MERCURY THROUGH THE AGES

Mercury and its compounds have been known by many civilisations for many thousands of years. Due to its unusual properties scientists have been fascinated by mercury and have wanted to account for its characteristics for centuries.

Vermillion pigment (mercury sulphide) has been used since prehistory as a colour for paint and fabric dye. A cave painting in red paint is shown below:

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Cinnabar was known by many ancient civilisations to yield mercury by simply heating in air. The rich cinnabar deposits at Almaden in Spain have been known for centuries by the Greek and Romans who used mercury for alchemic experiments.

One of the main uses of mercury through the ages was for alchemic experiments in which scientists believed that base metals could be converted into gold. Alchemists believed that mercury was an essential element for alchemy because it was part of all metals and represented the fluidity of all metals. It came a shock then, when in the mid eighteenth century that it was discovered that at a low enough temperature mercury could become solid and the belief that it represented fluidity of metals was disproved. Some famous names throughout history have been affected by mercury poisoning whilst attempting alchemy most notable Charles II who died of mercury poisoning after attempting alchemy in a poorly ventilated room.

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Mercury was also used by gold prospectors in the wild west of America. They found that impure gold found in rocks could be extracted by mixing the impure gold with mercury to form a mercury gold amalgam. This could be squeezed though leather to remove the impurities and then the amalgam was placed inside a potato and baked until all the mercury had been evaporated off into the flesh of a potato and a nugget of gold was left over.

www.golddredger.com/ gpoc99/slucing1.htm

A mixture of mercury and chalk was used by detectives to dust a crime scene for fingerprints and many detectives contracted mercury poisoning as a result of exposure to this dust.

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