Napoleon's Buttons Quotes

“Alkaloids are natural fungicides, insecticides, and pesticides. It has been estimated that, on average, each of us ingests about a gram and a half of natural pesticide every day, from the plants and plant products in our diet. The estimate for residues from synthetic pesticides is around 0.15 milligrams daily—about ten thousand times less than the natural dose!”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“The British habit of taking quinine as a prophylactic precaution against malaria developed into the evening “gin and tonic”—the gin being considered necessary to make the bitter-tasting quinine in the tonic water palatable.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“ingestion of only one nutmeg describe nausea, profuse sweating, heart palpitations, and vastly elevated blood pressure, along with days of hallucinations.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“So synthetic vanillin is manufactured and comes from a surprising source: the waste pulp liquor from the sulfite treatment of wood pulp in the making of paper. Waste liquor consists mainly of lignin, a substance found in and between the cell walls of land plants.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“As boiling patients and surgeons was not practical, Lister had to find some other way to safely eliminate germs on all surfaces. He settled on carbolic acid, a product made from coal tar that had been used successfully to treat stinking city drains and that had already been tried as a dressing on surgical wounds, without very positive results. Lister persevered and met with success in the case of an eleven-year-old boy who came to the Royal Infirmary with a compound fracture of the leg.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“Equally appalling was the death rate from such bacterial infections; at least 40 percent of amputees died from so-called hospital disease. In army hospitals that number approached 70 percent.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“Chemically similar to picric acid, trinitrotoluene, known as TNT from the initials of tri, nitro, and toluene, was better suited for munitions.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“Kieselguhr, also known as diatomaceous earth, is the remains of tiny marine animals and has a number of other uses: as a filter in sugar refineries, as insulation, and as a metal polish. Further testing showed that mixing liquid nitroglycerin with about one-third of its weight of kieselguhr formed a plastic mass with the consistency of putty.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“Later investigations into the severe headaches suffered by workers in the explosives industry showed that these headaches were due to the dilation of blood vessels caused by handling nitroglycerin. This discovery resulted in the prescription of nitroglyerin for treatment of the heart disease angina pectoris.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“The water used for manufacture was frequently supplied as urine from workers in the gunpowder mill; the urine of a heavy wine drinker was believed to create particularly potent gunpowder. Urine from a clergyman, or better yet a bishop, was also considered to give a superior product.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“This small combination of atoms, one nitrogen and two oxygens, NO2, attached at the right position, has vastly increased our ability to wage war, changed the fate of nations, and literally allowed us to move mountains.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“The term polymer is often associated with synthetic fibers and plastics, but there are also many naturally occurring polymers. The word comes from two Greek words, poly meaning “many” and meros meaning “parts”—or units—so a polymer consists of many units.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“Less than half of children born under these conditions survived to their fifth birthday. Some authorities were concerned, not because of the appallingly high infant mortality rate but because these children died “before they can be engaged in factory labor, or in any other labor whatsoever.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“Lead acetate is very soluble, and its toxicity was obviously not known to the Romans. This should give us pause to think, if we long for the good old days when food and drink were uncontaminated with additives.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“The C in vitamin C indicates that it was the third vitamin ever identified.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“Economy and the profit margin ruled—although, in hindsight, it does seem that this was a false economy. Ships had to be manned above capacity to allow for a 30, 40 or even 50 percent death rate from scurvy. Even without a high death rate, the effectiveness of a crew suffering from scurvy would have been remarkably low. And then there was the humane factor—rarely considered during these centuries.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“Typically, ship’s biscuits were weevil infested, a circumstance that was actually welcomed by sailors as the weevil holes increased porosity and made the biscuits easier to break and chew.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“A change as small as the position of a bond—the link between atoms in a molecule—can lead to enormous differences in properties of a substance and in turn influence the course of history. So this book is not about the history of chemistry; rather it is about chemistry in history.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons

“But the rubber bubble was about to burst.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons: 17 Molecules That Changed History

“Однако в середине XIV века отношение к колдовству изменилось. Христианство не боролось с магией, которую санкционировало само (в форме чудес). Однако колдовство, осуществленное вне церкви, воспринималось как дело рук сатаны, а колдуньи состояли с ним в сговоре.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History

“Алкалоиды из этих растений стимулировали торговлю, приносили невероятную прибыль, становились причиной войн, революций и переворотов, порабощали миллионы людей — и все это из-за вечного стремления человека быстро получить удовольствие.”
― Penny Le Couteur, Napoleon's Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History