MDMD(4): Equation, p. 134

[Matthew P Wiener]

Andrew Dinn writes:

>Newton too was somewhat mad in his later years, thanks to liberal
>doses of mercury taken as a cure against teh venereal disease he
>imagined he had caught from consorting with prostitutes in his
>youth.

So far as anyone knows, Newton lived and died a virgin.  The mercury
poisoning he is believed to have suffered from would have been from
his numerous alchemical experiments.

>       From the little I have read about his life this cosmological
>obsession was at the core of his insanity.

Read a little bit more.  His insanity took the form of very strange
moods and liberal amounts of paranoia.  Having a cosmic vision in
itself, derived from his own astounding scientific successes, is
nowhere close to insanity.
--
-Matthew P Wiener (weemba at sagi.wistar.upenn.edu)