Silvery, shiny, and the only metal that's liquid at room temperature, Mercury is a mesmerizing element. But despite its entrancing nature, you don't want to inject it into your body. And yet, according to a new case report in BMC Research Notes, that's exactly what a 15-year-old Sri Lankan girl did.

Had the girl known that Mercury is toxic, inhibiting key enzymes that counteract oxidative damage and in turn producing a host of concerning symptoms eventually resulting in death, she probably wouldn't have injected both of her forearms with roughly 2 milliliters of the element. Alas, her unfortunate action was inspired by a movie giving the impression that injecting liquid metal can produce superhuman strength. As she found out, it doesn't.

Thankfully, the girl is alive, well, and almost entirely unscathed by the incident. A week after her ill-advised experiment, her parents brought her to the National Hospital of Sri Lanka with a 3-day history of high fever and a conspicuous rash. These symptoms might have mystified the attending physicians, but luckily, the girl wisely revealed her mercurial exploits of seven days past. A quick x-ray (shown above) confirmed her story, and tests placed her blood mercury levels at fifty times normal levels! Otherwise, she was in good health.

Doctors administered a chelation agent called dimercaprol to expunge the elemental mercury from her bloodstream. The chemical reacts with mercury and coverts it to a compound which can be excreted by the body. They also operated on the girl's forearms to manually remove some of the larger deposits of metal that had accumulated in her muscles, which can be clearly seen in the image below (apologies to the squeamish).

The girl stole the mercury from her science enthusiast father, who kept a small stash for conducting the odd experiment. Thankfully, elemental mercury is not as acutely dangerous as its compounds, such as methyl mercury or mercuric chloride. Still, if the girl had not received treatment when she did, she may have suffered permanent damage to her central nervous system, or even death.

Source: Thanuja Nilushi Priyangika et al. "A rare case of self-injection of elemental mercury." BMC Res Notes (2016) 9:189 DOI: 10.1186/s13104-016-1992-8