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A 28-year-old flight engineer from Singapore presented with nausea, lethargy, and tremor. He had been defecating an increasingly large quantity of silver droplets, which were identified on laboratory analysis as elemental mercury. An abdominal radiograph showed punctate opacities along the entire course of the colon. The urine mercury level was 26.1 μg per liter (130.1 nmol per liter). He required only antiemetic treatment in the hospital.For 12 weeks, the patient's mother-in-law had provided him with a traditional Indian medicine containing elemental mercury and meals to which approximately 3 Tbs of elemental mercury had been added. The ingestion of elemental . . .