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Though modern scientists recognize mercury as a harmful
environmental pollutant and one of the world's most dangerous
elemental toxins, mercury was once considered a wondrous substance
capable of eradicating internal disease, revolutionizing the paint
and cosmetics industries and even entertaining the masses as part
of amateur magic tricks and witch doctor scams.This work traces the
history of mercury in popular culture, beginning in the early
eighteenth century when Dr. Thomas Dover, nicknamed ""Dr.
Quicksilver,"" began prescribing doses of raw mercury to clear out
intestinal blockages and rid the body of syphilis and other
diseases. The author then details the role of mercury in several
medical, industrial, and cultural applications. In the fields of
dentistry and vaccination, mercury continues to be used as a
preservative and amalgamative agent. In the cosmetics industry,
mercury was once used as a popular ""skin lightener"" in soaps and
skin creams. In the early development of obstetrics and gynecology,
mercury was once used to stimulate conception and fetal abortion.
These uses of mercury, along with many more, are outlined in the
work, while several appendices provide translations of rare works
which reference mercury.
Whenever a new language is learned, a new culture is also
learned. Swiderski provides instructive examples of language
learning situations by describing multilingual events using more
than twenty of the world's languages. All aspects of language
learning from the physical environment of the classroom to the
perceptions of events and emotions that languages express are
considered. Australian aboriginal languages and Native American
languages are analyzed to illustrate the world of differences of
which English, Chinese, and Russian are also a part. The politics
of language teaching and the effect of language policy in the
classroom are brought out in concrete examples. This study will be
of interest to language teachers and the general international
community as well.
Bacillus anthracis anthrax had largely faded from public
consciousness until it resurfaced as a terrorist weapon in 2001. It
was always with us , lurking in the soil and hosted by our
livestock. Long before it was identified as a specific bacterium in
the late 1800s, anthrax was a catchphrase for a variety of diseases
and symptoms, from ancient biblical plagues to a painful carbuncle
on George Washingtons leg. Only when industrialization turned
anthrax into a widespread disease that threatened economies did a
true understanding of Bacillus anthracis begin to emerge.
This history of anthrax follows the development of our
understanding of the disease, beginning in the 18th century, when
science began breaking ground on the subject, until the present,
when anthrax is feared more as an agent of biowarfare than as a
health hazard harbored by the environment. There are three
appendices: the first outlines the reaction of Manchester, New
Hampshire, to the 2001 anthrax attacks; the second documents
workplace warnings to anthrax-prone workers; and the third lists
novels that involve anthrax. Bibliographical references are also
provided.
Formed as a word and a chemical compound in an culturally diverse
Europe, calomel came to America as a solution to epidemics also
imported. It grew into a primary gesture, both medical and
commercial, of the healing professions. Opposition to its use,
founded on experience with the effects of consuming it, took the
form of song and satire that echoed faintly after the drug was
forgotten.
Bullets change shape as they cross boundaries, bodily and cultural.
They originate as random projectiles emitted from a gunpowder blast
and are ever more narrowly channeled through gun barrels.
Refashioned by weight and design to anticipate the shape they take
in the enemy body, they turn around to meet the sender. This book
looks at bullets as they are sent, received and meant.
X-ray vision at first was the revival of the phantasmagoria and
ground-penetrating sight of earlier centuries attached to the new
technology of X-rays in the early twentieth century. The image-idea
of the existence of rays that allow prepared eyes to see into
clothing, through walls and into the earth, not feasible in fact,
generated fictions and surrogates of how living beings would
experience such an ability, what they would do with it and what it
would do to them. Expressing both a need and a desire, X-ray vision
underwent its own development gathering elements of play, inquiry
and assault independent of X-ray technology but converging with
microscopy, telescopy, television and surveillance.
Testing the boundaries between food, poison and medicine is a
public show made into a continuing drama of risk and survival. This
book is the first to explore the tradition of deliberate poison
eating, its practitioners, and the substances that might nourish or
kill them. Readers interested in the human history of drugs and
medicine, in feats of endurance usually survived and in the play of
controlling and regulatory authorities that always accompanies drug
and poison use will find Poison Eaters especially appealing.
This is a study of the St. Peter's Fiesta celebrated annually by
the Italian, or better, Sicilian-American community of Gloucester,
Massachusetts, USA. The study deals specifically with the fiesta
that took place 25-28 June 1970.
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