By Dr. Matsen

In Eating Alive II, I mention Alfred Stock, a German chemist who wrote about the dangers of mercury vapors. The following article, titled The Dangerousness of Mercury Vapor, was written by Stock in 1926 and translated into English by Birgit Calhoun. I’ve condensed it a bit; for the full article, click on the following link: http://www.stanford.edu/~bcalhoun/AStock.htm.

Zeitschrift fuer angewandte Chemie, 29. Jahrgang, 15. April 1926, Nr. 15, S. 461-466, Die Gefaehrlichkeit des Quecksilberdampfes, von Alfred Stock (1926)
The Dangerousness of Mercury Vapor
By Alfred Stock, Berlin-Dahlem
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut fuer Chemie
(Eingeg. Febr. 9, 1926)
Translated by Birgit Calhoun

When I am making the decision to report without hesitation to a wider circle about my personal problems, which ordinarily wouldn’t concern others and would not be worthy of publication, I am driven by the intense desire to warn emphatically all those who have to deal with metallic mercury about the dangers of this unstable metal, and to save them from the horrible experiences which have spoiled a great part of my life. Today I can speak about them freely because luckily they have been concluded, and they are behind me with sufficient distance.

The insidious horror of mercury is not nearly sufficiently well known and is being taken note of too little in those places where one is particularly threatened by it, in chemical and physical laboratories.

For nearly 25 years I have suffered from ailments, which, in the beginning, arose only occasionally, then gradually got worse and worse and finally increased to unbearable proportions so that I disparingly doubted my ability to continue to work scientifically. The cause was understood neither by me nor many outstanding physicians. They thought that it was possible that it could be found in the especially narrow built of the nasal passages and an unusual irritability of the nasal mucosa. Because of this, I underwent decades of treatments of the nose with cauterizations, burnings, massages, electrification, and bloody operations. Without success. Two years ago–a few of my colleagues fell ill with similar symptoms–it was accidentally discovered that it had to do with an insidious poisoning by mercury vapor. In my chemical work, which involves testing of volatile substances by the “vacuum method,” which uses mercury-tubs, -pumps, -manometers, and -valves¹⁾, I had been in constant contact with mercury for 25 years.

Today there is no doubt about the diagnosis any more because all my symptoms, although not gone completely, have more or less been diminished²⁾, after having avoided inhaling mercury vapors for the last two years without the use of any other healing methods.

First I am describing the difficulties as they developed in me over time. They are identical to an insidious mercury poisoning in every detail. I was able to convince myself of this through my colleagues and other peers, who suffered and still suffer from mercury vapor poisoning. Some of them, it is noted, were not cognizant of the origin of their difficulties. Many pertinent symptoms have, up to now, been insufficiently described. At any rate, insidious mercury vapor poisoning has not received the attention it deserves.

With me the situation began with slight intermittent headaches and mild drowsiness, which increased gradually, over the years, to constant nervous restlessness and “jitteriness.” Head-pressure impaired the ability to think. It worsened and finally became an almost uninterrupted vexing headache (sits mostly over the eyes). I had strong vertigo, which was occasionally connected with visual disturbances (unclear and double vision). Soon the upper air passages were involved as well. This started with a slight transient nose cold. This was followed by a constant “stuffy nose,” which later turned into severe nose, throat and sinus infections. They were followed, one by one, almost without interruption, by pussy, often bloody, mucosal discharge and scabbing, frequent sore throats and ear aches connected to auditory loss and loss of smell (some sense of smell remained; e.g. cyanic acid). There was a distaste for tobacco smoke. During the last years prior to recognition of the poisoning, there were added signs: a strong flow of saliva, a sour, insipid taste in the mouth, infections of the eyes and oral mucosa. There were little blisters, sensitive and sore areas on the tongue, the palate, the gums and the insides of the lips and cheeks. There was reddening of the gums and slight bleeding while brushing the teeth. There were toothaches, receding of the gums and formation of “pockets” and temporary loosening of individual teeth. The mouth and tooth signs revealed themselves only (in part they only reached their peak months after recognition of the poisoning) because, since my youth, I have been taking good care of my teeth (among other things nightly long rinses with 1 and 1/2% hydrogen peroxyde solution and sodium bicarbonate). If this hadn’t been the case, I might possibly have become aware of the cause of my problems through mouth infections.

Other signs were: Mental weariness and exhaustion, lack of inclination and inability to perform any, particularly mental, work, and increased need for sleep. There were tremors of the spread-out fingers and also sometimes the eyelids. There was pain in various locations of the body, tearing in the back and limbs, and pressure in the liver area. At times, there were disturbances of stomach and intestinal activity, loss of appetite, sudden bladder pressure, isolated bouts of diarrhea, which occurred without other possible causes. There were sudden blistery rashes, e.g. on the insides of the arms and thighs.

The most depressing accompanying sign relating to mental work was the diminishment of memory. My memory, which had previously been excellent, left more and more to be desired and became worse and worse until, two years ago, I suffered from nearly complete memory loss.

Why were our illnesses not recognized sooner as being mercury poisoning? I have often asked myself this question, not without self-accusations. The first signs, those that preceded the oral signs of slow mercury poisoning, are hardly known by the medical profession.¹³⁾ They consist only of fatigue, lowering of thinking and memory skills, slight headaches and drowsiness and rare occasional diarrhea. In the same way, it was little known until now that the nose and remaining breathing passages are being compromised in the form of a runny nose and sinusitis. But exactly these symptoms brought me and the physicians who treated me on the wrong track, and have been misleading in other cases that I have come to know about. Thus one of my assistants was treated for a long time for a sinus infection before the true cause came to light. By the way, balanced judgment of the bad situation becomes impaired in those who are affected exactly because of the existing drowsiness: “Quem Mercurius perdere vult, dementat prius!” [Whom Mercury wants to destroy, he first robs of his mind!]

At this time I would like to warn about a little known source of insidious mercury poisoning: It is amalgam tooth fillings. Professor Lewin suggested to me at once, when he noticed mercury poisoning in me, to replace all amalgam fillings–of which I had a considerable number in my mouth since early youth–with other fillings. Telling me this, he recalled a case of a university colleague who was at the edge of mental and physical collapse when the cause was found just in time. It was found in the numerous amalgam fillings stemming from the time when he was young. After their removal slow recovery followed.¹⁴⁾

Dentists used to prefer copper and cadmium amalgams and now often use the so-called silver amalgams for tooth fillings because these amalgams are easy to work with and fill out the cavities well. Silver amalgam is superior to the earlier named amalgams, which corode and rot over time. However it, too, releases mercury at room temperature as the following assays¹⁵⁾ proved to us:

We enclosed silver amalgam samples in an evacuated glass tube, which was bent [in the middle] at a ninety-degree angle with the ends melted shut. The horizontal tube shank with the amalgam piece was kept warm at 30-35 degrees C; the other shank serving as a recepticle, was cooled with ice or liquid air. We then measured the mercury that had sublimated in the receptacle in all cases.

• Amalgam piece carefully made for this purpose by dentist in the state-of-the-art method from metal powder and mercury: .801 g. Enclosed by melting into glass tube 24 hours after manufacture. Warmed [30-35 degrees] for 23 days. Receptacle in ice. Distilled mercury = 11.2 mg
• II. Same as above: .810 g. Kept for three weeks to make hardening as complete as possible. Only after that period of time was it enclosed by melting into glass tube. Warmed [30-35 degrees] for 12 days. Receptacle in liquid air. Distilled mercury = 15.3 mg
• III. Amalgam piece made by taking care using as little mercury as possible: 1.000 g. As in II. was kept in the open for three weeks. Warmed [30-35 degrees] for 9 days. Receptacle in ice. Distilled mercury = 8.2 mg
• IV. Amalgam filling, which had been in a tooth for years and had fallen out: .894 g. Warmed [30-35 degrees] for 14 days. Receptacle in liquid air. Distilled mercury = 29.4 mg

Without doubt, the fillings that were used here in the laboratory would have allowed mercury to evaporate from the mouth as well and supplied the inhaled air with a small amount of mercury, which, in the long run, has to be harmful. The old copper and cadmium amalgams are likely to be even more harmful.

For some time, one of my faculty colleagues had been suffering from occasional headaches and drowsiness the cause of which he couldn’t explain. After he had an old amalgam filling removed, which had caused a slight infection near the tooth in question, his symptoms disappeared gradually. After its removal the filling showed itself as crumbly and laced with mercury droplets, throughout.

Dental medicine should do without the application of amalgam as means for filling teeth altogether or, at least, wherever at all possible. There is no doubt that many complaints such as fatigue, memory weakness, oral inflammation, diarrhea, lack of appetite, chronic runny nose and sinusitis are sometimes caused by mercury that has been directed to the body from amalgam fillings, maybe only in small quantities, but constantly. The physicians should give this fact the most serious attention. Then it will probably become apparent that the frivolous introduction of amalgams as tooth filling device was a nasty sin against humanity.