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It has been reported that monks who were writing biblical and/or other religious texts were exposed to toxic mercury which was being released from the ink they were writing with. Evidences were collected from medieval bones from about six different cemeteries.

This study is going to be published in the Journal of Archaeological Science in August. The study also takes care of an undocumented disease called the FOS, which is somewhat like leprosy that can cause skull lesions. In addition, it was also reported that a medicine containing mercury was administered to about 79 percent of the buried individuals suffering from leprosy and about 35 percent of the people suffering from syphilis.

Scientists opine that it was during the preparation and administration of the medicines that contained mercury or while writing letters or while writing texts in prior to 1500 A.D that caused the deaths. Kaare Lund Rasmussen, a scientist from the University of Southern Denmark suspects that it was the ink that led to the poisoning of these monks who were involved in writing the scripts. He revealed to Discover News that it was natural to lick the brush to produce fine lines after all.

Rasmussen claims that no one should still touch or rub the pages written in incunabulum because earlier, cinnabar (a mercury type) was used to provide the bright, rich, pure and red color to ancient scripts.

Scientists claim that the diseased patients who were found buried in the earth were most likely to be administered with the vapor of metallic liquid mercury. So scientists claim that if the monks were little careless in avoiding their proximity to the vapor or during the preparation of the medicines, the mercury vapor could have poisoned them as well.

It is also assumed that other religious factions may have experienced a similar case of mercury poisoning while scripting holy texts. For instance, scientists at the Soreq Nuclear Research Center in Israel and the Israel Museum found that cinnabar appeared on about four fragments of the scrolls from Dead Sea that included verses and passages from the Hebrew Bible.

This Danish study has come out to be very certain in confirming the poisoning of the monks by the ink used by them while writing holy texts in the early medieval period. Bones were drilled to establish the results of mercury causing the poisoning of these monks.