8o PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY IN MEDICINE. 



Of primary interest for us is the proof that iodine and 

 sulphocyanate are excreted in the same places in the 

 organism, that sulphocyanates do not pass through the 

 body in even small doses without altering the metabolism, 

 and that a single dose of sulphocyanate, as discovered 

 by MUNK in 1877, still brings about an increased secretion 

 of this substance a week later. As was recognized by 

 even the earliest workers in this field, the excretion of 

 sulphocyanate is decreased when iodine is taken, and 

 completely stopped when iodism is produced. When 

 this condition exists, GROBER found that even concen- 

 trated saliva gives no sulphocyanate reaction. 



We are acquainted, therefore, with isolated facts in 

 the physiology and the pathology of sulphocyanate ex- 

 cretion which indicate that a relationship exists between 

 sulphocyanates and iodides. 



IV. 



The following report on therapeutic experiments with 

 sulphocyanate ions is based upon a rather small amount 

 of material. If we exclude the orientation experiments 

 to determine how much of the substance can be borne 

 and how it is excreted, there are thirty-five cases in all 

 in which careful observations were made and registered, 

 the possibility that other curative agencies were simul- 

 taneously active taken into consideration, and these 

 results controlled as far as possible by omitting the 

 sulphocyanate or using other remedies. Since sodium 

 ions are, as far as we know, the most indifferent of the 

 metallic ions from a pharmacological standpoint, sodium 

 sulphocyanate was employed, and this in the maximal 



