Sulfur

Sulfur hundreds of years ago was associated almost exclusively with volcanoes, hellish cauldrons and sinners. Then there was the era of gunpowder. And with the beginning of the scientific and technical revolution, vulcanization of rubber, the production of chemical warfare agents, polymer synthesis, drugs and other attributes of modern civilization suddenly appeared.

Polymers and medicines are about us. We deal with medical products and use organically bound sulfur, which kills Demodex mites.
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More sulfur burns in the ultraviolet, so many fire detectors do not detect its ignition. It is important to protect the production.

Combustion

For 500 years, sulfur was the main component of almost the only explosive available to humans. Sulfur in powder form is quite explosive and therefore was part of black powder. Sulfur burns in the air, forming a sulfur dioxide gas - a colorless gas with a strong odor. The gas is quite poisonous and, in contact with water in the lungs, is converted to sulfurous acid. It is on this property that the method of quick cleaning of various pests of vegetable stores, barns and basements is based. A sulfur checker lights up in the room, and after a few hours no one lives there.

Sulfur is also known for its compound - hydrogen sulfide, which has the characteristic smell of rotten eggs. More precisely, it eggs they smell when decomposed. It is formed during the decay of proteins that are present in the composition (only those that contain sulfur-containing amino acids methionine or cysteine ​​in the composition). This gas is produced in large quantities during the decomposition of organic matter and therefore is especially common in various sewers together with methane. Methane is non-toxic and not dangerous when breathing, until it displaces oxygen. But hydrogen sulfide is extremely toxic. And it causes failure of olfactory receptors, its smell ceases to be felt. People who descend into the wells, various sewer manholes, faint after a couple of breaths and quickly die.

A typical case is carbon monoxide poisoning .

But what will happen if you set fire to such a hatch:


They are still lucky in comparison with the candidates for astronauts:

Earwax

What you can get out of your ear does not actually contain sulfur as such. Just Latin name cerumen similar. It is produced by sulfur (ceruminous) glands and consists of proteins, fats, free fatty acids and mineral salts. The main function - protection from dust, bacteria, fungi and other unfriendly organisms.

Mercaptan flavors

These are thiols. They smell. If you store them in a sealed safe in containers with a lid, and put a double bag on top, will not help. This is how a skunk smells, lain in the heat for two weeks. To wash the smell from the hands is almost impossible.

One of the most common uses for thiols is the odoration of domestic gas. Methane, butane and propane do not smell at all, and installing leakage sensors is quite expensive. A simple solution was found - the gas should smell unpleasant. Moreover, the amount of mercaptan there is very small - 10 ⁻⁷ −10 ⁻⁸ mol / l.

How syphilis was treated with malaria

Spirocheta has four subspecies and causes not only well-known syphilis, but also lesser-known diseases such as yaws, pint and bejel. Yaws so generally spread by contact and affects mainly children. It is fairly well treated with penicillins and macrolides, so the lesions are present mainly in poor tropical countries. Treponemas are pure anthroponosis, that is, only people can be carriers. They have successfully parasitized us for at least 1.2 million years. It is now syphilis rather quickly and without any problems being treated, and in the past, particularly loving individuals have gradually turned into walking zombies over several years. Antibiotics have spread widely only during World War II, but at least something was needed to treat syphilis long before that. Doctors regularly conducted experiments, sometimes even on themselves. John Hunter, for example, to test his hypotheses, voluntarily infected himself with syphilis and gonorrhea. Following the traditions of his time, he was able to recover from quite toxic mercury preparations and cauterization.

A rather unexpected solution came from another area — psychiatry. There, too, with the treatment of patients it was all difficult and new methods were invented with enviable regularity. The Austrian psychiatrist Julius Wagner-Jauregg, after long experiments, proposed a method of treating psychosis with high fever. As it turned out, pale treponema is also very poorly tolerating hyperthermia and quickly dies.

A patient with syphilis was also infected with malaria. After a few weeks of severe fever, treponema died, and how to deal with malaria, already knew - quinine and methylene blue. A little later, to create artificial fever, they began to apply the sulfur already familiar to us in the form of a suspension in peach oil - sulfosin. Injection of this mixture into the muscles of the thigh caused a rise in temperature to 39–40 ° C and extremely painful sensations at the injection site. Years later, antibiotics appeared, but pyrotherapy was fixed in other areas of medicine - in particular, in a certain percentage of cases positive dynamics was described in patients with schizophrenia. Now refused to sulfosin and most often use the lipopolysaccharide causative agent of typhoid fever. Mainly for the translation of chronic infectious diseases in the acute phase for effective treatment.

Here is a similar treatment method for trepper, which Nikolai Nikulin cites in his book “Memories of War”:

“Faced with an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, physicians were at first confused. It is not enough medicines, experts and that is less. The tripper was treated in a barbaric way: several cubes of milk were injected into the patient's buttock, an abscess was formed, the temperature rose above forty degrees. Bacillus, as is known, does not tolerate such heat. Then treated an abscess. Sometimes it helped. Syphilitis was worse. I was told that they had been gathered in the town of Neyrupin in a special camp and were kept behind barbed wire for a while waiting for medicines that had not yet existed. ”

Sulfur in cosmetology

Sulfur is one of the most important biogenic elements: it is part of certain amino acids (cysteine, methionine), vitamins (biotin, thiamine) and enzymes. It works as a crosslinking, forming disulfide bridges and forming a tertiary protein structure. One kilogram of human flesh contains about two grams of sulfur.

Without it, normal hair growth is impossible, since their structural proteins contain sulfur-containing methionine.

And also her cosmetologists love her. And grandmothers, who are sure that the effect of the ointment is directly proportional to its smell. Sulfur-containing gels and ointments have a pronounced antiseptic and antiparasitic effect. When sulfur interacts with organic substances, sulfides and pentathonic acid are formed, which give it these properties.



Remember those cute ticks that live in your skin? Exactly they begin to die sadly from hunger due to the fact that sulfur changes the characteristics of sebum. At the same time, its antimicrobial effect is manifested due to the suppression of the growth of bacterial microflora. We have specially developed for this purpose the “ Demoten ” gel, which is balanced in its composition, which, on the one hand, gives the desired therapeutic effect, and on the other hand, it almost does not produce allergic side effects, like harsh smelling sulfur suspensions. We also use it in the Blefarogel 2 product , but only for eyelid skin care. She is gentle, so the composition is also chosen very delicate.

Sulfur can cause allergies, although quite rarely, but when working with it, it is necessary to very accurately know with which of its compounds it is necessary to go to the finished product. This part of the story is already a commercial secret, and as far as we know, in the direction of eyelid skin gels, we are still one of the best in the world. Again, thanks to the science of the USSR: most of our developments are a continuation of the polymers of the Soviet research institutes from which we all came out.