The Iodide of Iron is a most useful medicine for scrofulous children, who commonly suffer under Anæmia, as it combines a Chalybeate with an Antiscrofulic action. Bromine and Chlorine resemble Iodine in their Antiscrofulic effects. It is said that Scrofula and Consumption are unknown among the workmen in bleaching factories, where Chlorine is being constantly inhaled. Thus it has been strongly recommended that diluted Chlorine should be constantly inhaled by consumptive patients. It is probable that part of the efficacy of sea-side air and sea-voyages in scrofulous cases may be due to the free Chlorine which is given off in small quantities from the salt water of the ocean. The powers of Iodine and Bromine are shared by their compounds; and probably Chlorine is no exception to this rule. The bad consequences which follow the omission of common salt from the food, are sufficient to show that this substance has a beneficial action on the blood. Probably large doses of this article of diet would be found advantageous in Scrofulous disorders. It is easy to recognise such an action as that of Iodine in Scrofula, but it is almost impossible to invent a satisfactory explanation for it. Potash, free or carbonated, is another remedy of considerable importance in Scrofulous diseases. It is possibly one of those Catalytics which exert a simple chemical influence. It may act by holding in solution fibrinous and fatty matters, and preventing their abnormal deposit in a crude form in the shape of tubercular matter. It may also be found useful in cases of Syphilis, when aggravated by a previously existing strumous tendency, and where a course of Mercury cannot be safely prescribed. Small doses of Mercury, as an alterative, are often efficacious in scrofulous constitutions. They appear to act simply by stimulating the torpid liver to a performance of its proper function.[40] (_Vide_ page 144.) Potash has been used as a prophylactic against Consumption. The efficacy of Cod Oil in this disease has been explained by some as depending on the Iodine which it contains in small quantities. I do not consider this explanation to be the correct one. (_Vide Cod Oil, in Chap. IV._) ORD. IV. ANTIARTHRITICS. In this order are included some blood-medicines which exert a direct influence over certain disorders which depend on some fault in the complicated processes of assimilation and nutrition. The chief of these diseases are, Diabetes; Oxaluria; Lithic deposit in the urine; and the true Arthritic disorders, _i.e._, Gout and Rheumatism. Most of those blood diseases which cannot be clearly traced to the introduction of a poison from without may be arranged under this head, and appear to be curable by the same set of remedial agents. There are certain processes always going on in the blood, whose continuance in the right direction is essential to health. When one of these processes is disturbed, it does not generally cease, but it goes on then in a wrong direction.