Mercury

“ The space above the mercury is a vacuum. The mercury extends inside the tube to a height corresponding to the weight or pressure of the air, the vertical height of the top of the mercury column above the level of the mercury in the cistern, in inches and hundredths of an inch, being the barometer reading. ”

“ The warmth of your finger swells or expands the mercury, and it rises, because it needs more room. You can do the same thing by breathing on it. Your warm breath will expand the mercury. This is just what the warm air does to it; and when the weather is cold, the cold air shrinks or contracts it. When it is very cold indeed, the mercury is very low down in the tube, because it is so much contracted by the cold air; and when it is hot weather, the [3123] mercury is very high, because it is so much swollen by the heat. ”

“ The mercury does not wet the finger, and as the finger is lifted the mercury does not follow it.
The reason for this peculiarity of mercury is that the pull between the particles of mercury themselves is stronger than the pull between them and your finger or handkerchief. ”

“ When the mercury lowers, we see the smoke and noxious vapors remain in the apartments and near the surface of the earth. Now, every one knows that, of all winds, that from the east causes the mercury in the barometer to rise the highest, and that which lowers it most is from the west. ”

“ In looking around the closet where these pictures were exposed—where these plates were stored—he found that for some reason or other the bottle of mercury had been broken, and he tried almost every imaginable material in the closet, and at last it struck him it might be mercury. Well, he put some mercury on the plate and he ruined it. “Well, no,” he says, “it is not mercury but mercury in a very fine state. I wonder if it is the Vapor of Mercury?” He tried it and found that it was. That led to the development of the daguerreotype. ”

“ Mercury has been employed in one or other of its forms in almost all diseases; but each of its numerous preparations is supposed to have some peculiarity of action of its own, combined with that common to all the compounds of this metal. The mercurials form, indeed, one of the most important classes of the materia medica.
Tests. 1. Metallic mercury is detected by its liquid condition and volatility; and, when in a finely divided or pulverulent state, by the microscope, or by staining a piece of copper white when the two are rubbed together. ”

“ All the Mercury got without the use of Fire, whether by washing, or found in the Mines (for in the digging, some little particles get together, so that in some places you might take up two or three spoonfuls of pure Mercury) is call'd by them Virgin Mercury, and esteem'd above the rest. I inquir'd of the Officer what vertue that had more, than the other; he told me that making an Amalgama of Gold and Virgin Mercury, and putting it to the fire, that Mercury would carry away all the Gold with it, which common Mercury would not do. ”

“ Small breakages in the mercury, either from intervening bubbles of spirit or adhesion to the indices, may generally be rectified by cautiously tapping the frame of the instrument, so as to cause the mercury to unite by the assistance thus given to its superior gravity. ”

“ Mercury may then sometimes pass across the face of the sun at a time when the earth is on the same side of the sun, and in that case we can observe Mercury moving like a little black ball across the glowing front of the King of the Day. ”

“ Mercury oxide does not contain two simple bodies, a gas and a metal, but two elements, mercury and oxygen, which, when free, are a gas and a metal. Neither mercury as a metal nor oxygen as a gas is contained in mercury oxide ”

“ Experiment.—Mercury is allowed to fall, in a fine rain, on to melted sulphur; a black substance is produced; this black substance is heated in a closed vessel, it is volatilised and transformed into a beautiful red solid.
One could scarcely suppose that the black and the red substances are identical, if one did not know that they are composed of the same quantities of the same elements, sulphur and mercury. ”

“ When the planets Saturn and Mercury conjoin, the lead has to be melted and the mercury added. Then the metal must cool, while you wait for a conjunction of Jupiter with Saturn and Mercury; when that occurs, you melt the amalgam of lead and mercury, and add the tin, previously melted in a separate crucible, at the exact moment of conjunction. Again you wait for a conjunction [Pg 45] of either of the above-named planets with the Sun, when you add the gold; with the Moon, when you add the silver; with Venus, when you add the copper. ”

“ For example—'When mercury is heated, and at the same time exposed to atmospheric air, it is found that the volume of the air is diminished, and the weight of the mercury increased, and that it becomes, during the operation, a red crystalline body, which is the binoxide of mercury, formed by the metal combining with the oxygen of the air' ”

“ Yes, like any other liquid; only it requires a much greater degree of heat. At the temperature of six hundred degrees, it begins to boil and evaporate like water.
Mercury combines with gold, silver, tin, and with several other metals; and, if mixed with any of them in a sufficient proportion, it penetrates the solid metal, softens it, loses its own fluidity, and forms an amalgam, which is the name given to the combination of any metal with mercury, forming a substance more or less solid, according as the mercury or the other metal predominates. ”

“ The action of mercury is therefore used as a weather-glass, by which an index-point shows the movements of the fluid, by means of a wheel over which a thread passes, sustaining a float and a counterpoise. When the mercury rises the float goes up, and the weight falls, and turns the wheel by means of the thread. ”

“ Mercury amalgamated with a metal gives it a consistence more or less soft, and even fluid, according to the greater or smaller proportion of Mercury employed. All amalgams are softened by heat, and hardened by cold. ”

“ What is said by the chemists of their darling mercury, is, perhaps, true of every body through the whole creation, that, if a thousand lives should be spent upon it, all its properties would not be found out. ”

“ The particles of the water are drawn to your hand more powerfully than they are drawn to each other. But in the following experiment, you have an example of cases where cohesion is stronger than adhesion:
Experiment 16. Pour some mercury (quicksilver) into a small dish and dip your finger into it. As you raise your finger, see if the mercury follows it up as the water did [pg 48] in Experiment 14. When you pull your finger all the way out, has the mercury wet it at all? Put a lamp wick or a part of your handkerchief into the mercury. Does it draw the mercury up as it would draw up water? ”

“ Being the heaviest of all fluids of which we have any knowledge, and not congealing in the temperature of our climate, it has been preferred, before all others, for barometers, as a measure of the weight of the atmosphere. And, as heat dilates mercury similarly to other fluids, it is likewise made into thermometers. Mercury is sometimes used in medicine in its pure metallic state. ”

“ The prima materia was early identified with mercury, not ordinary mercury, but the ``mercury of the philosophers,'' which was the essence or soul of mercury, freed from the four Aristotelian elements—earth, air, fire and water—or rather from the qualities which they represent. Thus the operator had to remove from ordinary mercury, earth or an earthy principle or quality, and water or a liquid principle, and to fix it by taking away air or a volatile principle. ”

“ Earth by Heat becomes Fire, and by Cold returns into Earth. Dense Bodies by Fermentation rarify into several sorts of Air, and this Air by Fermentation, and sometimes without it, returns into dense Bodies. Mercury appears sometimes in the form of a fluid Metal, sometimes in the form of a hard brittle Metal, sometimes in the form of a corrosive pellucid Salt call'd Sublimate, sometimes in the form of a tasteless, pellucid, volatile white Earth, call'd Mercurius Dulcis; or in that of a red opake volatile Earth, call'd Cinnaber ”

“ Tests for Mercury.—Mercury, in combination and in the solid form, is most readily detected by mixing the substance intimately with dry anhydrous sodic carbonate, transferring the mixture to a glass tube, sealed at one end, and applying heat. If mercury be present, a ring of minute globules condenses in the cool part of the tube. If the quantity of mercury is likely to be very minute, it is best to modify the process by using a subliming cell (p. 258) , and thus obtain the sublimate on a circle of thin glass in a convenient form for microscopical examination. ”

“ So is it to be observed of Metals, and especially of Gold, which by reason of its abundant, fixt, digested and ripe Mercury, hath a very close, fast and compact, fixt and invincible Body, which neither Fire nor Water, Air, nor any Corruption of the Earth can prejudice, that the consuming power of the Elements can do them no harm ”

“ This air, from all its characteristics, I could riot but recognize as the same that I had extracted from calx of mercury, known as mercury precipitatum per se; the same that M. Priestley extracted from a number of substances by treating them with spirits of nitre. In proportion as this air had been freed, the mercury had been reduced, and I found again, within a few grains, the two ounces one dram of mercury which I had dissolved. The slight loss may have been due to a little yellow and red sublimate which clung to the upper part of the retort. ”

“ They that believe that Mercury is of a moist and cold nature, must lay down the Bucklers, for ’tis not so, but it abounds with a great heat and moisture, which being naturally planted therein, keeps it alwaies fluid: For, were it of a cold and moist Nature, it would alwaies remain rigid and hard, like to congealed Water, and were to be melted like other metals, by the heat of the fire, which it (viz. ☿) hath no need of, because it hath already a fluidity from heat, whereby it flows, and is alwaies constrained to live, and not to die, grow stiff, congeal, or be fixed. ”

“ One of its greatest peculiarities is, that it retains a fluid state at the temperature of the atmosphere. All metals are fusible at different degrees of heat, and they have likewise each the property of freezing or becoming solid at a certain fixed temperature. Mercury congeals only at seventy-two degrees below the freezing point. ”

“ This wonderfull virtue of fixing all volatile minerals, the Philosophers call their secret Fire or proper Agent, wherewith not onely the imperfect metals, as Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, and Mars, but also volatile Mercury, combustible common Sulphur, Antimony, Orpiment, and Arsenick may be fixed, so as on the Cupel to leave Sol and Lune. ”

“ Verily I did very many years ago exceeding studiously apply my self to the search of such a spiritual and Gold and Silver attracting Magnet, but I could not hitherto attain to the true Scope, until I at length by chance found that a true living and running Mercury might, by the benefit of Art, without any Addition of Mercurial things, be extracted out of the fugacious and imperfect Metals, such as are Lead, Tin, Bizmuth, Zink, and Antimony. ”

“ You surround the ball of mercury with pounded ice, and while it is melting make a mark at that point in the tube where the mercury has stopped in its descent. Then plunge the thermometer into boiling water. Whereupon the mercury goes up, up, up, till at last it reaches a point beyond which it will not pass. ”

“ The only mercurial compounds which are extensively used in the arts, are fictitious cinnabar or Vermillion, and corrosive sublimate.
MERCURY, BICHLORIDE OF; Corrosive sublimate; (Deutochlorure de mercure, Fr.; Aetzendes quecksilber sublimat, Germ.) is made by subliming a mixture of equal parts of persulphate of mercury, prepared as above described, and sea-salt, in a stone-ware cucurbit. ”

“ Mercury occurs in nature chiefly as the sulphide (HgS) called cinnabar, and in globules of metal inclosed in the cinnabar. The mercury mines of Spain have long been famous, California being the next largest producer.
Metallurgy. Mercury is a volatile metal which has but little affinity for oxygen. Sulphur, on the other hand, readily combines with oxygen. These facts make the metallurgy of mercury very simple. The crushed ore, mixed with a small amount of carbon to reduce any oxide or sulphate that might be formed, is roasted in a current of air. ”

“ In the next place I observe, That there are some mixt Bodies from which it has not been yet made appear, that any degree of Fire can separate either Salt or Sulphur or Mercury, much less all the Three. The most obvious Instance of this Truth is Gold, which is a Body so fix’d, and wherein the Elementary (56) Ingredients (if it have any) ”

“ Having already heard how the most pure Essences of Vegetables and Animals, by our secret Sal Armoniack are to be distilled by ascent, let us now also see, how Metals and Minerals may be highly purged by the same, and reduced to their first matter: which first matter is no other than a most subtil Mercurial Water, in which the purest part of the Metal is latent in the form of running Mercury, which Mercury is fit for preparing whatsoever Work you will of it, either Sol or Luna particularly, or a true Universal Tincture, vastly tinging. ”

“ Diagram showing that, owing to the Eccentricity of its Orbit, and its Varying Velocity, Mercury, although making but One Turn on its Axis in the Course of a Revolution about the Sun, nevertheless experiences on Parts of its Surface the Alternation of Day and Night.
Let us start with Mercury in perihelion at the point A. The little cross on the plan [Pg 36] et stands exactly under the sun and in the center of the illuminated hemisphere. ”