Rebellion Record: a Diary of American Events: Poetry and Incidents., Volume 1.
Frank Moore, Ed.

[70] use nothing to eat them up? Must we be under the combined tyrannies of combustion and constipation? Is not gunpowder direful enough, without depriving us of the benignant offices of Mercury? Are we to be feasted on lead pills, and be debarred from mercury pills? Is daguerreotyping to come to an end from the Ohio to the Gulf, from the Atlantic to the Indian country? Are we to use buckets of water or burnished copper for mirrors? Suppose, Mr. Secretary, your liver were locked up for a week, wouldn't you want blue pill? Think of going backwards in civilized medicine, in one class of cases, to times antecedent to Paracelsus. If, Mr. Secretary, you should be stretched in fever, learn the agencies of chlorate of potash, and then let us have blue pill and chlorate of potassa. If our sufferings become intolerable, and we order blue pill and calomel from Wolverhampton, would you be gratified in seeing it convoyed from Woolwich? Are the mountains of Cinnabar in California to stand idly kissing the mountain air, because you forbid mercury to flow through the Mississippi valley? Answer us that, Master Chase. Why not forbid lancets? They shed blood as well as Minie balls. Why are we allowed quinine, if we cannot have mercury? Why is morphine regular, and chlorate of potassa contraband? Alas, Mr. Secretary, if you starve us in health, is that any reason why we should be starved in the food of sickness? Do let the mercury and chlorate of potassa come in and go through us. Jonathan Plymley.