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one night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury

one night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury proverb: a single sexual encounter can lead to a lifetime of disease and treatment.

Proverb

one night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury

  1. A single sexual encounter can lead to a lifetime of disease and treatment.
    • An eminent physiologist, in the bad old days when Salvarsan and certain other Hg compounds were the only known remedy for venereal diseases, is said to have warned his students that 'One night with Venus may mean a lifetime with Mercury'.[1976, Jenifer M. Baker, Marine ecology and oil pollution, page 13
    • Vincent had opted for the mercury treatment, while Theo, afraid of the time involved ("One night with Venus, a lifetime with mercury')...[1995, Claire Cooperstein, Johanna: A Novel of the Van Gogh Family, page 112

Origin of one night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury

From the use of mercury compounds in the treatment of venereal diseases before the discovery of antibiotics.

Questions about one night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury

What does one night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury mean?
One night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury means a single sexual encounter can lead to a lifetime of disease and treatment.
What part of speech is one night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury?
One night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury is a proverb.

Words near one night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury in the dictionary

  1. one must give to get
  2. one nail drives out another
  3. one nation
  4. one nationer
  5. one nationers
  6. one night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury
  7. one ninth
  8. one o'clock
  9. one of a kind
  10. one of a kinds
  11. one of His Majesty's bad bargains

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: one night with Venus, a lifetime with Mercury (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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