Author Louisa May Alcott died of mercury poisoning.  She had contracted typhoid while working as a nurse in an army hospital during the Civil War.  Doctors treated her with calomel which contains mercury.  She recovered from the typhoid fever but her health continued to deteriorate from mercury poisoning until she died from it at the age of 56.  I have been unable to find anything describing her specific symptoms but apparently her life was a struggle after the calomel treatments and she got progressively worse over time.
Treating diseases with mercury compounds continued well into the 1950's that I know of, always with tragic results.  I am puzzled as to why this was allowed to go on and on.  I beg to see the logic in knowingly and deliberately destroying people's lives under the guise of treating an illness.  Come to think of it, use of Hg in medicine is still destroying lives only now, unlike back in Louisa May Alcott's day, medical authorities are staunchly denying that it's the mercury that's the culprit.   See what we're up against?
Betsy