AND OF MERCURY. 977 



employ a medicine that does so by impairing the 

 vital properties of the blood, and by generating 

 more or less fever? Is not caloric the most 

 certain, agreeable, and salutary of all the sudo- 

 rifics and diaphoretics, when employed externally 

 and internally ? Does it not increase the vigour 

 of the circulation through the lungs when torpid, 

 and thus improve the vital properties of the blood? 

 Is it not the agent on which all the phenomena 

 of life and health depend ? Why then resort to 

 the use of a drug, the obvious tendency of which 

 is to diminish all the powers of life, except when 

 it is necessary to relieve the stomach from an 

 accumulation of morbid or indigestible matter ? 



Perhaps there is no article in the Materia 

 Medica that has been more extensively employed 

 than the various preparations of mercury, which, 

 there is reason to believe, has destroyed more 

 constitutions than even malaria ; for, although the 

 mode of its operation is still involved in mystery, 

 it is given in almost every form of disease. It 

 has long been regarded as a specific remedy in 

 syphilis; but, fortunately for mankind, physi- 

 cians are now beginning to learn that this disease 

 may be cured without mercury ; and that it rarely 

 proves dangerous, except when aggravated by the 

 abuse of that mineral, to which the worst forms of 

 what has been called secondary syphilis are now 

 justly ascribed. 



It was the opinion of John Hunter, that mer- 



