MERCURY. 
§ 873-1 
placed a rabbit under a large glass shade, and for four days exposed it 
daily for two hours to the volatilisation of 2 grms. of mercury on warm 
sand ; on the sixth and seventh day 1-5 grm. was volatilised. On the 
fifteenth day there was no apparent change in the aspect of the animal ; 
5 grms. of mercury were then heated in a retort, and the vapour blown 
in at intervals of ten minutes. Fourteen days afterwards the gums 
were reddened and swollen, and the appetite lost ; the conjunctivse 
were also somewhat inflamed. The following day these symptoms 
disappeared, and the animal remained well. 
In another experiment 20 grms. of mercury were volatilised, and a 
rabbit exposed to the vapour under a small glass shade. The following 
day the conjunctivse were moist and reddened ; two days afterwards 
10 grms. of mercury were volatilised in the same way ; and after two 
days' interval other 10 grms. were volatilised in three-quarters of an hour. 
There was no striking change noticeable in the condition of the animal, 
but within forty-eight hours it was found dead. The cause of death 
proved to be an extravasation of blood at the base of the brain. The 
bronchia were reddened throughout and the lungs congested. Mercury, 
as with man, is also readily absorbed by the broken or unbroken skin ; 
hence thousands of sheep have been poisoned by the excessive and 
ignorant external application of mercurial ointment as a remedy against 
the attacks of parasites. The sheep become emaciated, refuse food, and 
seem to be in pain, breathing with short, quick gasps. 
In experiments on rabbits, dogs, and warm-blooded animals generally, 
salivation and stomatitis are found to occur as regularly as in man ; so 
also, in animals and man, paralytic and other nervous affections have 
been recorded. 
§ 873. (c) Effects on Man.—In 1810 1 an extraordinary accident 
produced, perhaps, the largest wholesale poisoning by mercurial vapour 
on record. The account of this is as follows :—H.M.S. Triumph, of 
seventy-four guns, arrived in the harbour of Cadiz in the month of 
February 1810 ; and in the following March a Spanish vessel, laden 
with mercury for the South American mines, having been driven on 
shore in a gale, was wrecked. The Triumph saved by her boats 130 
tons of the mercury, and this was stowed on board. The mercury was 
first confined in bladders, the bladders again were enclosed in small 
barrels, and the barrels in boxes. The heat of the weather, however, 
was at this time considerable ; and the bladders, having been wetted 
in the removal from the wreck, soon rotted, and mercury, to the 
amount of several tons, was speedily diffused as vapour through the 
ship, mixing more or less with the bread and the other provisions. In 
three weeks 200 men were affected with ptyalism, ulceration of the 
1 “ An Account of the Effect of Mercurial Vapours on the Crew of His Majesty’s 
Ship Triumph, in the year 1810,” Phil. Trans., 113, 1823. 
