It took a looooong, long while, but I finally found that I misinterpreted the effects.

It damages health for a period of time. It will do X damage for Y seconds. I originally thought that X damage happened every second, for Y seconds. I have since found that it does X damage for Y seconds and at the end of that time, the damage done is recovered.

With some upper level Alchemy, I created some of these to use with my bow. 25 damage over 10 seconds (250 damage total) would kill a lot of opponents and cripple many others. It took about 4 or 5 uses to find my error.

Am I the only silly person that thought this?