“ No, elemental fluorine has commanded respect since well before anyone managed to isolate it, a process that took a good fifty years to work out in the 1800s. (The list of people who were blown up or poisoned while trying to do so is impressive).”
The link intrigued me to click but unfortunately it 404ed. That led me to hunt down the list, and I found this snippet on an Royal Society of Chemistry page [0]:
“Sir Humphry Davy, Louis-Joseph Gay Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thenard all suffered intensely from the effects of inhaling hydrogen fluoride. Davy suffered injury to his eyes and fingernails. George Knox and his brother, Thomas Knox, both suffered from hydrofluoric acid poisoning. Thomas Knox nearly died. Paul Louyet and Jerome Nickles died during their investigations, presumably due to the effects of inhaling HF.”
The link intrigued me to click but unfortunately it 404ed. That led me to hunt down the list, and I found this snippet on an Royal Society of Chemistry page [0]:
“Sir Humphry Davy, Louis-Joseph Gay Lussac and Louis-Jacques Thenard all suffered intensely from the effects of inhaling hydrogen fluoride. Davy suffered injury to his eyes and fingernails. George Knox and his brother, Thomas Knox, both suffered from hydrofluoric acid poisoning. Thomas Knox nearly died. Paul Louyet and Jerome Nickles died during their investigations, presumably due to the effects of inhaling HF.”
[0]: https://edu.rsc.org/feature/the-discovery-of-fluorine/202024...