302 AN ADDRESS ON CORROSIVE SUBLIMATE 



all these three wools remain perfectly pure, so far as the sense of smell can 

 detect, to the present time. The bottles are before you, and even in that con- 

 taining the I per cent, wool, you will find nothing but a smell, something between 

 that of mortar and the inner bark of some trees, which is the immediate effect 

 of the action of corrosive sublimate upon the serum. The serum that had 

 come through the dressing equally resisted the inoculation. By means of a 

 process of testing with which I will not now trouble the Society, I could ascertain 

 pretty exactly the proportion of corrosive sublimate present in these liquids 

 that had thus come through. The corrosive sublimate made the liquids turbid 

 in the case of the wool with stronger proportions ; but, in the case of the i per 

 cent., it had not rendered the serum turbid, and therefore I was able, without 

 the use of the microscope, to judge by the existing transparency, and also by 

 the presence or absence of scum on the surface, whether any organisms did or 

 did not develop ; and none whatever occurred. As regards the strongest wool, 

 the liquid which came through contained about one part of corrosive sublimate 

 to i6o parts of the fluid. I tasted this, and found it had the peculiar metallic 

 nauseous taste of corrosive sublimate. I also mixed some of it with five parts 

 of milk got from a dairy, and therefore, as we know, containing bacteria of 

 various kinds. Here is the milk, still fluid after the lapse of nearly six weeks, 

 although, when it was mixed with the serum, it was already advancing towards 

 septic changes. The first of those changes, namely, lactic fermentation, has 

 been prevented, otherwise the milk would not have been fluid, as you see it 

 to be. There is not the slightest smell either of the lactic or butyric fermentation, 

 but only that which Pasteur pointed out to occur as the result of oxidation 

 of the fatty matter of milk — a little odour of suet. That is exactly the smell 

 that you have in boiled milk kept for a few weeks in an aseptic state. 



Thus, Mr. President, we had evidence that corrosive sublimate forms, 

 with the serum of the blood, a material, whether we call it a chemical compound 

 or not, which retains the properties of the corrosive sublimate, both as to taste 

 and as to antiseptic virtue. Now it seems to me highly unlikely that both the 

 characteristic taste of corrosive sublimate and the antiseptic virtue would be 

 retained if the corrosive sublimate were decomposed in any way ; and therefore, 

 I venture to think, speaking with all deference to chemists, that we have not here 

 a chemical combination in the ordinary sense, but an association of particles, 

 such as occurs in solution : not an albuminate of mercury, but an albuminate of 

 sublimate, if I may use such an expression ; a loose association of particles of 

 chloride of mercury with albumen. If such be the case, I need hardly point out 

 how important this may be with reference to the surgical uses of corrosive 

 sublimate. The discharges, in passing through a sublimate dressing, may acquire 



\ 



