This is available commercially as Heloxy 505.The production of lithium grease consumes a significant amount of castor oil. Hydrogenation and saponification of castor oil yields 12-hydroxystearic acid, which is then reacted with lithium hydroxide or lithium carbonate to give high-performance lubricant grease.Since it has a relatively high dielectric constant (4.7), highly refined and dried castor oil is sometimes used as a dielectric fluid within high-performance, high-voltage capacitors. Lubrication
Vegetable oils such as castor oil are typically unattractive alternatives to petroleum-derived lubricants because of their poor oxidative stability. Castor oil has better low-temperature viscosity properties and high-temperature lubrication than most vegetable oils, making it useful as a lubricant in jet, diesel, and racing engines. The viscosity of castor oil at 10 °C is 2,420 centipoise, but it tends to form gums in a short time, so its usefulness is limited to engines that are regularly rebuilt, such as racing engines. Lubricant company Castrol took its name from castor oil. Castor oil has been suggested as a lubricant for bicycle pumps because it does not degrade natural rubber seals. Early aviation and aeromodelling
Castor oil was the preferred lubricant for rotary engines, such as the Gnome engine after that engines widespread adoption for aviation in Europe in 1909.
Soldiers who deserted their post could be executed even if they had a medical excuse, but officers who had neurasthenia were not executed. Current opinion
This concept remained popular well into the 20th century, eventually coming to be seen as a behavioural rather than physical condition, with a diagnosis that excluded postviral syndromes. Neurasthenia has largely been abandoned as a medical diagnosis. The ICD-10 system of the World Health Organization categorizes neurasthenia under "F48 - Other neurotic disorders".One modern opinion of neurasthenia is that it was actually dysautonomia, an "imbalance" of the autonomic nervous system.Barbara Ehrenreich, restating Jamess view, considers that neurasthenia was caused by the Calvinist gloom, and it was helped by the New Thought, through replacing the "puritanical demand for perpetual effort and self-examination to the point of self-loathing" with a more hopeful faith. In Asia
The medical term neurasthenia is translated as Chinese shenjing shuairuo (simplified Chinese: 神经衰弱; traditional Chinese: 神經衰弱; pinyin: shénjīng shuāiruò; Cantonese Yale: sàhngīng sēuiyeuhk) or Japanese shinkei-suijaku (神経衰弱), both of which also translate the common term nervous breakdown. This loanword combines shenjing (神經) or shinkei (神経)  "nerve(s); nervous" and shuairuo or suijaku (衰弱) "weakness; feebleness; debility; asthenia". Despite being omitted by the American Psychiatric Associations DSM in 1980, neurasthenia is listed in an appendix as the culture-bound syndrome shenjing shuairuo as well as appearing in the ICD-10. The condition is thought to persist in Asia as a culturally acceptable diagnosis that avoids the social stigma of a diagnosis of mental disorder.