Introduction - Uppsala Monitoring Centre

1709 Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the mercury thermometer.
1711 Nicolas Boileau (1636–1711) wrote:
You say without reward or fee
Your uncle cured me of a dangerous ill:
I say, he never did prescribe for me;
The proof is plain, I’m living still.
John Marten wrote ‘A treatise of the Venereal Disease’ (7 th edition).
He mentions the following adverse effects of mercury: salivation,
swelling of salivary glands, caries, acute bone pains, oppression
about the hypochondria, extreme anxieties, faintness, difficulty in
breathing, present danger of choking, prickings and twitchings,
soreness, lameness, palsies, spasms, convulsions, apoplexy, thirst,
giddiness in the head, trembling, impediment of speech, loss of
hearing, decay of sight, loss of smelling, swollen tongue, fever, want
of sleep, cold sweats, vomiting, dysentery, hair fell off, headache
and, of course, death. ‘Mercury as us’d, the body fills,With
wholesome goods, or noxious ills, And quickly cures, or quickly kills.’
(Marten, 1711).
1712 ‘A Compleat History of Druggs’ by Monsieur Pomet, Chief Druggist
to the present French King, done into English, published in London.
Mercury: ’Quicksilver is a remedy for misery, in which the patient
swallows a pound or more: It is voided by the stool, without any
alteration’. ... ‘It is used in the composition of several unguents and
plasters. It is one of the best remedies in physick, to dissipate and
eradicate the grossest, most foul, malignant, and inveterate humours
…’
‘one of the most surprising effects that mercury produces is to
raise a salivation, and so carry off the very radix or root of the
distemper in all venereal foulnesses. To explain this, it must be
considered, that the venereal virus conflicts in a humour that is salt or
acid, tartarous and gross; which fermenting by degrees, corrupts the
blood and other humours, and causes all the ill accidents that follow
it.…’
‘Such a salivation is approved of, whereby about two or three pints
of a viscous or glutinous humour are discharged every day, and
which is fully accomplished in the space of twenty or twenty-five
days, or a month at furthest.’
‘The head, the gums, the palate and the tongue are ulcerated: the
salivary vessels relaxed.’
Opium–Opium is narcotic, hypnotic and anodyne; it composes the