red mercuryn.

1582 S. Batman Vppon Bartholome, De Proprietatibus Rerum xix. xxxvii. f. 395^v Verditer must be grounde with cleere water, and so must all other colors first. Varmilan, Red, Red Mercurie,..Rubet called Red bowle and Rosset.

1643 A. Wilson Five Yeares King Iames 44 He gets into his hands certaine Poysons, viz. Rosacre, white Arsnick, Mercury sublimate, Cantarides, red Mercury.

1732 E. Strother Lect. Rationale Medicines I. 20 Red Mercury precipitate is dissolv'd by Oil of Vitriol.

1853 in C. Falck-Lebahn tr. Goethe's Faust 444 (note) Ein rother Leu or Löwe (: red lion :), red-stone, red mercury, (oxide of mercury,) from which oxygen is obtained.

1921 Geogr. Jrnl. 57 406 It was found necessary to spend half an hour after every march washing and drying the ponies' legs, and dressing them with red mercury and butter.

1981 Jrnl. Econ. & Social Hist. Orient 24 203 Merchants gather here [sc. Yunnan] because it is a place where cinnabar, red mercury, glittering stones, and precious gems are produced.

1990 Cultural Anthropol. 5 168 A variety of goods are traded and bartered that have little use for the Sudanese, for example, red mercury, cobalt, uranium, cocaine, and heroin.

1995 New Scientist 29 Apr. 4/3 Barnaby has concluded that it is a polymer with a gel-like consistency in which mercury and antimony have been bound together after irradiation for up to 20 days in a nuclear reactor... Red mercury itself, he claims, was first produced in 1965 in a cyclotron at the nuclear research centre at Dubna, near Moscow, and is now made at ‘a number’ of Russian military centres.

2002 Moscow Times (Nexis) 27 Sept. Osmium, as was red mercury, is offered for sale as an essential material used in nuclear weapons production by various hucksters.