Pete The Elder

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September 12, 2005

Rome and Murder

I finished the Modern Scholars lecture of The History of Ancient Rome last week and was for the most part impressed. It was a bit short to cover all of Rome in the detail I would have liked, but most of the conclusions of Professor Titchener made sense and she was a very good choice for lecturer with her focus on the cultural reasons for Romes power. I am still not sure I agree with the conclusion that Christianity was the main reason Rome fell because other Christian based Empires have succeeded and many of the enemies Rome fell to like Attila the Hun were Christian as well. I think mainly Rome got as big as it could with the technology available to it, but there was no way for it maintain itself at that size with that form of government it used and with the technology it possessed.

Speaking of Empires I have now begun listening to The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It is a whopping 44 tapes long, but these are divided into four smaller collections of 11 tapes so I may take breaks and listen to something else in between the sections.

I am through the first section of Elements of Murder: The History of Poison and though I do like it, I was hoping for a more linear take on the history of poison. The first section deals with mercury and the second section is about arsenic. The most interesting thing I learned so far is that pure liquid mercury is not that dangerous to drink and that some people drank it daily for years as a laxative without any ill effects (although I would not recommend trying this for yourself). Ingesting mercury compounds can be very dangerous as can inhaling the fumes that pure mercury is constantly giving off.

Dan, you might be interested in his take on thimerosal injections, which he does not think cause autism. He does think mercury might have a role in austism because of a study that showed autistic children have far less mercury in their hair than non-autistic children. This may mean that autistic people have difficulty processing and getting rid of the tiny amounts of mercury that we all naturally absorb from the environment.

Posted by Pete at September 12, 2005 04:58 PM

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Posted by: Dangerous Dan at September 16, 2005 12:31 AM