course, and others to the detection of mercury by a careful chemical analysis in the fluids and solids during life or after death.
Many stories are related by the older authors of the discharge of running quicksilver from the living body during a mercurial course. Some of the most authentic of them have been collected by Zeller. In his list of cases it is stated that Schenkius met with an instance of the discharge of a spoonful of quicksilver by vomiting; that Rhodius twice remarked quicksilver pass with the urine; and that Hochstetter once saw it exhaled with the sweat.[1] Fallopius likewise states, that in people who had used mercurial inunction for three years, and who had the bones of the leg laid bare by suppurating nodes, he had seen quicksilver collected in globules on the tibia; and he speaks of its being the practice in his day to draw the mercury from the body, when overloaded with it, by successively amalgamating a bit of gold in the mouth and heating the amalgam to expel the mercury.[2] With regard to these statements of the older authors it may be observed that, although their singularity renders them questionable, they ought not to be rejected at once, as some have done, merely because corresponding facts have not been witnessed in modern times; for no one can now-a-days have such opportunities for observation as were enjoyed by Fallopius and his contemporaries. The experiment of amalgamating gold in the mouth of a person under a course of mercury has always failed in modern times. But who can now have an opportunity of making the experiment during a mercurial course of three years? Besides, the statements quoted above are not all destitute of modern confirmation. Thus Fourcroy has noticed the case of a gilder attacked with an eruption of little boils, in each of which was contained a globule of quicksilver. Bruckmann mentions the case of a lady who subsequently to a course of mercury remarked after a dance many small black stains on her breast, and minute globules of quicksilver in the folds of her shift.[3] And Dr. Jourda has described in a late French periodical a case where fluid mercury was passed by the urine. The last fact appears satisfactory in all its circumstances. A patient had been taking corrosive sublimate for a month in the dose of a grain, besides using for the first sixteen days a gargle containing metallic mercury finely divided. Towards the close of the month he observed on the sill of the window, on which he used to turn up his chamber-pot after using it, many little globules of mercury, amounting in all to four grains. Dr. Jourda on learning this observation of his patient collected some of the urine with care, and after it had stood some time found in it a black, powdery sediment, which, when separated and dried, formed little globules of mercury.[4]
The next class of facts in favour of the entrance of mercury into
