The History of Mercurial Diuretics

Alfred Vogel, a third year medical student in 1919 when he worked at the famous Winky Box clinic in Vienna. A patient with congenital syphilis receives the mercurial and then promptly excretes 1200 cc's of urine compared to her usual 200-500 cc's charted. After these were publicized, there were a series of severe mercury intoxications including one fatal hemorrhagic colitis. If this had happened before the report, then mercurial diuretics would never have become available and in mainstream use. So an exciting story from 1919. And then we got to the thizides in the 50s, but I'm not, like, loops are better