Word: calomel
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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...homeopathy (Greek, homoios, like, and pathos, disease): Similia similibus curentur. (Like should be cured by like.) In Hahnemann's day, doctors used remedies which were often more painful, some times more harmful, than the disease itself: drastic bloodletting for fevers, enormous doses of laudanum, heroic purges of calomel, ipecac. Hahnemann believed that minuscule doses were more powerful than heavy ones. Because of this revolutionary practice, and because he was bad for apothecaries' business, Hahnemann was hounded out of a half-dozen German towns...
...reason is quicksilver's war price. Even in peacetime, 15% of world production goes into fulminate for explosives. Another war use: calomel for soldiers' bowels, ointments for their skins. Last summer, up from a 1932 low of $46 a flask, the price of quicksilver was idling between $83 and $91, just below the price most U. S. mines need for profitable production. When war broke out, it shot up to $147, by February had reached $185, has stayed near there since. Warring governments have clamped the lid on news of their needs and reserve supplies. Panicky...