Chinese Emperor who died of lead poisoning trying to be immortal?

The Emperor's name was QIn Shi Huang (pronounced chin- she- wang). In his younger years, he was the first emperor to unify all of China, but as he got older, he became completely obsessed with become immortal. He was extremely paranoid of dying. He slept in a different room ever night, to confuse anyone who would try to kill him in his sleep, He spent years sending people to search for the legendary "elixir of life", which would keep him alive forever.

While he was visiting Eastern China, his advisers and scientists told him that eating mercury tablets (it wasn't lead, it was mercury), he would live forever. Mercury is very poisonous, and corrosive, it can even melt through gold. However when scientists in ancient China poured mercury on gold, they thought the mercury was absorbing the gold. Their theory was, that if mercury could even absorb gold, maybe it could absorb life, and keep the emperor alive forever.

It's pretty ironic that searching for eternal life eventually killed him.

Of course not. If we can get a war going with China, we don't have to pay off our debts to them, and Bush can declare an emergency and stay in office. The fact that the Federal agencies that used to check such things as poisons on imported food and goods have been gutted so more money can go to war profiteers just might have something to do with it. The Chinese are just being good capitalists, cutting production costs to raise profits. The same thing is done here. It is free enterprise without regulation. Some day take a look at the Constitution and see how many times capitalism and unregulated enterprise are mentioned.

Im pretty sure it was mercury they had him ingest. His name is Shih Huangdi (or Qin Shih Huangdi). He was the founder of the Qin(Chin) dynasty. Another interesting thing about him and mercury is that supposedly in his mausoleum, there are rivers of mercury flowing around his tomb, though it has not been excavated so no one really knows for sure.

His name was QIn Shi Huang, I think. The only one I can think of historically. But I belive He ingested mercury tablets. So I don't know if this helps..

Valuable topic, just what I was looking for.

wimp