Other Cures.--Fontana, toward the end of the eighteenth century, was sure that he had discovered in caustic potash an absolute specific for snake poisoning. He had had a series of cases, and felt that he had actually observed this substance following the snake poison into the system and neutralizing it. Its active effect on the external tissues proved eminently suggestive for {33} the patient and good results followed. We have had many specifics since, and yet we are not quite sure how much any of them avail unless recent biological remedies prove lasting in their effects and are really of therapeutic efficiency. Antidotes and Suggestion.--For many other poisons beside snake venom there have been announced supposed antidotes of all kinds. The literature of the antidotes used for opium is extremely interesting and even in recent times contains many disillusions. Twenty years ago our medical journals contained any number of cases in which a solution of potassium permanganate seemed to have proved effective in neutralizing not only opium itself but its alkaloids and derivatives. Not only was it efficacious, then, if taken while the opium was still in the stomach but, just as with Fontana's caustic potash and the snake venom, it followed the opium into the tissues and at least blunted its action. Numbers of cases were reported in which potassium permanganate was supposed to have had this desirable effect. The effect of alcohol in neutralizing carbolic acid attracted as much attention as did potassium permanganate for opium. Here there was no doubt that alcohol immediately after the external application of carbolic acid did prevent its corrosive action. It was supposed to do the same thing in the stomach and even, as some enthusiastic observers thought, followed the carbolic acid into the tissues. Here once more the claim is not proven and it is evident that the influence on patients' minds when small doses of carbolic acid were taken, was the real therapeutic factor at work.