_General Symptoms._--As soon as the acid is swallowed, the patient complains of intense burning pain in the mouth, throat, and stomach, the pupils are contracted, the conjunctiva insensible to touch, the skin cold and clammy, the temperature rapidly falls, and the pulse becomes weaker and weaker, till it is almost imperceptible. The breathing is laboured, and, as the fatal issue approaches, becomes stertorous; vomiting of frothy mucus occurs in some cases. The invasion of the symptoms is most rapid, and many of the patients have been in an insensible condition when found. The above symptoms have even supervened when the strong acid has been used for dressing wounds. Dr. J. Hamilton records a case where the acid was used as an application to a wound four inches long, in a child four and a half years of age. Direct contact of the acid with the wound was prevented. About an hour after the dressing was applied he saw the patient, who was then supposed to be suffering from the effects of chloroform used during the operation on the child‘s arm. She was suffering from symptoms like those before described. On removing the dressing, some of the carbolic acid, it was found, had melted and run into the wound, and to this Dr. Hamilton attributed the symptoms. The child ultimately died. (See _British Medical Journal_, 1873, vol. i. p. 226.) The urine and fæces, when passed, are of a dark colour, and it has been frequently noticed that the urine passed by the assistants in surgical hospitals, who, under the antiseptic methods adopted, are constantly washing their hands in solutions of carbolic acid, is of an olive-green colour. This shows that absorption takes place readily through the skin. Bilroth, in his work on _Clinical Surgery_, gives several instances of absorption in this way. Nephritis with casts in the urine may occur. The hypodermic administration of carbolic acid, twelve to twenty-four grains in a day, has failed in five cases under my observation to be followed by carboluria.