THE "SPECIFIC TREATMENT' 

 OF DISEASE 



By GEORGE H. F. NUTTALL, F.R.S., 



Quick Professor of Biology in the University 

 of Cambridge. 



Until recently medical men employed but few 

 remedies which exerted a marked curative effect 

 on particular infective diseases. Mercury is the 

 drug which has been longest used as a "specific" 

 remedy in the treatment of "specific disease," 

 which is a name frequently applied by medical 

 men to syphilis. This disease is an ancient scourge 

 of the human race and its treatment by mercury 

 dates far back into the past, iodide of potash 

 having only in more recent times been added to 

 the armamentarium of physicians who used it 

 especially in the later stages of the malady. A 

 second specific remedy is quinine, now universally 

 used in the treatment of malaria. This drug is 

 derived from cinchona bark which had long been 

 in use by the natives of Peru before its introduction 

 into Europe in the iyth century. 



How it was discovered that mercury and cin- 

 chona bark exerted their particular curative effects 



