Newton's Smart Ass (The Donkey and Cart Paradox)

 "If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

~~Sir Isaac Newton

http://images.travelpod.com/users/chris-marianne/bigchina.1117263240.kashgar_-_donkey_cart.jpg

Much like mass or volume, energy is a property of an object. Energy is the potential for an object to exert force. Therefore, it can be said that a simple machine, such as a lever or pulley system, stores energy which then gives it the "potential" to do something. Here it seems that we have also given ourselves a pretty good description of the term "potential energy." That is, potential energy is energy stored in matter.

Energy differs from force, in that I need energy to exert a force. Energy is needed to exert force. If I don't have any energy, I will not be able to do anything. It is energy which is the currency for performing work. You need energy to do work. If I have no energy, I can't use force to make something move. Which thus brings me to the somewhat unsatisfying conclusion that energy can exist without force, but that force cannot exist without energy. Or, to put it another way, energy is not force exactly, but force on the other hand, could be described as being energy in one form or other. There. Clear as mud. To try and build a better picture, let's take a closer look at what is meant by the term "force" exactly.

A force is a push or pull upon an object resulting from the object's interaction with another object. Whenever there is an interaction between two objects, there is a force upon each of the objects. When the interaction ceases, the two objects no longer experience the force. Forces only exist as a result of an interaction.
http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/newtlaws/u2l2a.cfm

Our modern understanding in the workings of force and motion is derived from observations made by Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727.) His most outstanding contribution to physics was in formulising the exact forces which act on objects, and how these define an object's motion. Essentially, it amounted to a mathematical representation of how energy was involved in moving objects, and indeed, stationary objects. Thus, Newton was able to arrange his findings to develop a mechanical model of the Universe, giving us the expression "classical mechanics."

The term classical mechanics was coined in the early 20th century to describe the system of mathematical physics begun by Isaac Newton and many contemporary 17th century natural philosophers, building upon the earlier astronomical theories of Johannes Kepler, which in turn were based on the precise observations of Tycho Brahe and the studies of terrestrial projectile motion of Galileo, but before the development of quantum physics and relativity. Therefore, some sources exclude so-called "relativistic physics" from that category. However, a number of modern sources do include Einstein's mechanics, which in their view represents classical mechanics in its most developed and most accurate form.
http://wapedia.mobi/en/Classical_mechanics

What Newton was trying to establish was a set of equations which illustrated how motion is governed by the Universe. In theory, these formulas amounted to a firm set of rules which could be applied to motion anywhere in the Universe - from everyday objects to distant planets. In the following three hundred years, it should be duly noted that the Universe, being something of a stickler for rules and regulations, has always been seen to obey them. In 1686, Newton set-out the formulas in his paper, "Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis," and presented them as the Three Laws of Motion.

Newtonian concept of force is given in three simple mechanical laws:

1) A body remains in its kinetic state, either at rest or in motion, unless there is an external force acting on it; which is known as the law of inertia.

2) If a (net) force F is applied to an object with mass m, then the acceleration a of the object caused by F follows the relation F = ma

3) If object A exerts a force F on object B then object B, then object B exerts a force -F on object A, equal in magnitude and opposite in direction to F
http://www.thecatalyst.org/physics/chapter-two.html

The definition of "force" can be found in Newton's Third Law, which states that for "every action there is always opposed an equal reaction." According to the Third Law, a force is simply a mutual interaction between two objects that results in an equal and opposite push or pull upon those objects. This illustrates the fact that forces always occur in pairs. Forces never act in isolation, and when two objects interact, action and reaction forces of equal magnitude are always paired and act on the objects in opposite directions.

Newton's 3rd Law states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This basically means that forces always occur in pairs. In any situation where one object is exerting a force on the other, then the other object is also exerting a force that is equal in magnitude but opposite in direction on the initial object. So for example, The Sun exerts a gravitational pull on Earth, and likewise, the Earth exerts the same gravitational pull on the Sun. But since the mass of the Earth is so much smaller than that of the Sun, the effects of the force on the Earth is much greater, and so we orbit around the Sun, while the Sun merely does a small wobble in reaction to the forces exerted by the Earth.
http://physicsstash.blogspot.com/2007/07/horse-and-cart-in-syllabus.html

The most important provision is that for forces to occur there must be TWO OBJECTS. Forces only exist as a result of an interaction between two objects. Therefore, if energy can be percieved as a property of one object, then perhaps we can think of force as being a property of two objects. Force is never found to be the property of one object. To develop a greater understanding of force, it is important to know how to apply the Third Law correctly.

In physics, there is a supposed paradox relating to the Third Law, in-which a wise, but particularly lazy donkey refuses to move because he claims that the action of him pulling the cart, only results in the cart pulling him back with an equal opposing force. Never mind how much he strains to pull away, the cart pulls him back with the same magnitude of force, thereby leaving him stuck to the spot. There's nothing for the donkey to do, except shrug his shoulders and ask for another carrot.

In truth though, there is no paradox. That's because the donkey and the cart are not a straight forward action-reaction pair. There is also a third object that is conspicuous by its absence from the donkey's reasoning - the ground! If you imagine the donkey and cart floating in the vacuum of space, with donkey kicking his heels in vain, it might reveal just how vital the ground really is for this type of motion.

To get moving, the donkey has to get the cart moving too. Strictly speaking, it is not as simple as saying that the cart opposes the motion of the donkey. Rather, it is the forces which the donkey generates which are in opposition to the forces generated by the cart. In trying to explain this process a little better, it is perhaps best to think of the donkey and cart as consisting of two conflicting systems. One system is the donkey and the ground making up one action-reaction pair, while the other system consists of the cart and ground in another action-reaction pair.

If we begin with the system of the donkey and ground, we have the donkey which is applying an action force downward and backward, while the ground has a reaction force which is acting forward and upward. The donkey resists the ground moving forward, and the ground resists the donkey moving backward. It is noticeable that the applied backward push on the ground is dependent on a very significant force in order for it to be converted into forward motion - friction.

In ancient times, Aristotle had maintained that a force is what is required to keep a body in motion. The higher the speed, the larger the force needed. Aristotle's idea of force is not unreasonable and is in fact in accordance with experience from everyday life: It does require a force to push a piece of furniture from one corner of a room to another. What Aristotle failed to appreciate is that everyday life is plagued by friction. An object in motion comes to rest because of friction and thus a force is required if it is to keep moving. This force is needed in order to cancel the force of friction that opposes the motion. In an idealized world with no friction, a body that is set into motion does not require a force to keep it moving. Galileo, 2000 years after Aristotle, was the first to realize that the state of no motion and the state of motion with constant speed in a straight line are indistinguishable from each other. Since no force is present in the case of no motion, no forces are required in the case of motion in a straight line with constant speed either.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/IB_Physics/Mechanics

We can think of friction as a force that impedes motion - it is always a resistance to the motion of things. If the ground was slippery for example, the conversion of the action-reaction forces would be greatly reduced by the lack of friction. Friction fulfils the very definition of force, in that it describes an interaction between two objects, such as the wheel and the ground for example, and that both bodies generates forces which act on the other body.

Friction is not a fundamental force but occurs because of the electromagnetic forces between charged particles which constitute the surfaces in contact. Because of the complexity of these interactions friction cannot be calculated from first principles, but instead must be found empirically.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friction

Needless to say, friction is also required by system number two, the action-reaction pair of the cart and the ground, to keep the cart moving along the ground. The force of the wheel pushing backward is dependent on friction to convert it into a reaction force which pushes the cart forward. If friction did not exist between the wheels of the cart and the ground (it might help to imagine the wheel and ground smothered in oil - but never include yourself in the picture - that's just wrong!) the wheels would simply never get a grip on the road (and very likely give up energy in the form of heat, and noise) and the cart would never get off the spot.

Friction helps people convert one form of motion into another. For example, when people walk, friction allows them to convert a push backward along the ground into forward motion. Similarly, when car or bicycle tires push backward along the ground, friction with the ground makes the tires roll forward. Friction allows us to push and slide objects along the ground without our shoes slipping along the ground in the opposite direction.
http://superphysics.netfirms.com/friction.html

The motion in both these systems, and therefore the system over-all, is dependent upon frictional forces. If we overlay these two systems on the over-all system of donkey, cart, and ground, we can see that what we effectively need in-order to see motion, is for the donkey to produce a reaction force which is greater than the cart's resistive force. In other words, the cart will move forward when the frictional force between the horse and ground, is greater than the frictional force between the cart and ground. Because both these reaction forces are so dependent upon friction, it also reveals something of the force which is truly responsible for motion (at least walking motion) - electromagnetic force.

Now, there are some who explain the paradox of the lazy donkey, but still fail to acknowledge that the donkey and cart are NOT an action-reaction pair. If the donkey and cart were an action-reaction pair, motion would only be possible if the action of the donkey was somehow greater than the reaction of the cart. But how is this possible, if according to Newton's Third Law, the opposing force is ALWAYS of the same magnitude as the applied force?

"If a force acts upon a body, then an equal and opposite force must act upon another body."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_(physics)

Some commentators still maintain that motion is possible because the reaction force and the action force are working independently from one another. This means the reaction force does not cancel the action force because they are both acting on different bodies - the donkey is acting on the cart, and the cart is reacting to the donkey. Unfortunately, their reasoning blatantly contradicts what defines an action-reaction pair in the first place - that is, they always come in pairs! It seems inconceivable that one can operate with a strength which is totally independent from the other.

As we have seen, motion is not dependent, in anyway, upon an "interaction" between the donkey and cart. Sure, there is something at work between the donkey and cart because they are tied together, meaning that forces must exist between them, but as such, this arrangement is not responsible for the forces which drive motion. Rather, it is the interaction with the ground which is driving the motion of the donkey and cart; the forces which occupy the harness, and wagon tree between the donkey and cart are a response to that interaction.

In an "interaction," forces appear between two objects, and exert forces of the same magnitude in opposite directions. In effect, what we are seeing is each body being repelled in the opposite direction by a force that is exerted by the other body. What we see is one body moving away from the other body - one body goes left while the other goes right. A good way of visualising this is to imagine two ice-skaters who are leaning one against the other with their hands. This presents itself as a good example because the lack of frictional forces between the skaters and the ice, allows us to dismiss the "interaction" between the ice-skaters and the ground, and to concentrate more on the ice-skaters acting as an action-reaction pair.

On one level, the difference between dancing on a floor and skating on ice is the lack of friction. Smooth ice provides very little resistance against objects, like ice skates, being dragged across its surface. Compared to, say, a wooden floor, ice has much less friction.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/17/physics-figure-skating/

Thus, ice-skater A pushes against ice-skater B, and a force will emerge that also pushes back against A. They "interact." Both A and B are sent in opposite directions AWAY from each other, they repel one another, and they do so with the same magnitude of force. This means that if A and B both have the same mass, then at least in theory, they shall both glide the same distance away from each other.

Using the example of two-ice-skaters, brings to the forefront the importance of the term "interaction." At the conclusion of my last post, I basically said that it was possible to think of force and energy as describing the same entity, even though it seems to break a well-founded tradition in physics that supposes they are not. What is exciting is that by developing an understanding of what exactly is meant by "interaction," the discreet affair between "force" and "energy" is finally exposed.

Energy is the property of one object, whereas force is never the property of one object, but ALWAYS two objects. However, strictly speaking, force is not the property of two objects either. A very distinctive feature of force is that it describes the "interaction" between two objects. In other words, force is the "interaction." Quite what this means, evaded me somewhat, until I came across a post on the blog "Gravity and Levity," and at once, everything was revealed. Some extracts from the post are featured below:

Force and energy: which is more real? This question sounds ridiculous, and maybe it is. So if you’re not in the mood for philosophy right now, you can skip this post.

Nonetheless, I think it makes sense to talk about our general attitude toward the concepts of force and energy. “Which is more real?” may not be a very well-defined question, but I think it is a very natural one that cuts to the heart of how we think about forces and energies. Furthermore, it is one to which my answer has changed over the years. The change was a difficult one: force and energy are such profoundly important concepts in physics that to change your view of them is to change your view of all topics that are built upon them (basically, everything). But for me it has been extremely important. Shifting my position from “force is more real” to “energy is more real” was essential for understanding and enjoying advanced topics in physics.

...If you believe that energy is more “real” than force, then you stop talking about “forces acting on objects” and instead talk about “interactions between objects.” Your starting assumptions for describing the universe must be the “interaction energies”.

...So which viewpoint is more correct? In a sense, it doesn’t matter: both give results that are perfectly consistent with our observations of nature. The second one seems a little crazier, but in fact it requires fewer assumptions. It also manages to explain why all forces come in pairs: between two objects there is only one interaction energy, to which both objects will respond. In my mind, the “energy is more real” viewpoint is much more compatible with advanced physics concepts like thermodynamics (where energy is really the only consideration), quantum mechanics (where our force laws are no longer strictly obeyed, but energy remains absolute) and field theory (where we are given a way of picturing where the energy is really stored). Perhaps most importantly, I find the energy viewpoint much more conducive to wonder.
http://gravityandlevity.wordpress.com/2009/04/13/force-and-energy-which-is-more-real/

The question of whether force is simply another term for describing energy, though presenting itself as a bit of a stumbling block for me, is something which seems to be already familiar with both world-weary physicists and philosophers (and bloggers!) alike. The authors of "Gravity and Levity" (unfortunately, I couldn't find their real names anywhere on the blog) are to be congratulated for such a great post. They have approached the problem in such an effective way, that they have succeeded in producing an expression of the relationship between energy and force in one turn of phrase, and it is one that is so astute, so sublime, that it becomes, quite frankly, life-changing:

"...Between two objects there is only one interaction energy, to which both objects will respond."

There. Isn't that just beautiful? Force is an interaction energy. But of course there's more. Do you see? The interaction energy is describing something that exists OUTSIDE the two objects. It is describing the existence of energy ouside bodies, and it is this energy which acts on bodies, meaning that there must be energy outside all bodies, meaning that we may aswell go the whole hog and say that energy exists EVERYWHERE.

If you recall the definition of potential energy given at the top of this page, it describes energy as being the property of an object. Saying that energy can exist outside objects, or bodies, is not without controversy in today's climate. Heavily influenced by relativity, and for too many reasons to divulge in this post, the entire field of physics is sold on the concept that all energy is contained inside matter. Even the photon, which is essentially massless, is still considered to be a particle of some description. The void of a vacuum is supposed to be just that - void! There's not supposed to be anything there, least of all energy! The idea that energy can exist outside matter would present all sorts of problems for modern theory, because it would be forced to admit to the existence of energy, not as an abstract mathematical concept, but as a real, physical substance.

If energy was a real substance that the Universe was immersed in, it would mean, at least in theory, it should be possible to reach out and grab it and use it, and do so, (here comes the dirty word) for "free." That's right, I'm talking about "free energy." No-one respectable in physics likes to discuss free energy. Talking about the possibility of free energy amounts to breaking one of the greatest taboos in science. It's the definitive "no-no." If you demand to talk to a physicist about free energy, they're likely to grab your wrist and give you a nasty chinese burn. Free energy, they will tell you, is impossible. And they'll probably call you a "crackpot" too. For the moment though, there's no need for us to enter the forray, and so we'll stick more closely to the term "interaction energy."

In comparing the two ice-skaters to the donkey and cart, we are seeing some obvious differences in the way energy interacts. With the ice-skaters, energy acts upon them and repels one from the other in opposite directions. Something quite different happens to the donkey and cart, because unlike the two ice-skaters, these two move together in the same direction. The forces are moving in opposite directions, but now they pass one another, like trains in the night, so to speak. Forces which move from the donkey to the cart, appear to combine in the harness and wagon tree, with those forces moving in the opposite direction from the cart to the donkey. There is an intimate dance of energy, where one force can be seen moving from left to right, while the other moves from right to left, as it were.

Between the donkey and cart we find there exists a transmission of forces, and with our new-found wisdom, we might also describe it as a transmission of energy. In other words, energy is being transmitted. It is the harness and wagon tree which is responsible for transmitting forces from the donkey to the cart, and from the cart to the donkey. Remember, these forces are not directly derived from an action-reaction pair, which means that they are not the result of an "interaction" between the donkey and the cart. No, the forces are derived from two seperate systems, namely: the donkey and the ground, and the cart and the ground. What we have are two independent sources for the forces, which means that the magnitude of the forces can differ - something that is not possible with a simple action-reaction pair. I think this gives a much more rounded explanation as to how the donkey is able to overcome the resistive force of the cart.

(I should point out this is not a new post. It's a few years old now. I have not re-edited it since then, even though, after just re-reading it, I feel that it could probably do with a bit of a polish. My sympathies to anyone seeking mathematical solutions to the problem, as truth be told, I simply do not possess the tools to describe them. (Must learn more math) But I might make the important distinction that even at zero acceleration, the donkey and cart should never be combined and viewed as an action-reaction pair. It remains to be seen that they will always be two seperate systems, that is the donkey/ground system and the cart/ground system, and that they just so happen to share zero acceleration when they are both at rest.)

Dinosaurs and the gravity problem...

by Ted Holden THE ANOMALIST: 1 Summer 1994 from Scribd Website Scientists delight in devising explanations for the great dinosaur extinctions. But there are several questions which they have failed to even ask, much less tried to answer. Why, for instance, in all of the time claimed to have passed since the dinosaur extinctions, has nothing ever re-evolved to the sizes of the large dinosaurs? If such sizes worked for creatures which ruled the Earth for tens of millions of years, then why would not some species of elephant or rhinoceros have evolved to such a size again? What kinds of problems, if any, would sauropod sizes entail in our world as it is presently constituted? Could it be that some aspect of our environment might have to be massively different for such creatures to exist at all? A careful study of the sizes of these antediluvian creatures, and what it would take to deal with such sizes in our world, has led me to believe that the super animals of Earth's past could not live in our present world at all. A look at sauropod dinosaurs as we know them today requires that we relegate the brontosaur, once thought to be one of the largest sauropods, to welterweight or at most middleweight status. Fossils found in the 1970's now dwarf this creature. Both the brachiosaur and the supersaur were larger than the brontosaur, and the ultrasaur appears to have dwarfed them all.1 The ultrasaur is now estimated to have weighed 180 tons.2 A comparison of dinosaur lifting requirements to human lifting capabilities is enlightening, though there might be objections to doing so. One objection that might be raised is that animal muscle tissue was somehow "better" than that of humans. This, however, is known not to be the case. According to Knut Schmidt-Nielson, author of Scaling: Why is Animal Size So Important?, the maximum stress or force that can be exerted by any muscle is independent of body-size and is the same for mouse or elephant muscle.3 Another objection might be that sauropods were aquatic creatures. But nobody believes that anymore; they had no adaptation for aquatic life, their teeth show wear and tear which does not come from eating soft aquatic vegetation, and trackways show them walking on land with no difficulty. A final objection might be that dinosaurs were somehow more "efficient" than top human athletes. This, however, goes against all observed data. As creatures get bulkier, they become less efficient; the layers of thick muscle in limbs begin to get in each other's way and bind to some extent. For this reason, scaled lifts for the super-heavyweight athletes are somewhat lower than for, say, the 200-pound athletes. By "scaled lift" I mean a lift record divided by the two-thirds power of the athlete's body weight. As creatures get larger, weight, which is proportional to volume, goes up in proportion to the cube of the increase in dimension. Strength, on the other hand, is known to be roughly proportional to the cross-section of muscle for any particular limb and goes up in proportion to the square of the increase in dimension. This is the familiar "square-cube" problem.4 Consider the case of Bill Kazmaier, the king of the power lifters in the 1970s and 1980s. Power lifters are, in my estimation, the strongest of all athletes; they concentrate on the three most difficult total-body lifts, i.e. bench press, squat, and dead-lift. They work out many hours a day and, it is fairly common knowledge, use food to flavor their anabolic steroids. No animal the same weight as one of these men could be presumed to be as strong. Kazmaier was able to do squats and dead lifts with weights between 1,000 and 1,100 pounds on a bar, assuming he was fully warmed up.   Standing Up at 70,000 pounds Any animal has to be able to lift its own weight off the ground, i.e. stand up, with no more difficulty than Kazmaier experiences doing a 1,000-pound squat. Consider, however, what would happen to Mr. Kazmaier, were he to be scaled up to 70,000 pounds, the weight commonly given for the brontosaur. Kazmaier's maximum effort at standing, fully warmed up, assuming the 1,000 pound squat, was 1,340 pounds (1,000 pounds for the bar and 340 pounds for himself). The scaled maximum lift would be 47,558 pounds (the solution to: 1,340/340.667 = x/70,000.667). Clearly, he would not be able to lift his weight off the ground! A sauropod dinosaur had four legs you might say; so what happens if Mr. Kazmaier uses arms and legs at 70,000 pounds? The truth is that the squat uses almost every muscle in the athlete's body very nearly to the limits, but in this case, it does not even matter. A near maximum bench press effort for Mr. Kazmaier would fall around 600 pounds. This merely changes the 1,340 pounds to 1,940 pounds in the equation above, and the answer comes out as 68,853 pounds. Even using all muscles, some more than once, the strongest man who we know anything about would not be able to lift his own weight off the ground at 70,000 pounds. To believe then, that a brontosaur could stand at 70,000 pounds, one has to believe that a creature whose weight was mostly gut and the vast digestive mechanism involved in processing huge amounts of low-value foodstuffs was, somehow, stronger than an almost entirely muscular creature its size, far better trained and conditioned than any grazing animal. That is not only ludicrous in the case of the brontosaur, but the calculations only become more absurd when you try to scale up to the supersaur and ultrasaur at their sizes. How heavy can an animal get to be in our world, then? How heavy would Mr. Kazmaier be at the point at which the square-cube problem made it as difficult for him to stand up as it is for him to do 1,000-pound squats at his present weight of 340 pounds? The answer is 20,803 pounds (the solution to: 1,340/340.667 = x/x.667). In reality, elephants do not appear to get quite to that point. Christopher McGowan, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, claims that a Toronto Zoo specimen was the largest in North America at 14,300 pounds,5 and Smithsonian personnel once informed me that the gigantic bush elephant specimen which appears at their Museum of Natural History weighed around 8 tons.   Sauropod Dinosaurs' Necks A study of the sauropod dinosaurs' long neck further underscores the problem these creatures would have living under current gravitational conditions. Scientists who study sauropod dinosaurs now claim that they held their heads low, because they could not have gotten blood to their brains had they held them high.6 McGowan mentions the fact that a giraffe's blood pressure - which at 200-to-300 mm Hg (millimeters of mercury) is far higher than that of any other animal-would probably rupture the vascular system of any other animal. The giraffe's blood pressure is maintained by thick arterial walls and by a very tight skin that apparently acts like a jet pilot's pressure suit. A giraffe's head might reach to 20 feet. How a sauropod might have gotten blood to its brain at 50 or 60 feet is the real question. "Gravity is a pervasive force in the environment and has dramatically shaped the evolution of plants and animals," notes Harvey Lillywhite, a zoologist at the University of Florida at Gainesville. As some land animals evolved large body sizes, "cardiovascular specializations were needed to help them withstand the weight of blood in long vertical vessels. Perhaps nowhere in the history of life were these challenges greater than among the gigantic, long-necked sauropods" For a Barosaurus to hold its head high, Lillywhite has calculated that its heart, "must have generated pressures at least six times greater than those of humans and three to four times greater than those of giraffes." 7 Faced with the same dilemma, University of Pennsylvania geologist Peter Dodson remarked that while the Brachiosaurus was built like a giraffe and may have fed like one, most sauropods were built quite differently. "At the base of the neck," Dodson writes, "a sauropod's vertebral spines, unlike those of a giraffe, were weak and low and did not provide leverage for the muscles required to elevate the head in a high position. Furthermore, the blood pressure required to pump blood up to the brain, thirty or more feet in the air, would have placed extraordinary demands on the heart and would seemingly have placed the animal at severe risk of a stroke, an aneurysm, or some other circulatory disaster." 8 Within recorded history, Central Asians have tried to breed hunting eagles for size and strength, and have not gotten beyond 25 pounds or thereabouts. Even at that weight they are able to take off only with the greatest difficulty. Something was vastly different in the pre-flood world. The only way to keep the required blood pressure "reasonable," Dodson goes on to add, is "if sauropods fed with the neck extended just a little above heart level, say from ground level up to fifteen feet..." One problem with this solution is that the good leaves were, in all likelihood, above the 20-foot mark; an ultrasaur that could not raise its head above 20 feet would probably starve. Dodson, it should also be noted, entirely neglects the dilemma of the brachiosaur. And there is another problem, which is worse. Try holding your arm out horizontally for even a few minutes, and then imagine your arm being 40 feet long. Given a scale model and a weight figure for the entire dinosaur, it is possible to use volume-based techniques to estimate weight for a sauropod's neck. An ultrasaur is generally thought to be a near cousin - if not simply a very large specimen - of the brachiosaur. The technique, then, is to measure the volume of water which the sauropod's neck (severed at the shoulders and filled with bondo or auto-body putty) displaces, versus the volume which the entire brachiosaur displaces, and simply extrapolate to the 360,000-pound figure for the ultrasaur. I did this using a Larami Corporation model of a brachiosaur, which is to scale. To make a long story short, the neck weighs 28,656 pounds, and the center of gravity of that neck is 15 feet from the shoulders, the neck itself being 38 feet long. This equates to 429,850 foot-pounds of torque. If we assume the sauropod could lift its head at least as easily as a human with an 18-inch neck can move his head against a neck-exercise machine set to 130 pounds, then the sauropod would require the muscular strength of a neck 17.4 feet in diameter. With a more reasonable assumption of effort, equivalent to the human using a 50-pound setting, the sauropod would require a neck of over 20 feet in diameter. But the sauropod's neck, at its widest, apparently measured about ten feet by seven feet where it joined the shoulders, then narrowed rapidly to about six or seven feet in diameter over the remainder of its length. McGowan and others claim that the head and neck were supported by a dorsal ligament and not muscles, but we know of no living creature using ligaments to support a body structure which its available musculature cannot sustain. In all likelihood, sauropods, in our gravity at least, could neither hold their heads up nor out.   Antediluvian Flying Creatures The large flying creatures of the past would also have had difficulties in our present-day gravity. In the antediluvian world, 350-pound flying creatures soared in skies which no longer permit flying creatures above 30 pounds or so. Modern birds of prey, like theArgentinian teratorn, weighing 170 to 200 pounds, with 30-foot wingspans, also flew. Within recorded history, Central Asians have been trying to breed hunting eagles for size and strength, and have not gotten them beyond 25 pounds or thereabouts. Even at that weight they are able to take off only with the greatest difficulty. Something was vastly different in the pre-flood world. Nothing much larger than 30 pounds or so flies anymore, and those creatures, albatrosses and a few of the largest condors and eagles, are marginal. Albatrosses, notably, are called "goonie birds" by sailors because of the extreme difficulty they experience taking off and landing, their landings being badly controlled crashes, and this despite long wings made for maximum lift. In remote times, the felt effect of the force of gravity on Earth must have been much less for such giant creatures to be able to fly. No flying creature has since re-evolved into anything of such size, and the one or two birds that have retained this size have forfeited flight, their wings becoming vestigial. Adrian Desmond, in his book The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs, has a good deal to say about some of the problems the Pteranodon faced at just 40-to-50 pounds. Scientists once thought this pterosaur was the largest creature that ever flew. The bird's great size and negligible weight must have made for a rather fragile creature. "It is easy to imagine that the paper-thin tubular bones supporting the gigantic wings would have made landing dangerous," writes Desmond. "How could the creature have alighted without shattering all of its bones? How could it have taken off in the first place? It was obviously unable to flap 12-foot wings strung between straw-thin tubes. Many larger birds have to achieve a certain speed by running and flapping before they can take off and others have to produce a wing beat speed approaching hovering in order to rise. To achieve hovering with a 23-foot wingspread, Pteranodon would have required 220 pounds of flight muscles as efficient as those in humming birds. But it had reduced its musculature to about 8 pounds, so it is inconceivable that Pteranodon could have taken off actively." 9 Since the Pteranodon could not flap its wings, the only flying it could ever do, Desmond concludes, was as a glider. It was, he says, "the most advanced glider the animal kingdom has produced."10 Desmond notes a fairly reasonably modus operandi for the Pteranodon. Not only did the bird have a throat pouch like a pelican but its remains were found with fish fossils, which seems to suggest a pelican-like existence, soaring over the waves and snapping up fish without landing. If so, then the Pteranodon should have been practically immune from the great extinctions of past ages. Large animals would have the greatest difficulty getting to high ground and other safe havens at times of floods and other global catastrophes. But high places safe from flooding were always there, oceans were always there, and fish were always there. The Pteranodon's way of life should have been impervious to all mishap. There is one other problem. The Pteranodon was not the largest bird. The giant Teratorn finds of Argentina were not known when Desmond's book was written. News of this bird's existence first appeared in the 1980s. The Terotorn was a 160-to-200 pound eagle with a 27-foot wingspan, a modern bird whose existence involved, among other things, flapping wings and aerial maneuvers. But how so? How could it even have flown? How large can an animal be and still fly? "With each increase in size, and therefore also weight," writes Desmond, "a flying animal needs a concomitant increase in power (to beat the wings in a flapper and to hold and maneuver them in a glider), but power is supplied by muscles which themselves add still more weight to the structure. The larger a flyer becomes the disproportionately weightier it grows by the addition of its own power supply. There comes a point when the weight is just too great to permit the machine to remain airborne. Calculations bearing on size and power suggested that the maximum weight that a flying vertebrate can attain is about 50 pounds..." It is for this reason that scientists believed Pteranodon and its slightly larger but lesser known Jordanian ally Titanopteryx were the largest flying animals of all time. The experience from our present world coincides well with this and, in fact, don't go quite that high. The biggest flying creatures which we actually see are albatrosses, geese, and the like, at 30 to 35 pounds. The Pteranodon's reign as the largest flying creature of all time actually fell in the early 1970s when Douglas Lawson of the University of California found partial skeletons of three ultra-large pterosaurs in Big Bend National Park in Texas. This discovery forced scientists to rethink their ideas on the maximum size permissible in flying vertebrates. The immense size of the Big Bend pterosaurs may be gauged by noting that the humerus or upper arm bones of these creatures is fully twice the length of Pteranodon's. Lawson estimated the wingspan for this living glider at over fifty feet. The Big Bend pterosaurs were not fishers. Their remains were found in rocks that were formed some 250 miles inland and nowhere near any lake deposits. This led Lawson to suggest that these birds were carrion feeders, gorging themselves on rotting mounds of dismembered dinosaur flesh. But this hypothesis raised numerous questions in author Desmond's mind. "How they could have taken to the air after gorging themselves is something of a puzzle," he wonders. "Wings of such an extraordinary size could not have been flapped when the animal was grounded. Since the pterosaurs were unable to run in order to launch themselves they must have taken off vertically. Pigeons are only able to take-off vertically by reclining their bodies and clapping the wings in front of them; as flappers, the Texas pterosaurs would have needed very tall stilt-like legs to raise the body enough to allow the 24-foot wings to clear the ground. The main objection, however, still rests in the lack of adequate musculature for such an operation."12 The only solution seems to be that they lifted passively off the ground by the wind. But this situation, notes Desmond, would leave these ungainly Brobdignagian pterosaurs vulnerable to attack when grounded. While Desmond mentions a number of ancillary problems here, any of which would throw doubt on the pterosaur's ability to exist as mentioned, he neglects the biggest question of all: the calculations that say 50 pounds are the maximum weight have not been shown to be in error; we have simply discovered larger creatures. Much larger. This is what is called a dilemma. Those who had estimated a large wingspan for the Big Bend bird were immediately attacked by aeronautical engineers. "Such dimensions broke all the rules of flight engineering," wrote Colorado paleontologist Robert T. Bakker, in The Dinosaur Heresies, "a creature that large would have broken its arm bones if it tried to fly..."13 Subsequently, the proponents of a large wingspan were forced to back off somewhat, since the complete wing bones had not been discovered. But Bakker believes these pterosaurs really did have wingspans of over 60 feet and that they simply flew despite our not comprehending how. The problem is ours, he says, and he proposes no solution. So much for the idea of anything re-evolving into the sizes of the flying creatures of the antediluvian world. What about the possibility of man breeding something like a Teratorn? Could man actively breed even a 50-pound eagle? Berkuts are the biggest of eagles. And Atlanta, an eagle that Sam Barnes, one of England's top falconers in the 1970s, brought back to Wales from Kirghiz, Russia, is, at 26 pounds in flying trim, as large as they ever get.14 These eagles have been bred specifically for size and ferocity for many centuries. They are the most prized of all possessions amongst nomads, and are the imperial hunting bird of the Turko-Mongol peoples. The only reason Barnes was allowed to bring her back is that Atlanta had a disease for which no cure was available in Kirghiz and was near to death. A Berkut of Atlanta's size, Barnes was told, would normally be worth more than a dozen of the most beautiful women in Kirghiz. Elephants are simply too heavy to run in our world. The best they can manage is a kind of a fast walk. Mammoths were as big and bigger than the largest elephants, however, and Pleistocene art clearly shows them galloping.   The killing powers of a big eagle are out of proportion to its size. Berkuts are normally flown at wolves, deer, and other large prey. Barnes witnessed Atlanta killing a deer in Kirghiz, and was told that she had killed a black wolf a season earlier. Mongols and other nomads raise sheep and goats, and obviously have no love for wolves. A wolf might be little more than a day at the office for Atlanta with her 11-inch talons, however, a wolf is a big deal for an average-sized Berkut at 15-to-20 pounds. Obviously, there would be an advantage to having the birds be bigger, i.e. to having the average Berkut weigh 25 pounds, and for a large one to weigh 40-to-50 pounds. It has never been done, however, despite all the efforts and funds poured into the enterprise since the days of Genghis Khan. The breeding of Berkuts has continued apace from that day to this, but the Berkuts have still not gotten any bigger than 25 pounds or so.15 It is worth recalling here the difficulty which increasingly larger birds experience in getting airborne from flat ground. Atlanta was powerful enough in flight, but she was not easily able to take off from flat ground. This could spell disaster in the wild. A bird of prey will often land with prey, and if take-off from flat ground to avoid trouble is not possible, the bird's life becomes imperiled. A bird bigger than Atlanta with her 10-foot wingspan, like a Teratorn with a 27-foot wingspan and weighing 170 pounds, would simply not Survive.   Assorted Other Evidence There are other categories of evidence, derived from a careful analysis of antediluvian predators, to show that gravitational conditions in the distant past were not the same as they are today. It is well known, for example, that elephant-sized animals cannot sustain falls, and that elephants spend their entire lives avoiding them. For an elephant, the slightest tumble can break bones and/or destroy enough tissue to prove fatal. Predators, however, live by tackling and tumbling with prey. One might think that this consideration would preclude the existence of any predator too large to sustain falls. Weight estimates for the tyrannosaurs, however, include specimens heavier than any elephant. That appears to be a contradiction. Moreover, elephants are simply too heavy to run in our world. As is well known, they manage a kind of a fast walk. They cannot jump, and anything resembling a gully stops them cold. Mammoths were as big and bigger than the largest elephants, however, and Pleistocene art clearly shows them galloping. Finally, there is the Utahraptor. Recently found in Utah, this creature is a 20-foot, 1,500-pound version of a Velociraptor.16 The creature apparently ran on the balls of its two hind feet, on two toes in fact, the third toe carrying a 12-inch claw for disemboweling prey. This suggests a very active lifestyle. Very few predators appear to be built for attacking prey notably larger than themselves; the Utahraptor appears to be such a case. In our world, of course, 1,500-pound toe dancers do not exist. The only example we have of a 1,500-pound land predator is the Kodiak bear, the lumbering gait and mannerisms of which are familiar to us all. And so, over and over again, this same kind of dilemma-things which cannot happen in our world having been the norm in the antediluvian world. An Explanation Ventured The laws of physics do not change, nor does the gravitational constant, as far as we know. But something was obviously massively different in the world in which these creatures existed, and that difference probably involved a change in perceived gravity. This solution derives from the continuing research of neo-catastrophists, that is, followers of the late Immanuel Velikovsky, and is known as the "Saturn Myth" theory.17 The basic requirement for an attenuated perception of gravity involves the Earth being in a very close orbit around a smaller and much cooler stellar body (or binary body) than our present Sun. One pole would always be pointed directly at this nearby small star or binary system. The intense gravitational attraction would pull the Earth into an egg shape rather than its present spherical shape, so that the planet's center of gravity would be off center towards the small star. This would generate the torque necessary to counteract the natural gyroscopic force and keep the Earth's pole pointed in the same direction as it revolved around the star. The consequences of this intense gravitational pull would be dramatic. It would allow, first of all, for gigantic animals like the dinosaurs (just as any change in gravity to the present situation would likely cause their demise). It would also tend to draw all of the Earth's land mass into a single supercontinent (Pangea). Why else, after all, should the Earth's continental masses have amassed in one place? And finally, with the Earth's pole pointed straight at this star or binary system, there would be no seasons. All literature of the distant past points out that the seasons did not appear until after the flood. The state of the present solar system indicates that this previous system was eventually captured by a larger star, our present Sun. But the pieces of this old system have not vanished. The influential small star or binary system of the past remains, though its reign of power has ended. The star or stars are Jupiter and Saturn, the next largest objects to the Sun in our present system. It is instructive that the ancients worshiped Jupiter and Saturn as the two chieftain gods in all of the antique religious systems. If the present solar system was present in the distant past, one would expect primitive peoples to have worshiped the most visible of the astral bodies: the Sun the Moon Venus There is no conceivable reason they would worship as gods two planets which most people cannot even find in the night sky - unless, of course, these bodies occupied a far more prominent place in the heavens than they do today.   Notes 1. David Lambert and the Diagram Group Staff, Field Guide to Dinosaurs: The First Complete Guide to Every Dinosaur Now Known, New York, 1983, p. 118. 2. Christopher McGowan, Dinosaurs, Spitfires & Sea Dragons, Cambridge, 1991, p. 118. 3. Knut Schmidt-Nielson, Scaling, Why is Animal Size So Important?, Cambridge, 1984, page 163."It appears that the maximum force or stress that can be exerted by any muscle is inherent in the structure of the muscle filaments. The maximum force is roughly a 3 to 4 kgf/cm2 cross-section of muscle (300-400 kN/m2). This force is body-size independent and is the same for mouse and elephant muscle. The reason for this uniformity is that the dimensions of the thick and thin muscle filaments, and also the number of cross-bridges between them are the same. In fact the structure of mouse muscle and elephant muscle is so similar that a microscopist would have difficulty identifying them except for a larger number of mitochondria in the smaller animal. This uniformity in maximum force holds not only for higher vertebrates, but for many other organisms, including at least some, but not all invertebrates." 4. The normal inverse operator for this is to simply divide by 2/3 power of body weight, and this is indeed the normal scaling factor for all weight lifting events, i.e. it lets us tell if a 200-pound athlete has actually done a "better" lift than the champion of the 180-pound group. For athletes roughly between 160 and 220 pounds, i.e., whose bodies are fairly similar, these scaled lift numbers line up very nicely. It is then fairly easily seen that a lift for a scaled up version of one particular athlete can be computed via this formula, since the similarity will be perfect, scaling being the only difference. 5. McGowan, op. cit,. p. 97. 6. Ibid., pp. 101 -120. 7. Harvey B. Lillywhite, "Sauropods and Gravity", Natural History, December, 1991, p. 33."...in a Barosaurus with its head held high, the heart had to work against a gravitational pressure of about 590 mm of mercury (Hg). In order for the heart to eject blood into the arteries of the neck, its pressure must exceed that of the blood pushing against the opposite side of the outflow valve. Moreover, some additional pressure would have been needed to overcome the resistance of smaller vessels within the head for blood flow to meet the requirements of brain and facial tissues." 8. Peter Dodson, "Lifestyles of the Huge and Famous," Natural History, December, 1991, p.32. 9. Adrian J. Desmond, The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs: A Revolution in Paleontology, New York, 1976, p. 178. 10. Ibid, p. 178. 11. Ibid, p. 182. 12. Ibid, pp. 182-183. 13. Robert T. Bakker, The Dinosaur Heresies, New York, 1986, pp. 290-291. 14. David Bruce, Bird of Jove, New York, 1971. 15. Ibid. 16. Tim Folger, "The Killing Machine," Discover, January, 1993, p.48 17. David Talbott, The Saturn Myth, New York, 1980. Return to Immanuel Velikovsky Return to The Occult Reptilian Saga

The Dangerousness of Mercury Vapor

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 diminshment 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.
Only with the help of extensive notes and great effort was I able to put together a scientific paper or deliver a lecture. I forgot the telephone number on the way from the telephone book to the telephone. I forgot everything that I had once learned by heart. I forgot the content of the book or theater play I had just read or seen as well as my own work, which had been published. It was impossible for me to remember numbers and names. Often even the names of good acquaintances were lost. Specifically, I lost the ability for arithmetic and mathematical figuring. Also my chess playing ability suffered. The impairment of memory, particularly that of people memory and the worsening ability to do arithmetic, seem to be signs peculiar to insidious mercury vapor poisoning. This showed itself in blatant form in my co-workers and other people whom I got to know who had been under the influence of mercury for a longer period of time. Soon after all of us in the laboratory had found out what was wrong with us, we sat down together to put down on paper a completed piece of work where we had to do a lot of mathematics. None of us was able to add up columns of ten to twenty multi-digit numbers without making mistakes.
While my physical ability, e.g. mountain climbing, did not seem to have been weakened, the ability to work mentally suffered a little, although not in as devastating a fashion as had been the case with memory. Added to that were depression, and a vexing inner restlessness, which later also caused restless sleep. By nature companionable and loving life, I withdrew moodily into myself, shied away from the public, stayed away from people and social activity, and unlearned the joy in art and nature. Humor became rusty. Obstacles, which formerly I would have overlooked smilingly (and am overlooking again today), seemed insurmountable. Scientific work caused great effort. I forced myself to go to the laboratory without being able to get anything useful accomplished in spite of all efforts. Thought came laboriously and pedantically. I had to deny myself working on solutions to questions beyond the nearest tasks at hand. The lecture that used to be a pleasure became a torture. The preparations for a lecture, the writing of a dissertation, or merely a simple letter caused unending effort in styling the material and wrestling with the language. Not seldom did it happen that I misspelled words or left out letters. It was not nice to be aware of these shortcomings, not to know their cause, not to know a way to their elimination, and to have to fear further deterioration.
All attempts to improve the situation went awry. Staying in the mountains for many weeks did not help. I felt hardly less ill than in Berlin. The nose treatments and operations sometimes brought short-lived, yet never lasting relief. It was peculiar that all mental difficulties disappeared for hours when the physician treated certain areas of the mucosa of the upper nose with cocaine. When the right spot was hit, headache and vertigo disappeared sometimes in a few minutes; memory, inclination to work, and good mood reappeared, but, sadly, only as fleeting guests. Sometimes I made use of this possibility to call them up before a lecture, an important meeting etc.
As already indicated, my colleagues in the laboratory, my assistants, doctorants [PhD Candidates], and female lab workers had already suffered for some time from all kinds of problems: Fatigue without recognizable cause, worsened memory, mild headaches and drowsiness, occasional digestive disturbances, limb aches, slight mouth inflammation, nose colds [runny nose], sinusitis etc. The difficulties expressed themselves differently from person to person, whereby they came to light foremost in the areas of lowest resistance. All of them showed fatigue and diminished ability to perform mental tasks [work]. But nobody had the idea that the cause of it could be the same for all of us. Only the convergence of several lucky/unlucky circumstances finally opened our eyes.
In 1921, out of frugality, we had switched off the much more expensive power consuming electrical ventilation system of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institute for Chemistry. Since the middle of 1923, two of my colleagues, an assistant and a Spanish guest, were working on gas density measurements, which required maintaining a constant temperature, and for this reason kept the windows and doors closed if possible. The work had to be done by the spring of 1924 because my assistant wanted to go into industry, and the Spanish colleague wanted to return home. The work was performed hastily so that our ordinarily scrupulous cleanliness suffered in every room. Spilled mercury remained unattended, and much of it lay under tripods, in cracks and slits between the floor boards and on tables. Thus the conditions presented themselves that, instead of the slow insidious mercury poisoning, the more easily recognizable acute mercury poisoning became apparent. The assistant fell ill more seriously, not only with headaches, mental fatigue etc., but also with stronger bodily deterioration; with tooth abscesses and such. His brother, a physician, suspected that the symptom complex pointed to mercury poisoning. The experienced poison researcher L. Lewin [Louis Lewin, 1850-1929] whom we consulted checked out all laboratory personnel and declared that, based on his experience, he was certain that all of us were suffering from mercury poisoning. Indeed the test showed (according to the procedure described in the following memorandum) mercury in the air of the workrooms as well as in the urine of all involved. The mercury content of the air in the individual rooms was quite varied: Depending on the results of the specimens it showed thousandth or hundredth of mg, i.e. only a small fraction of what the air under saturation with mercury vapor can accomodate. At room temperature, taking .001 mm mercury saturation pressure as its base value, this figures to be about 12 mg per cubic meter. Since man breathes in about 1/2 cubic meter air per hour, and the inhaled mercury apparently³⁾ is retained for the most part in the lungs, it would require a very extended period of time in mercury saturated air to suffer from acute mercury poisoning. However it takes a long time after inhaling mercury containing air before the poisoning becomes obvious. For one or more years the signs may be limited to fatigue and slow diminuition of mental performance and memory. Thus the already mentioned Spanish colleague, for example, showed outward signs of inflammation of the oral cavity only at the very end of the year he stayed in our laboratory. The symptoms reached their climax months after he had left us, and after he was removed from the influence of mercury. He had noticed the mental effects much earlier without being able to explain the cause. "For me, it was," he said, "as if I was getting dumber and dumber in Germany." And I had to make similar observations with my remaining co-workers. Thus all my PhD candidates had difficulty withstanding the rigors of the doctor's exams. The PhD candidates and assistants recovered after a few years, once they had left the laboratory without being aware of the mercury poisoning. As for me, the effects of the minute amounts of mercury increased over the course of decades as described in the following narrative.
Particularly significant for insidious mercury poisoning is a noticeable coming and going of symptoms. Following a few days or weeks of improved well-being comes, sometimes setting in suddenly, a time of increased ill health. This also happens in the form of frequent relapses during the recovery period. As soon as my illness had reached its pinnacle, there were, as a rule, one or two tolerable days. Then the saliva flow, runny nose, and sinusitis, starting from the nose down to the throat and sliding down to the bronchi, increased again. There were tooth inflammations, highest fatigability and drowsiness, vexing headache, often also tearing and diarrhea. Headache, drowsiness and memory loss are connected to the irritation of the nerves leading to the upper part of the nose seen in the already mentioned effect of cocaine application on the nasal mucosa.
Apparently there are many similarities between insidious mercury poisoning and the better known lead poisoning. The [latter] is more thoroughly researched because it happens more often in industry. It, too, concerns mainly the nervous system and shows the same waxing and waning of the symptom complex⁴⁾. "After a period of health the poison can suddenly, without cause, display its effects again by evoking an attack of lead colic or other symptoms. This phenomenon can only be explained by the poison having been encapsulated for a long time in a place in the body to which, suddenly, the circulation has access again..."⁵⁾. According to F. Schuetz and H. Bernhardt⁶⁾ lead deposits itself preferably in the spleen, gall bladder, and brain, and is primarily excreted with the bile, possibly also through the colon wall. The kidneys, in this case, are less involved in the acute and chronic course of poisoning. Mercury seems to act similarly. After one year of excluding mercury as the cause of mercury poisoning, it could not be detected in my urine, in spite of the fact that there were still very strong signs of illness. The saliva, however, still contained mercury⁷⁾.
After we had recognized the source of our illness, our first worry was how to protect ourselves from mercury in the future. The first thing, of course, was to remove carefully everything on tables, in drawers, slits, cracks and joints, and under damaged areas of the linoleum flooring, whereby a modified "vacuum cleaner" (consisting of suction connection, suction bottle with a long rubber hose in front of which was attached a cut-burner type widened glass nozzle) served us well. We had the linoleum repaired. All cracks in the work tables were eliminated. The dangerous corners between floors and the so-called scrub molding were rounded off (putty, painted with oil paint) so that they were more easily accessible for cleaning. Wherever tripods stood for a longer period of time, the joints between tripod and table tops were also closed off with putty. All open mercury surfaces on tubs, manometer holders etc. were covered as completely as possible with fit-cut cellon plates. We avoided eating in the work rooms or saving food and took especially good care cleaning our hands (particularly brushing our finger nails) after handling mercury. We also paid good attention so that no mercury fell into pockets and folds of the work coats. Moreover we gave full attention to the airing out of the work rooms by testing the success with air analyses (Compare the following memorandum). It was soon apparent that the reinstallation of the strong house ventilation system (very strong ventilators in the attic suck the air out through hoods; fresh air enters from channels through flaps above the doors) was not nearly sufficient enough to make the air mercury free. The situation in our laboratory is inopportune in that we are working with particularly many mercury apparatuses whereby open mercury surfaces and occasional sprinkling of mercury is not altogether avoidable. An added factor is that the work rooms in the very modern and well-built and furnished Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut for Chemistry are so large (several hundred cubic meters air space) that the air does not get renewed fast enough by the ventilation system. In this regard smaller rooms may be advantageous because, naturally, the same ventilation works better and causes faster replacement of the air⁸⁾. Sufficiently airing ventilation, in this case, as it turned out, is obtainable only through constantly opening windows and creating a draft (regulated by temperature, windspeed, and -direction). At the same time the ventilation system is at work. Because it rests at night, the laboratory is being supplied with fesh air through opening the windows wide. This measure is repeated at noon. Thus we have succeded in keeping the laboratory air so clean that traces are detectable only in small quantities, and we can continue working with our mercury apparatuses without having to fear new health problems.
Whenever one deals with mercury one should devote great care to the testing and cleanliness of the air. One should check the airstream situation in the work space⁹⁾and provide for as much fresh air as possible. It goes without saying that all work with mercury, if at all possible, should be performed under hoods¹⁰⁾. That is the only way that protects from damage with certainty. These precautions are necessary even if one has to choose the path through the Scylla of mercury poisoning and the Charybdis of a cold. A chemical removal of mercury cannot be obtained according to our experiences. It had been suggested to distribute sulfur powder or zinc dust in the work place. We also tried large foil flags that were hung in long rows from the ceiling. Although tin foil amalgamates quickly if you put it into a closed container next to mercury, it failed in this case: The mercury content in the air did not lessen noticeably; one tin flag (33 X 100cm area; weighing 57g), which had hung for 11 months over a mercury apparatus, was weighed afterwards. It contained only .005 mg mercury.
The recovery from insidious mercury poisoning, after the removal of the poison source, takes place very slowly. Professor Lewin predicted this, and the development of our wellbeing confirmed this. The time period is visibly connected to the duration of the poisoning, and possibly also to how old you are. My co-workers who had left the laboratory were, thankfully, rid of their problems in the course of 1 - 2 years and have fully recovered the freshness of their thinking ability and memory. Nevertheless, even they had to suffer for a long time from relapses not only of mental but also of physical nature (particularly mouth inflammation). Some assistants and female lab workers continued to work here where they, unfortunately, cannot operate without mercury. Even today, after two years, they are still suffering from clearly visible, but steadily diminishing, after-effects of the poisoning. As for me, who was exposed to the damaging influences for over 20 years, the recovery apparently is taking the longest. All in all, I recovered the ability to work. I had only occasional relapses (headaches, drowsiness and mild mouth inflammation). Considering the course of the recovery up to now, I do not doubt, however, that my last co-workers and I will lose our symptoms completely. It seems that you have to count on it to take years to excrete the mercury again that took years to build up in the body. In this regard the following case has been educational to me recently, which at the same time proves that it is irrelevant for the course of insidious mercury poisoning whether the poison gets into the body via the lungs or through the skin¹¹⁾
A medical assistant who had applied mercury salve therapy on his patients fell ill in 1905 with those symptoms (moodiness, headache, vertigo), which gradually got worse (fatigue, unbearable headache, oral inflammation, loosening and loss of teeth, constant runny nose, sinusitis, sore throat, ringing in the ears, hearing and vision disturbances). Only in 1911 was the situation recognized as mercury poisoning. The man stopped applying the salve therapy, but still needed many years before he lost his symptoms. After 1914, when he went to war he suffered from headaches and drowsiness. Today as a fifty-five-year-old he is again the picture of health and quite youthful.
It seems that an existing mercury intoxication preconditions a special sensitivity vis-a-vis renewed exposure from mercury vapor. Some of us who, at our work, and also during occasional mistakes with ventilation, had come in contact again with more mercury, noticed this soon because of the stronger symptomatology after the relapses. That is not surprising because, as the long development period of the insidious illness shows, a certain borderline value has to be reached before noticeable symptoms appear. The borderline value is certainly exceded for a long time, even during recovery, so that each added amount of mercury worsens your wellbeing at once.
On doctor's orders we tried to hasten the recovery in various ways through use of diuretics and emetics, through hot baths and prolonged use of small amounts of sodium iodide. I do not get the impression that healing was particularly accelerated. The iodide has the reputation of bringing the metal into soluble form from insoluble organic mercury compounds. This is the form in which the mercury is probably anchored in the body. As far as I am concerned, there was no proof that significantly more mercury was excreted after addition of iodide. No progress was to be expected from diuretics, as already mentioned, since the mercury excretion in the urine had stopped relatively soon altogether. The healing arts are sadly lacking in medicines that detoxify mercury in the body ¹²⁾.
Exercize in fresh air is still best suited to make the subjective symptoms less noticeable. With milder headaches and vertigo Novalgin has been proven worthwhile as a palliative. All in all, it has to be left to time to become master over this destroyer of peace. For me even a four-week long stay in the high mountains and an ocean voyage to southerly latitudes brought hardly any progress, (which normally occurs with unaffected people), although, naturally, the mental relaxation helped the nerves.
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.

• I. 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.
Insidious mercury poisonings are certainly much more common than ordinarily thought. This is true particularly for chemists and physicists who so often have to work with it. The great danger here is being noted much too little, and the true cause of symptoms and illness is often not recognized. In literature you find almost nothing about this.¹⁶⁾ Since the discovery of our misfortune I have found out about a dozen certain cases of insidious mercury poisoning, just in the circle of my acquaintances. They almost always have the same symptoms. Often the correct cause was missed and therefore the correct treatment was missed as well. An important example is that of a foreign colleague who had been working with mercury apparatus' for a long time. When he visited me and I asked him whether he had ever felt any mercury poisoning, he decidedly said that he had not. Upon further questioning about his health he then admitted: "I am in bad shape. For years I have been suffering from neurasthenia and had to stay away from the laboratory from time to time." The doctors had tried all kinds of things with him. They had treated him for stomach, intestinal, and ribcage disease with a special diet etc. In reality what he had been dealing with was full-blown mercury poisoning without doubt.
One unknowing victim of mercury poisoning has probably been Faraday. In the last two to three decades of his life, which came to an end in his late seventies, he was bothered increasingly by health problems, which made his scientific work more and more difficult, and which played a significant role in his letters and descriptions of his life. They were diagnosed by physicians as neurasthenia and early onset arteriosclerosis. They consisted of, at times, strong mental and physical fatigue, "irritable weakness," headaches, vertigo, "rheumatism" and, more than anything else, constant increasing memory loss.¹⁷⁾
Faraday, being spared serious "bodily" illnesses, was even in old age a strong hiker and swimmer. But he avoided people for the last third of his life. Scientific work, including his lectures, were continued with long interruptions into the last decade of his life. It is heart rending to read in the great researcher's letters that he went to see his physician friend so often to complain to him about vertigo and headache, that he couldn't remember names, that he was losing the connections with his colleagues, that he was forgetting his own work and notes, that he was forgetting his letter writing, and that he didn't know any more how to write words. "The affected organ is my head. The result is loss of memory and clarity and vertigo." All these symptoms make it most likely that Faraday suffered from an insidious mercury poisoning from the vapors used in the laboratory. It makes you shudder to think how, in all likelihood, this rich intellect could have been freed from this suffering, and what gifts he could have given to science if the cause of his illness could have been recognized and remedied.
Maybe--Professor Jaensch (Marburg) brings this to my attention--the mysterious sickness the mathematician, physicist, and philosopher, Blaise Pascal (1623-1661), succumbed to when he was still young was mercury poisoning. Pascal worked with mercury in his well-known barometer research. His suffering from sustained headaches, vertigo, toothache, loss of appetite, and lasting bad colic complete the picture of advanced slow mercury poisoning.
No doubt mercury, the use of which sadly cannot be done away with in research, has done heavy damage to science in the past as it still does today in the way it curtailed the output of many a researcher. May this present-day warning help us pay better attention and avoid the dangers of this insidious metal.
Please view the bibliography in the original article: Die Gefaehrlichkeit des Quecksilberdampfes, von Alfred Stock (1926)