{"id":981,"date":"2010-02-28T00:26:04","date_gmt":"2010-02-28T06:26:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asylumeclectica.com\/grim\/?p=981"},"modified":"2010-02-28T00:26:04","modified_gmt":"2010-02-28T06:26:04","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-february-27-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=981","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour For February 27, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Today&#8217;s Ideal Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mercury metal can be diluted with solid materials, by carefully grinding them together in a pestle and mortar, and in this way pharmacists used to prepare grey powder. Detectives found that grey powder made an ideal dusting powder to highlight fingerprints on surfaces and it was brushed liberally on to all areas where fingerprints might be found. The skill was to leave only the faintest film of powder on the surface, which meant brushing most of it into the air from where it could be breathed in. Mercury that entered the body in this way tended to stick in the lungs and be absorbed. Detectives and forensic scientists whose job it was to find or photograph fingerprints began to display the symptoms of chronic mercury poisoning, such as excessive salivation, stomach pains, insomnia, tremors, irritability, and depression, although for a long time these were not linked to the real cause. Indeed it was only in the 1940s that it was realized that the detectives were really suffering from chronic mercury poisoning.<\/p>\n<p>Culled from: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0192806009\/theasylumeclecti\">The Elements Of Murder<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s Ideal Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Mercury metal can be diluted with solid materials, by carefully grinding them together in a pestle and mortar, and in this way pharmacists used to prepare grey powder. Detectives found that grey powder made an ideal dusting powder to highlight fingerprints on surfaces and it was brushed liberally on [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=981"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/981\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}