An inaugural dissertation on mercury : embracing its medical history, curative action, and abuse in certain diseases / by John W. Francis, A.B. Vice-President of the Medical and Surgical Society of the University of New-York.

  • Francis, John W. (John Wakefield), 1789-1861.
Date:
1811
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inaugural dissertation on mercury : embracing its medical history, curative action, and abuse in certain diseases / by John W. Francis, A.B. Vice-President of the Medical and Surgical Society of the University of New-York. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    rated mercury becoming inert, and consequently in- capable of producing disease, can be admitted only as a species of chemical agency upon inorganized materials, and will by no means apply to the organized animate body. The assumption that such an opera- tion takes place in the human system is altogether gratuitous. If, again, the principle just stated were true, the successful treatment of this disease would uniformly depend upon the quantity of mercury ad- ministered. But this would lead to the adoption of a practice at variance with the experience of several very eminent writers, and one which Mr. Bell himself thinks proper to guard against •* and indeed the very small quantity of corrosive sublimate which is neces- sary to effect a cure, renders it almost certain, as re- marked by Dr. Cullen,f that mercury does not cure the disease by being an antidote to the poison. The arguments in support of this theory, derived from the operation of mercury when locally applied, are not to be considered as of any importance, for the disease can be removed by such remedies only as produce a general action upon the whole constitution, the me- dium through which the morbid matter is diffused, and upon which it exerts its destructive influence. Mercury, in the state of an oxide, is one of the most universal stimulants. Its action, though primarily • Bell on the Venereal, vol. 2. p. 259. f Cullen's Mat. Med. vol. 2. p. 254.