From what has been said, the reader will readily perceive, why a sudden salivation is often the effect of taking cold under the operation of mercury. We have no means of immediately checking a salivation. Discontinuing the use of the mercury, employing gentle laxatives, and avoiding every thing which tends to irritate the inflamed surface of the mouth and fauces will lessen the inflammation and discharge, and by degrees remove them. When the mercury instead of falling on the glands of the mouth and fauces, is thrown on the bowels in consequence of taking cold, it is more in our power to regulate and restrain the discharge. For the most part this affection of the bowels is a mere diarrhœa. The griping pains which sometimes attend it seem to arise from the copious secretion from the intestines washing off the mucus which is the natural defence against the irritation of their contents. When this affection is allowed to continue, and no care is taken to defend the bowels, dysenteric symptoms sometimes shew themselves; these are most frequently the consequence of mercury taken internally, as I shall presently have occasion more particularly to observe. This affection of the bowels may be induced in another way. It will have nearly the same effect, whether the fluid, which should pass by the skin is thrown on the bowels in consequence of the action of the skin being checked by taking cold, or in consequence of this fluid being directed to the bowels by any cause of irritation applied to their surface. Hence it is, that indigestible and irritating food will often produce such a change in the distribution of the fluids, that the increased secretion by the skin or salivary glands, occasioned by the mercury, shall be exchanged for that by the bowels. When the mercury is thrown on the kidneys it passes off, as by the skin, without uneasiness of any kind; and as in this case also, the only bad consequences are, that the mercury, instead of acting on the system for the cure of the disease for which it is given, is drained from the body, and the patient is sometimes weakened by the increased discharge. Mercury may, to a certain degree, be diverted from the kidneys by the use of certain astringent medicines. Those which direct it to the skin, by increasing the action of this organ, will divert it from the kidneys; but by this we should lose, not gain, as it is thrown off by the former more rapidly than by the latter. In many cases the action of mercury on the kidneys is salutary, and our aim is as much as possible, by the use of diuretic medicines, to direct it to this channel; for it happens with respect to the kidneys, as with respect to the bowels, that whatever tends to irritate and increase the discharge from them, solicits the mercury to them. It is partly in this way that it often proves a cure in various species of dropsy. * * * * *