Calomel

 

                                                                               Calomel

Medical uses for calomel were common well into the nineteenth century. It acts as a purgative and kills bacteria (and also does irreversible damage to their human hosts). Some treatments are of historical interest. 

The three physicians atttending Gen. Washington’s final hours administered calomel to the dying President. Lewis and Clark carried it on their expedition and used it to treat their men’s STD’s.

 Louisa May Alcott (author of Little Women) suffered from its effects. Even in the present decade several cases of mercury poisoning have been attributed to facial cremes containing calomel. Such cremes are banned in the United States because mercury is readily absorbed through the skin.

Once the most popular of cathartics, calomel has been used in medicine since the 16th century. The recognition of its potential toxicity (because of disassociation into mercury and mercuric chloride), together with the development of superior and safer cathartics, led to a decline in its use in internal medicine. 

                                                                       Calomel Is A Poison

It has found application in certain insecticides and fungicides, however. The compound is also used in the construction of calomel electrodes for potentiometric titration (a chemical technique designed to measure the potential between two electrical conductors in a medium such as an electrolyte solution).

                                                                          Human Past

                                   pp. 324-325, Merck’s Index: Fourth Edition (1930)

Mercury Chloride
Merck- Mercurous-C.P.
Calomel; Mild Mercury Chloride; Mercury Subchloride, or Monochloride, or Protochloride.
Actions: Cathartic; Alter. ; Diuretic; Antiseptic; Anthelmintic.
Uses: Detecting cocaine, pilocrpine, SCN, & free alkali; I; also in electrolysis as the calomel electrode.
Uses (Internal): constipation, incubation period of infectious disease, cholera, dysentery, cardiac dropsy, pleurisy, malign. fever, malaria, syphilis, gout, worms, cholelithiasis, mitral insufficiency, eclampsia gravidarum
Uses (External): smallpox pitting, pruritus, diphtheria, syphilitic ulcers, myiasis, membrane croup (by fumigation), condylomata, warts.
Effect of dose not in proportion to size. Small, well-triturated doses better than large coarse ones. Larger doses in proportion to age of children than w.o. medicine.
Caution: Keep in the dark.

                                                                     

                                                                         Snapshot