_Mercurius corrosivus nitrosus._ * _Ward’s white drop._ _Mercurius corrosivus muriaticus._ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAP. V. _Of the Mercurial Preparations intended to act immediately on the Parts affected with Lues Venerea._ EVERY preparation of mercury may perhaps, under proper management, be successfully employed in the cure of the venereal disease. But by much the greatest number of these preparations neither are, nor ever have been, in common use for that purpose. To treat, at any considerable length, of all that are at present in use, would lead to prolixity and repetition. A few observations on those which, from their being most successful, are at present most frequently employed, will afford sufficient data for determining the choice of one preparation in preference to another. The different modes in which mercury has been exhibited have very universally been reduced to two general heads, and referred either to its employment externally or internally. This division, however, is not without some degree of inaccuracy. Mercury, when taken internally, is very universally thrown into the system in general, without any particular attention to the affected part. When it is used externally, it is for the most part meant to act immediately on the diseased part. This, however, is not always the case; and sometimes the only thing intended by external application is its introduction into the system. But, when this is the case, its external employment is on precisely the same footing with its internal use. The proper distinction, then, depends not so much upon its being used either externally, or taken by the mouth, as upon the mode in which it is meant to act. Mercury, in every case, is intended either to act immediately upon the affected part, or to enter the circulating system. If there be any truth in what has been said with regard to the action of mercury, the manner in which, in each of these ways, it comes to produce a cure, can readily be conceived, and is, at bottom, very similar. But, at the same time, these different modes of using the medicine are, in some measure, fitted for different purposes; and the influence which is exerted in the one way demands attention, which is not always requisite in the other. These methods of using mercury, then, may, with greater advantage, be considered separately than together. And what would claim consideration, in the first place, are those modes of application, in which the mercury is intended to act immediately upon the affected part.