Interesting about the silver study, and agree about quacks.
"J. R. McNeill, an environmental historian, opined that Midgley "had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth's history."
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/01/yep-gasoline-l...
Several reasons:
1. Tomatoes have a high acidity, but many other foods (I mean, wine, for crying out loud! From ubiquitous pewter glasses!) would have had a higher acidity. Vinegar was commonly used in a variety of dishes.
2. Lead poisoning is not usually a sudden event that causes you to say "My god! Must have been the tomatoes!" If there even was a connection, it would have taken a large scale analysis that would have more strongly identified that "people who eat off of pewter tend to get these symptoms." After all, it wasn't just the wealthy eating tomatoes. It just makes no sense that they could have linked the two, especially after all of the incredibly blatant health hazards that hadn't been linked together.
3. Tomatoes are clearly a member of the nightshade family, and this was known in the 1700's. Although lots of great things come from the family (chili peppers, tobacco!) they're often not things to mess with, and might kill you. Potatoes also had a similarly bad reputation because of this. An over-cautious biologist and a little misinformation (or perhaps an early variety of tomato with too much solanine or something nasty in its leaves) seems a lot more likely than "lead poisoning"
4. The source that was linked to for this "fact" is a book on growing Heirloom tomatoes that has nothing to back this up at all, and is far from a "scholarly resource" Seems like a lot of irresponsible reporting.
By that, I'm guessing you mean in the periodic table. Been a while since I looked at that, should check it out again out of interest.
The University of Nottingham's School of Chemistry has some great, brief videos on various elements if you're ever interested: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtESv1e7ntJaLJYKIO1FoYw
Turns out that non-ionic silver at concentrations of 10 to 30 ppm by weight in otherwise pure water of neutral pH will kill germs quite remarkably. Without the risk of argyria to any degree upon consuming at least a pint a day with regular sun exposure in addition.
As has been known for years, the depicted politician is suffering from consumption of an overdose of silver in general, likely orders of magnitude beyond the level needed for germkilling, and also likely to have been in ionic form. One big slug of poorly-crafted material created according to any number of questionable procedures could be enough to cause this type of permanent discoloration.
Probably not the kind of thing to try at home.
Although it is sometimes suspected that overdoses of ionic silver occurred often enough when cooking or serving acidic foods in sterling kitchenware over the centuries to royalty, that the term "bluebloods" was coined.
Also, there is some possibility the blueness used to represent some dieties in India gives a good idea of what a prototype royal figure might have looked like if too much silver was consumed intentionally or not.
OTOH, a true colloid crafted after decades of professional silver electrochemistry, of known concentration as measured by state-of-the-art laboratory techniques, can be considered almost like a completely different animal.
If I ever meet anyone with the guts to take it to clinical trials, I'll gladly supply the material.
All it takes is one physician single-handedly at the least, as long as nobody is in a hurry, it could be done in spare time like the process was invented, no deadlines. Simply the confidence to know you can accomplish what others do not dream of doing on their own.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vark
Silver too, according to the above page.
Edit: I may be dead wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organogold_chemistry
Gold goes out from the body unchanged from how it went in.
It gives a person a "gray/purple" skin color that makes them look dead. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argyria
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervitaminosis_A [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_intoxication
edit: I should also note (since bringing up families of elements) that - supporting your anecdote - silver has known and studied antimicrobial properties (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16766878). Sadly it has been coopted by quacks, so there's also a lot of misinformation out there about it, too.