On Tue, Feb 24, 2009, alexander <voka...@verizon.net> said: > People nowadays are much more conscious of the environmental toxins.
with considerable reason. Plumber comes from the use of lead pipes to convey water in Roman times, but it didnt stop with the romans; lead supply mains are not common, but some are still in regular use; and it was commonplace 50 years ago for the economy of their use to be sufficient excuse for misguided fools to deny solid evidence that lead poisening was a serious health issue. Mercury gets into the ocean food chain, Swordfish are peculiarly prone to it, and swordfish 'steak' is one of my favorite foods :-(. The element Mercury has a number of risks, including a very low vapor point. Mercury compounds are of course each different, it will take toxicologist to know how dangerous each loading agent is; including how prone they are to break down or combine. I can fully understand if a researcher (eg Mimo) has strong reservations about working with Mercury to compound such agents. >From the point of leeching the metals out, silk binds more closely Good to know that, I recall dyes for silk being more difficult to bind than dyes for cotton. >> I wouldn't claim to be an expert, but according to my medical dictionary >> mercury poisoning was common in some trades in the past - in particular in >> the preparation of felt used in hats. >> is there any evidence that strings were loaded with mercury or >> anything else apart from the fact that some works of art show the lower >> courses differently coloured? Mimo hought it worth trying out, and experiments today support the plausibility of it. >> > Regarding the use of mercury (or lead) to load a gut string: if it were >> > a problem wouldn't we have seen at least some contemporary reports of >> > professional lutenists with poisining symptoms - I'm not aware of any. We barely know who the players all were, and we arent doing a good job of tracking todays cases of toxic poisoning; why should we expect to be able to do so with historical cases? But we do have some instances, Mozart and Beethoven for example. -- Dana Emery To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
