this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2024
833 points (98.9% liked)
Microblog Memes
5837 readers
2158 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Lead is definitely used in lots of old paint, but I seem to recall that this one specifically was mercury-based as mercury can induce schizophrenia and hallucinations, whereas lead's neurological effects are in the "makes you dull and slow" camp.
Also, lead was mostly used in the 1900's, IIRC. Before that they used even nastier stuff like mercury, arsenic ( I think arsenic in the paint was the cause of death for Napoleon Bonaparte) and chromium.
But then I'm not an MD or a historian; just a chemist trying to recall all of this from bits and pieces I've read over the years, so I might be way off base with some of the specifics.
Apparently it was stomach cancer that did Napoleon in, though arsenic was suspected.
Lead in paints and even makeup can be traced back to the Roman Empire. It was popular long before the 1900’s!