A solution of iodide of iron was first employed in medicine in this country by Dr. A. T. Thomson some time in the ’30’s of the nineteenth century. It was introduced into the London and Edinburgh Pharmacopœias in the form of a solid salt, and in the latter also in the form of a solution. Neither of those preparations could be preserved from decomposition, and the first suggestion of a syrup appears to have been made in Buchner’s Repertorium in 1839, and soon after by other experimenters. Dr. Thomson gave a formula for a syrup of iodide of iron to one of the earliest meetings of the Pharmaceutical Society in 1841, reported in the first volume of the _Pharm. Jnl._ LEAD. Lead is one of the ancient metals and was associated in classical writings with Saturn. The lead compounds used by the ancients in medicine were white lead or ceruse (carbonate and hydrate), and litharge (oxide). Ceruse is supposed to owe its name to cera, and to mean waxy; litharge is from Greek, and means silver stone; it was regarded as the scum of silver. Red lead or minium was also used to some extent in the form of an ointment. Although not much used now as a medicine for internal administration, lead in various forms has been tried and advocated by doctors, usually as a sedative. The Pil. Plumbi c. Opio is what remains in our Pharmacopœia of these recommendations. Galen mentions lead as a remedy in leprosy and plague, and little bullets of lead were at one time given in cases of twisted bowels. The sedative property of lead salts has caused them to be prescribed for neuralgia, hysteria, and convulsive coughs; Goulard, recognising the anticatarrhal and astringent effects of the acetate, recommended it in urethritis; and on the theory that lead poisoning and phthisis were incompatible French practitioners at one time hoped to find in lead a remedy for tuberculosis.