Monkey Blood

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hello, this is William calling from Fort Worth, Texas. How are y’all today?

Doing well, William. What’s going on?

Excellent. Thank you. What can we do for you?

I guess these kids will never know what this monkey blood was.

It’s always called monkey blood, but being a medical historian, they’re calling it mercuricome is fine, but monkey blood, why monkey blood?

If they put it on your wound, oh, it’s not going to sting, they blow on it, it stings worse.

-huh.

Wait, mercuricome, the red stuff, right?

Right.

It’s a slang term for it.

People love to goof around, and they have whimsy and caprice, and sometimes they’re guided by that more than they are common sense and logic.

Right.

Yeah, but not everybody calls it that.

I sure never heard that term growing up.

No, you know what’s funny about that, William, is monkey blood to refer to mercurochrome, which is the antiseptic that you might have put on your wounds back in the day.

It also actually refers sometimes to iodine or methylate or thimerosal, all four of those at different times.

I guess methylate and thimerosal are the same thing.

Well, and it sounds like the kind of thing that a parent would say to get a kid to stop crying about a skinned knee.

Oh, do you want some monkey blood? You know, completely divert their attention from the fact that they’re…

And the kid’s like, what are you putting on me?

Well, as my grandmother was always, if you picture the understanding of Granny from Beverly Hillbillies, she never wanted to go to the doctor.

She’d rather pull something out of the garden or use natural herbs and all these natural cures.

And in the back of my mind, it’s no wonder why they lived to be 100.

They lived on this stuff, you know?

There are other things that have been called monkey blood besides mercurochrome, including red wine in the British Navy.

And in the U.K., raspberry or strawberry topping for your ice cream because, you know, this red liquid you pour on.

And there’s even, I’ve seen a few uses of, there’s this waterproof chemical sealant that is red.

Use it on like boats and concrete.

That’s also sometimes called monkey blood.

Interesting.

That’s a whole different shift of this, putting this wound on there.

Oh, you’re seeing your knee? Come over here. Give me some monkey blood.

No, no, no. That’s not.

Let’s go to the saying no.

One more thing before we go, William.

It’s also in Spanish.

Some Spanish speakers, not only in Texas, but in Mexico and a few other places, also call it sangre de mono or sangre de chango, which is literally monkey’s blood.

Really? Wow.

I knew it was in the South because everybody talks of it, but the deal is I didn’t know it stretched that far.

Yeah, yeah. That’s a complicated history, right?

I keep wondering if we got it from the Spanish speakers or if they got it from us or how that goes.

We’ll never know, maybe.

William, thank you so much for your call.

Really appreciate it, man.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Y’all be safe over there.

Okay, take care.

Take care.

Bye.

I remember being shocked when a friend of mine moved from Alabama to Kentucky and used that stuff because I always used Bactine.

Yeah, and all of a sudden she was showing up with these big pink stains on her skin where she had cuts and scrapes.

The kind of a, the Mercurichrome mark is kind of a badge of honor.

You’ve got a wound.

Kind of showing it off.

At least when I was a kid, I kind of, it was like wearing the band-aid.

I felt like I kept that band-aid on as long as possible.

And maybe the Mercuricrome is the same story.

You leave it on as long as possible.

So everyone will ask you about your injury.

Yeah, a conversation piece.

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