USES OF MERCURY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 May 1938, Page 9

USES OF MERCURY

AS GOOD AS BULLION. WAR-MAKERS’ BEST FRIEND. Without mercury fulminate, the only successful detonator for high explosives, not a gun could fire. This organic compound of quicksilver ignites so quickly that it must be retarded to set off the explosive in the shell. Bought and hoarded as the war-mak-ers’ best friend, mercury is the indispensable material.

Almaden, a Spanish mine which has been supplying mercury for 2000 years, and Irdia, a mine in Southern Austria, now owned by the Italian Government, provide 80 per cent of the world’s mercury supply and 90 per cent of Europe’s. D. S. Rosier, in the ‘Coronet,’ believes mercury may well be one of the reasons why Italy keeps her finger in the Spanish pie. Were she to dominate a Fascist vanguard, she would have a virtual monopoly.

Almaden contains the world’s richest deposits of cinnabar, which is crushed and heated until it volatises at 360 deg F., turns into vapour, and is condensed to trickle out as pure mercury.

Yellow mercuric oxide is used in tremendous quantities by navies for anti-fouling paints which keep the keels of their vessels smooth running. And no war could run for long without the sanitation which involves tons of bichloride of mercury. Your mirror’s background which reflects you has been painted with a mercury compound. Mercury nitrate is used in making your felt hats. Your dentist packs amalgam of mercury into your faulty molars. Your golf greens have been treated with a mercury salt to prevent brown patches. The seeds which grew the vegetables you ate for dinner probably were sterilised with one or other of the mercury compounds.

Mercury as a metal was known in 100 B.C. Salts of mercury were first produced in 900 A.D. Mercury chloride, or calomel, is today’s most widely used stimulant of the liver and gall bladder. Phenyl mercuric nitrate is in your prescription for athlete’s foot. Ammoniated mercuric chloride combats fungus infections. Blue ointment uses a mercury salt to check vermim Neosalvarsan, a soluble salt of mercury, is used in the treatment of syphilis. Mercurochrome disinfects scratches. More than 40 different compounds of mercury greet you in a drug store.

The future of mercury is hard to predict. Italy, with limited gold reserves, makes the most of it. Mercury is as good as gold bullion in today’s markets, and the loyalists, hard pressed for war munitions, haven’t the gold and haven’t the credits, for they use mercury, and it serves them all. The United States is the third producer of the world, with low-grade Pacific coast ores, which can only-be mined when the price is high. The Spanish loyalists and Fascists alike have been converting reserves of mercury into cash since January of this year, when the quicksilver cartel, amounting to an agreement between the two, was waste-basketed. Because mercury counts as gold in the United States a large percentage of newlyreleased mercury has arrived at American ports.