THERAPEUTIC STUDIES ON IONS 9 



after the remedy had been used for months. While a 

 great similarity, in part even an identity, seems to exist 

 between the iodides and the sulphocyanates, the latter 

 do not possess the specific effect upon the thyroid gland. 

 The use of the drug even for months does not affect a 

 parenchymatous goitre. This fact might well at times 

 prove of therapeutic advantage. 



Therapeutics still continues to count the salts among 

 the " alterants" and the " resolvents. " Both of these 

 properties of " changing the course of a disease" and 

 " bringing about a resolution" the sulphocyanate ions 

 possess in rich part, as shown by our own observations. 

 From the versatility and intensity of their action we are 

 presumably correct in putting them beside the iodide ions. 



I do not wish to bring this paper to a close without 

 adding a few general remarks on the principle which 

 prompted it. 



This leads, first of all, to a conception of the way in 

 which the salts act upon the organism, which, though 

 still hypothetical, encounters at present nothing which 

 speaks against it. Just as a large group, of non-ionized 

 narcotics bear an intimate relation, according to H. 

 MEYER'S and OVERTON'S beautiful discoveries, to the 

 lipoids of the cell, the ionized compounds might find 

 their point of attack in the protein constituents of the 

 protoplasm. A difference in the distribution, or a re- 

 placement of the normal ions of the cell, would be con- 

 nected with changes in the state of the colloids and con- 

 sequently also changes in function. If the application 

 of our principle extends, on the one hand, almost to the 

 chain of psychophysical processes, it has its limitations, 



