Blue Mass

[Eva Elisabeth]

I agree with Roger. I think Mary rather took other drugs (I, too, read she took paregoric and laudanum, and this I could well imagine) as it was first of all used to treat constipation (for which A. Lincoln, according to Speed, took it), I don't think she suffered from that.

BTW, thanks for your comments on Lamon, Roger!

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(04-07-2014 11:54 AM)GARY POPOLO Wrote:  As I said I looked it up and it was interesting to find that Lincoln was given BM for some time but once at the white house he stopped taking this medication and a lot of the side effects stopped.

Due to Bill's question I checked Wiki what other complaints were treated with blue mass (tuberculosis, toothache, parasitic infestations, the pains of childbirth, and syphilis), and found this I've never come across before:

"There is, however, evidence that Lincoln continued to take blue mass. An interview given by his wife Mary Todd Lincoln to a correspondent from the Pittsburgh Chronicle suggests that Lincoln continued his use of the medication, despite his earlier statements to the contrary. In the interview Mrs. Lincoln described an instance in which her husband’s “usual medicine,” the mercury based “blue pills” made him terribly ill. Mrs. Lincoln “recalled the fact that her husband had been very ill, for several days, from the effects of a dose of blue pills taken shortly before his second inauguration.” She said he was not well, and appearing to require his usual medicine, blue pills, she sent to the drug store in which Harrold was employed last and got a dose and gave them to him at night before going to bed, and that next morning his pallor terrified her. ‘His face,’ said she, pointing to the bed beside which she sat, ‘was white as that pillow-case, as it lay just there,’ she exclaimed, laying her hand on the pillow—‘white, and such a deadly white; as he tried to rise he sank back again quite overcome!’ She described his anxiety to be up, there was so much to do, and her persistence and his oppressive languor in keeping him in bed for several days; said he and she both thought it so strange that the pills should affect him in that way; they never had done so before, and both concluded they would get no more medicine there, as the attendant evidently did not understand making up prescriptions."

The given source is: Sacramento Daily Union, Vol.29,#4479, Aug.21, 1865, Late Atlantic Intelligence.

Thus that interview with the correspondent from the Pittsburgh Chronicle must have taken place before Aug.21,1865. Would be interesting to read it (has anyone?), but I wonder - did she give interviews so soon after remaining so long in her "mourning bedroom" in the White House?