u/Cool-Association-820

Calomel was used as a medicine from the 16th century through the early 20th century. By the 19th century, calomel was viewed as a panacea, or miracle drug, and was used against almost every disease, including syphilis, bronchitis, cholera, ingrown toenails, teething, gout, tuberculosis, influenza, and cancer. In 1853, Samuel Jackson described the harmful effects of calomel on children in his publication for Transactions of Physicians of Philadelphia. He noted that calomel caused gangrene on the skin, loss of teeth, and deterioration of the gums. Eventually, calomel's popularity began to wane as more research was done, and scientists discovered that the mercury in the compound was poisoning patients. During the 19th century, calomel was used to treat numerous illnesses and diseases like mumps, typhoid fever, and others — especially those that impact the gastrointestinal tract, such as constipation, dysentery, and vomiting. As mercury softened the gums, calomel was the principal constituent of teething powders until the mid-twentieth century. Babies given calomel for teething often suffered from acrodynia. Calomel, in high doses, led to mercury poisoning, which had the potential to cause permanent deformities and even death. Some patients experienced gangrene of the mouth generated by the mercury in the medicine, which caused the tissue on the cheeks and gums inside the mouth to break down and die. Some patients would lose teeth, while others were left with facial deformities.

Mark Twain's Autobiography includes an essay that said of the Moro Massacre in the Philippines, "In what way was it a battle? It has no resemblance to a battle ... We cleaned up our four days' work and made it complete by butchering these helpless people." The essay, Twain's 1906 Comments on the Moro Massacre, which was not published until after his death, said,

"General Wood was present and looking on. His order had been, 'Kill or capture those savages.' Apparently our little army considered that the "or" left them authorized to kill or capture according to taste, and that their taste had remained what it had been for eight years in our army out there-the taste of Christian butchers."

In the February 1901 article To the Person Sitting in Darkness Twain wrote the following about imperialism:

"There must be two Americas: one that sets the captive free, and one that takes a once-captive's new freedom away from him, and picks a quarrel with him with nothing to found it on; then kills him to get his land. . ."

"True, we have crushed a deceived and confiding people; we have turned against the weak and the friendless who trusted us; we have stamped out a just and intelligent and well-ordered republic; we have stabbed an ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest; we have bought a Shadow from an enemy that hadn't it to sell; we have robbed a trusting friend of his land and his liberty; we have invited clean young men to shoulder a discredited musket and do bandit's work under a flag which bandits have been accustomed to fear, not to follow; we have debauched America's honor and blackened her face before the world. . ."

"And as for a flag for the Philippine Province, it is easily managed. We can have a special one-our States do it: we can have just our usual flag, with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones."

Elsewhere Twain wrote,

"We have pacified some thousands of the islanders and buried them; destroyed their fields; burned their villages, and turned their widows and orphans out-of-doors; furnished heartbreak by exile to some dozens of disagreeable patriots; subjegated the remaining ten millions by Benevolent Assimilation, which is the pious new name for the musket; we have acquired property in the three hundred concubines and other slaves of our business partner, the Sultan of Sulu, and hoisted our protecting flag over that swag.

And so, by these Providences of God-and the phrase is the government's, not mine-we are a World Power."

Still elsewhere Twain wrote, "I bring you the stately matron named Christiandom, returning bedraggled, besmirched, and dishonored from pirate raids in Kiao-Chou, Manchuria, South Africa and the Philippines, with her soul full of meanness, her pocket full of boodle, and her mouth full of pious hypocracies."