| Description Of Item | A small cylindrical medicine vial with a handwritten label that reads ‘Calomel [gtt.?]’, containing a small amount of off-white powder.
Calomel, or mercuric chloride, is a rare naturally occurring mineral introduced as medicine in the year 1493, following the discovery of medicinal ‘quicksilver’, or mercury, ten years earlier by the Swiss physician Paracelsus (Root, 1856, p.7). Along with other mercurial remedies such as ‘blue pills’, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw calomel used as a treatment for a variety of illnesses, as a sialagogue, expectorant, cathartic, emmenagogue, alterative, and tonic, primarily in cases that required a laxative or purgative, leading to no other medicine being ‘more largely employed in a greater number of diseases’ (Sigmond, 1840, pp.98-99). It was administered mostly as a tasteless, yellowish-white powder or ‘heavy scales’ (Sigmond, 1840, p.43), formed by triturating the raw calomel ‘with water, either in a morter or on a slab with a muller, or in a mill’ (Jewell, 1856, p.2). Other uses included treatment for syphilis, specifically recommended by John W. Foye in 1874 as an inhaled vapour (1874, p.14), though mercury had already been a popular remedy to treat syphilitic sickness for several centuries by this point.
Although mercurial treatments had some support within the Western medical community, they were also met with a plethora of criticism from a number of doctors. Some practitioners, such as G.G. Sigmond, believed calomel to be a potential ‘source of the most fearful calamities’ while also maintaining that it was one of the most ‘valuable resources of the healing art’ when used correctly (1840, p.1); others, however, were utterly opposed to the drug. Complaining in his 1856 book, 'The Peoples’ Medical Lighthouse', of the foul breath and ulcerated gums endured by calomel users (one of its most common side effects), Harmon Knox Root also described the risk of increased ‘susceptibility to colds and disorganized blood’ posed by the treatment (1856, p.239). Furthermore, John Elliotson described their prescription as ‘absurd’, claiming that they ‘make the patient weak’ (1844, p.953), while, in 1848, David Ward stated that he frequently witnessed ‘the wrecks of men, women and children; some of whom have lost their jaws or a part of them, others have lost the use of their limbs, some have lost the bones of the nose, and palate; some have lost a part of the face…’ (1848, p.13), all negligently prescribed calomel. Nonetheless, mercury continued to be used medicinally into the 20th century in the West and is still sometimes used today in the production of medical goods, although opposing legislation means that this is increasingly rare.
References
Elliotson, J. 1844. The principles and practice of medicine. Philadelphia: Carey and Heart.
Foye, J. W. 1874. The treatment of syphilitic diseases by the mercurial vapour bath. Boston: Williams.
Jewell, J. 1856. Specification of Joseph Jewell: preparation of calomel for medicinal use. London: Great Seal Patent Office.
Root, H. K. 1856. The People’s Medical Lighthouse. New York: Ranney.
Sigmond, G. G. 1840. Mercury, blue pill and calomel; their use and abuse. London: H. Renshaw.
Ward, D. 1848. An essay on biliary derangement, and the excessive use of calomel, and other mercurials. Adrian: R. W. Ingals.
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