OT: The Peabody Sisters & Hg

[Guest guest]

Hello everyone,

I hope this post doesn't bore you all to tears, but I found this fascinating. I was doing a little light reading to escape the autism world. I started reading The Peabody Sisters. (My maiden name is Peabody.) The book is about , and Sophia Peabody. These women lived in 19th century Boston and were very progressive for their time. One sister, Sophia, is an invalid artist who goes on to marry iel Hawthorne. I have often read about Sophia Peabody and how frail she was. In these other books, there was never a clear picture of what her illness was except to say she suffered "headaches or a case of the nerves."

In this new book, the author ( Marshall) has gotten to the bottom of what Sophia's problem was. She was a very fussy baby when teething so her physician father treated her with large doses of calomel (mercury) powder. Sophia suffered from mercury poisoning! According to Marshall the mercury attacked her CNS and by mid-19th century doctors discontinued the calomel powder for teething. (Except for in the mid-20th century when we had Pinks disease from the same cause.)

So basically Sophia is a fifth generation Peabody suffering from mercury and my is an eleventh generation Peabody suffering from the same ailment. That's what I call progress! Amazing.

I'll go back to my book.

Bye,

Peabody Estepp