In laying down the general lines of treatment for both lead poisoning and lead absorption, it is essential in the first place to distinguish carefully between the two states; for although lead absorption may gradually drift into definite lead intoxication and lead poisoning, with all the classical symptoms associated with the saturnine cachexia, a large number of cases, particularly those in industrial processes, do not and should not progress beyond the early symptoms of lead absorption. The treatment, therefore, will depend in the first place on whether the case be one so constantly met with in industrial processes, where generalized symptoms of lead absorption are manifest without any definite and disabling symptoms traceable and sufficiently pronounced to enable a diagnosis of lead poisoning to be made. The facts given in the chapter on Pathology, on the methods of entrance of lead, on the toxic manifestations, and the blood-changes, and, above all, the facts relating to microscopical hæmorrhages and other profound changes in the bloodvessels, point clearly to the lines along which the general treatment for amelioration, prevention, or cure of poisoning should be undertaken. The treatment of the so-called “presaturnine state,” or what is preferably termed the “state of lead absorption,” is one that the appointed surgeon or certifying surgeon in lead factories or other processes in which lead is manufactured or used, is constantly called upon to treat. Lead poisoning is a definite entity as a disabling disease, whereas lead absorption, although the prodromal stage of such disease, cannot be defined as actual lead poisoning, as in many instances persons may show signs of continued lead absorption, but their powers of elimination can be maintained at such a level that the ratio of absorption to elimination remains in equilibrium. With the preventive treatment of lead poisoning we have dealt in another place (see p. 199). What is particularly required here is the medicinal treatment, which may be helpful in preventing lead absorption passing on to definite lead poisoning.