Mercury and lead

Torsten,

It is not the first time that you talks about mercury and its strange
consequences. Today you are joking again, don't you?

> 1. According to analyses of Roman bones, the Roman had high level of
> lead in their bodies. Cause: their use of <sapa>, a lead compound, to
> sweeten their wine. Demented behavior: read Suetonius. Western Rome
> fell to the Germanic tribes, who drink beer, and Eastern Rome fell to
> Muslims, who don't drink at all. Neither drink wine.

Are you innocent enough to believe that a big empire (as undoubtly Roman
Empire was) could fell down only because of bad wine? And did you know
that Roman were drinking wine while building the same famous empire? So
they had to have been so demented as to achieve such a glorious deed.

> 2. National Geographic, some years back, did an excavation of
> Columbus' first camp on Hispaniola. On one of the pictures you see a
> broken bottle, filled with mercury. Columbus eventually behaved in
> such a manner that he had to be taken home to Spain in chains.

Please show a clear connection between the broken bottle and Columbus'
behaviour. Can you prove that he was near enough this featured bottle in
his camp to have been impoisoned by its contents?

> 3. Another picture in National Geographic: a diving expedition to a
> Spanish galleon: broken clay containers of mercury. Mercury spilling
> out on the sea bottom. Spain transported 150 tons of mercury each
> year to the New World (from Spain and the Philippines). One broken
> container and mercury would spill out in the ship sailing for months
> in the tropics. Without a thorough clean-up (which they most likely
> didn't do, there's no record of it) anybody sleeping below deck would
> become brain-damaged, deranged and stark raving mad. As to the
> behavior of the Spanish, I don't think I have to comment on that. The
> mercury was used in the gold mines, mercury in a gold pan would
> amalgamate the gold specks, and then mercury was gotten rid of by
> heating to evaporation. Anybody's guess how that affected the
> panners. This happened especially in Mexico, Colombia and Peru.

Am I wrong, or perhaps you are trying to associate it with Mexican,
Colombian and Peruvian guerrillas?

> 4. There was a massive mercury poisoning (eating treated seed grain)
> in Iraq in 1971. Several hundred died. Several thousand were
> hospitalized. As to those with only subclinical symptoms (personality
> changes, irate and rigid behaviour etc), no further comment.

Yes, and Saddam Hussein was one of them, obviously.

> 5. Shoko Asahara, the demented leader of the Aum cult (is it OK if
> call him demented and not religious?) was born in a seaside town in
> Japan 50 km from Minamata in 1956, at the time of the mercury
> disaster.

"At the time" doesn't mean that it has something to do with anything. I
was born when The Beatles begun their career (same time) and until today
I am a nobody, and I am sure that the utmost of Liverpool (same place)
inhabitants of my age are as unknown as me too.

> 6. The "first" emperor Chin, famous for his cruelty, was buried with
> a landscape, in which the rivers were mercury.

Touché! Your mercury has nothing to do here because the emperor was
close to mercury _after_ his death...
Now please tell me whether Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Idi Amin,
etc. were fed with mercury.
(Some historical, political and economical readings may be useful if you
want to occupy your leisure hours).

Omar