Memvir upon Animal Fat. 109 
ings of old ointment, and scarcely contained any traces of 
mercury, indicated by a hydrosulphuret. : 
According to these data it would be natural to think that 
the acid nitrate of mercury had undergone a change, and 
one would think that it had passed to the state of a yellow 
nitrate or nitrous turbith, which is little soluble in water. 
I kept ointment a long time in fusion, but I could not 
separate the nitrous turbith from it; the latter, therefore, is 
not merely disseminated in the ointment, but must be inti- ° 
mately united with and dissolved in it. I convinced myself 
of the possibility of the solution of turbith in oxygenated 
fat, by heating these two matters together. -T decanted the 
liquid clear ; it perfectly imitated the citrine ointment, and 
contained a very great quantity of mercury. 
As to the use of this production, the effects of which, 
_ some physicians allege, are analogous to pomatum simply 
A by the nitric acid, I do not allow myself to give 
any opinioh on the subject; it is probable, however, that a 
substance which holds mercury in true combination will 
produce different effects from -one which does not contain 
any at all. , 
In place of the acid nitrate employed above, I took neutral 
nitrate at the s2nimum. 
When reduced to fine powder, I projected it upon heated 
fat: bubbles were immediately produced, and the white pew- 
der of the nitrate was soon converted into yellow powder. 
The fat acquired a solid consistency ; it contained mercury 
in solution. 
The neutral nitrate is therefore decomposed by hogs’ lard. 
It is not that the mercury here yields its oxygen because it 
is already in it at the minimum ; but it is the nitric acid 
which abandons in part the oxidated mercury and acts upon 
the fat where it is decomposed; from which results the yel- 
low nitrate of mercury, which contains little nitric acid *. 
Lexamined several other metallic salts with fat, such as 
% Nitrous turbith contains, according to the Portuguese chemists Braam- 
comp und Oliva, 12 per cent. of nitric acid. (See their analytical treatment 
of the mercurial substances by the phosphorous acid in the Annales de Chimie, 
No. 161.) 
the 
