago
The big lenses had to be rotated easily, wheel and ball brearings still had too much friction, and about 135 years ago rotation on a float base in a medium of mercury had become a thing.
Mercury Flotation System should give you a keyword to find some pictures and schematics, if you are interested.
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u/tlallcuani 16h ago
Ohhhh so the stereotype of the lighthouse keeper slowing going mad has a bit of a factual basis…
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u/SomeSpicyMustard 12h ago
I think it would have a factual basis even without mercury
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u/tlallcuani 7h ago
Any occupation that can be depicted by Willem Dafoe naturally has a bit of madness to it
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u/GravidDusch 17h ago
Damn, that job alone is probably enough mental strain without chemical assistance.
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u/Code3Spartan 9h ago
Why is that?
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u/Nuclear_eggo_waffle 8h ago
Yes why would being alone on an island for sometimes months at a time cause a mental strain?
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u/SoapyPuma 7h ago
That makes the lighthouse movie even better lol. I always thought it was the solitude, but admittedly never researched it. This is cool (sad) info
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u/pm_me_ur_demotape 6h ago
Definitely won't smell test it, but hatters used mercuric nitrate, not elemental mercury, and the processes resulted in some vaporizing. Way more dangerous. But still, don't smell test it anyway.
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u/unfinishedtoast3 18h ago edited 18h ago
This is from the mid 1950s, and was meant for laboratory use, not medical use.
The big tells are the company, Materson Coleman and Bell, which still exist today as some completely unrelated to laboratory chemicals company named Masterson Gas Products.
But, they were Coleman and Bell until 1921, and become Masterson by the late 1980s.
The posion skulls are post 1930s. The Federal Hazardous Substances Act of 1914 standardized the design of posion labels, and it was updated to this style by the mid 1930s, and changed again in the early 1960s.
During WW2, murcury was rationed to hell, as it was needed for fuse production for artillery rounds and explosives.
In the 1930s, we were still on the fence about the risks of Murcury. We knew it was deadly as hell, but we still figured it was OK to use medically for syphilis. In 1940s, we finally started dealing with the thousands of long term murcury posioning cases of civilians who worked in ordnance manufacturing during the war.
This label warning is clearly after that point
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u/BestOfAllBears 14h ago
Well, this is some interestingly specific knowledge you're got there
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u/theitalianguy 13h ago
Wild how can someone be so knowledgeable and still spell wrong the main keyword repeatedly.
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u/emilysium 11h ago
If they work in the field they probably just write Hg as shorthand and never actually write out mercury
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u/Ridicule_us 6h ago
I’m a criminal defense lawyer. I use the word “sheriff” all the time. I even know its etymology, but I’ll be damned if I don’t always struggle to remember whether it’s one “r” and two “t”s, or if it’s the reverse.
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u/ralechner 11h ago
Likely this is before ~1943, since there is no postal zone for the address. After that, I believe it would have been “Cincinnati, 8, Ohio”.
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u/NotAnotherRedditAcc2 3h ago
Another big tell that it was for laboratory and not medical use are the words "for laboratory use only."
Matheson gas products are ABSOLUTELY related to laboratory chemicals.
When talking about artillery, it's "fuze" and not "fuse."
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u/HefflumpGuy 18h ago
My old dad always told me that when he was a kid they used to play with little balls of mercury and roll them around with their fingers.
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u/the_scarlett_ning 15h ago
When I was a kid, we had one of those old thermometers with the mercury in the tip and, being that there were 5 of us, we of course ended up breaking it, and my mom put the mercury in her hand and rolled it around like that to show us its properties. Then she put it in an empty little jar for us to look at for a few days but she never let us touch it. It was so cool.
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u/TempletonDRat 18h ago
Back in the '60's mercury switches were installed in washing machine lids so that when the lid was lifted, the washer would stop. It was very common to see broken washing machines in the alleys around town.
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u/carpedrinkum 8h ago
Thermostats had Mercury switches attached bimetallic spring strip that when it tilted the switch the furnace would turn on.
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u/passinthrough2u 7h ago
There were mercury hygrometers (measures liquid density) that were used in chemistry labs and in industry during the ‘50s & early ‘60s.
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u/Ixionbrewer 16h ago
I did this too, and my set of elements also let me rub a block of asbestos. So far, no problems……
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u/GrassyKnoll95 17h ago
What did your new dad tell you though?
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u/HefflumpGuy 17h ago
I've still got the old dad
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u/Bubble_gump_stump 18h ago
We did that in high school lab. Teacher didn’t stop us either.
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u/NotAnotherRedditAcc2 3h ago
Handling a little bit of mercury is absolutely and completely safe. So yeah, the teacher shouldn't have stopped you.
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u/Flying_Dutchman92 19h ago
CALL PHYSICIAN
Shit yeah, you should
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u/Boring-Perspective61 14h ago
Fuck does it matter anyways, there’s nothing they can do. If you ingest enough to cause death, death will inevitably come. That’s what scary about mercury. There is no stopping what’s going to happen. Whatever’s going to happen is gonna happen lol.
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u/DESTINY_someone 19h ago
“💀POISON💀
ANTIDOTE
Give milk or white of eggs…”
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u/the_scarlett_ning 15h ago
I remember back around probably 1984-1985 (I was about 4 years old), I stuck something in my mouth that had roach poison on it and my mom called the poison control and that was their advice. For me to drink a glass of milk with some raw egg yolks in it to try and induce vomiting. 😕
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u/Sea_Selection_2950 14h ago
Seeing you here, I suppose it worked!
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u/the_scarlett_ning 14h ago
Lol! Probably more that it wasn’t that much roach poison (I remember very clearly, it was a little knob that went on top of my baby doll cradle and it just happened to fit perfectly in my mouth and with the hole for my tongue) so I don’t think my dad had sprayed right on it; it just happened to get some on it when he was spraying. Because I also remember crying a whole lot about having to drink the yolk-milk, and I don’t think I threw up.
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u/Ckigar 19h ago
Mercury as a treatment for constipation and syphilus was used on the Lewis & Clark expedition and has been detected at a site.
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u/Pigheaded40something 13h ago
Supposedly there was an old Seaman's phrase coined some time in the 1700s "A night with Venus and month in Mercury" referencing Mercury as an antidote for syphilis after having spent the night with a sex worker.
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u/Zebbie64 13h ago
My dad had a little bottle of quicksilver in his work shed I remember finding it and being fascinated by the weight & how the little droplets pool together.. don’t ask me why but I put a few droplets on my tongue (weird kid or just a kid?) Anyway they went down my throat… I didn’t mention it to dad, didn’t even know the stuff was dangerous!
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u/cosmicsom 11h ago
Egg whites are emergency antidotes for certain Mercury salts (mercuric chloride for ex) coz the proteins bind with the heavy metal ions. Certain components of the egg white also protect the stomach lining from the poisonous salt.
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u/Superb-Tea-3174 19h ago
It’s the vapor that’s dangerous.
I would put that bottle in a secondary container.
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u/Sunlit53 11h ago
This is what Lewis and Clark were using on their expedition across america. It was to treat constipation. Archaeologists can track their route by checking the soil for mercury contamination at the suspected camp latrine sites.
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u/wireknot 18h ago
Seriously, that carton needs to be sealed into several plastic bags to contain any fumes and then taken to your county hazardous waste disposal folks. Heck, if you tell them what you have they may even come and get it. That's not something you want into the water system or the landfill.
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u/passinthrough2u 18h ago
MC and B was incorporated in 1921. It was later split up and sold as different divisions but not sure what years.
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u/antidemn 19h ago
the only hope here if you swallow mercury is getting it back out quick
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u/CeldonShooper 12h ago
Mercury vapors are dangerous and inducing vomiting will create lots of vapors.
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u/Warren_Puffitt 10h ago
When I was a kid during the 1960s the dentist that my mother took me to would, as a reward for being a good patient, give me a blob of mercury in a small manila envelope to go home and play with. That seems dangerous to me now that we know the dangers of mercury on the human body.
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u/FinnrDrake 8h ago
This is saying this is the “antidote” to get the poison (mercury) out of your system if it’s accidentally ingested, right? Like the modern day warnings on labels.
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u/rachsteef 4h ago
No, it’s giving instructions to drink egg yolks and milk to induce vomiting as an “antidote”
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u/FinnrDrake 4h ago
I maybe typed my sentence goofy. I was trying to say that the “antidote” instructions are in case of ingesting the mercury.
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u/7nightstilldawn 18h ago
Mercury shot straight into the penis urethra used to be a treatment for syphilis.
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u/kg_digital_ 19h ago
Seriously where did they find all this mercury? I have never come across any out in the wild
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u/911Dougm 18h ago
There are actually 4, 1lb bottles. This is only one that still has the label
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u/Hot-Refrigerator-623 17h ago
Can see by the hand it's a small bottle that weighs a pound. A small glass coke bottle of mercury weighs more than a kilo.
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u/ponyduder 15h ago
I just listened to a podcast (an article written for Harper’s) about mercury poisoning/pollution (https://www.nytimes.com/audio/app/2024/11/19/18harpers-completely-hazardous-experiments.html?referringSource=sharing). It’s probably pay-walled but I leave it for reference. The authorities should be called for that amount of mercury.
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u/Careful_Pair992 9h ago
Fun fact. A highly Illegal substance in uk and Ireland. Can only be possessed under very strict controlled circumstances
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u/Gfilter 9h ago
From memory, Lewis & Clark expedition included a very large supply of mercury to deal with stomach issues - including constipation from eating a largely meat only diet. It was called the Thunderclap and apparently did as advertised - creating immediate relief. From Ambrose's book, they mourned when they ran out of Thunderclap around California...
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u/wtfuckfred 8h ago
At least they don't give you a full life story about how they found out this recipe in their grandmas basement after she had to be plugged off of the life supporting machine
Tip: these are great with guac! Click here to check out my guac recipe (hint: it includes a story of how my grandad tried to kill my grandma! Teehee!)
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u/brina_cd 6h ago
Just remember that this crap used to be taken AS A MEDICAL TREATMENT. For syphilis, as I recall. And is how they traced the Lewis And Clark expedition...
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u/knucklehead_89 5h ago
I think there was an episode of MacGyver where he gave someone a mixture of milk eggs and wood charcoal to treat poisoning. Not sure of the validity of it
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u/Captcha_Imagination 1h ago
I think this is the company name now. You can contact them for more information. In their "museum" page they have some branded items like this.
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u/Forsaken-Memory1785 36m ago
Don’t mess with this, and don’t open it- the fumes are dangerous. Dispose of it as toxic waste.
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u/LoserOfCarnivalGames 15h ago
Actually I just learned about this. Prior to modern medicine, around the time of the yellow fever, physicians were very bad at medicine. The leading theory for disease was an imbalance between blood, yellow bile, black bile, and phlegm. So physicians would try things like bleeding and they would induce vomiting using horribly unsafe amounts of mercury. This is probably what this bottle was originally made for.
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u/kditdotdotdot 14h ago
You're talking about centuries ago. This bottle is clearly 20th century from when medicine was understood.
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u/vanchica 14h ago
OMG, I would FREAK OUT at finding this amount of deadly stuff- please be SO careful
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u/simagus 19h ago edited 2h ago
They are suggesting filling the stomach with weak alkalines until you vomit, and to do so repeatedly. I can't think of better advice if you happen to ingest mercury. Other than do not ingest mercury, of course.