Re: But what then
As a physiologist I measure pressures in mmHg of course. Though knowledge of what that means physically is in danger of being lost on the young, along with how to use a dial telephone. News reaches me of a nursing course where the mercury sphygmomanometers were deemed ‘too dangerous for the students’ by some jobsworth who saw ‘mercury’ and went Aaaarrgghh!
I demonstrated physiology labs during my PhD and we had class sets of sphygmomanometers, housed in sturdy metal boxes with the columns set well within the boxes as is standard design. In Blood Pressure week they were in constant use and never one got broken.
Liquid mercury is not very dangerous unless you spread it over a wide area and get thin amounts on your fingers. If you were say a Victorian hatter using it to soften felt. Hence the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland. Powdered sulphur is good for cleaning up spilt mercury btw. I have done that, I was a chemistry monitor in school back in the early ‘80s.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
