168 ACTION OFTHE VEGETABLE ACIDS ON CALOMEL. 
the nervous force, any more than heat is electricity : the one 
changes into the other in the one case, by the form of the 
integrant molecules of the crystal; and in the other, by the 
structure of the electric organs. . . . The nervous fluid in 
this hypothesis is what we suppose heat, electricity, and 
light to be — namely, a peculiar vibratory motion of ether.” — 
Chambers's Journal , article on Noad's i Manual of Electricity ' 
ON THE ACTION OF THE VEGETABLE ACIDS ON CALOMEL. 
By M. Bauwens. 
The most enlightened physicians, the greatest chemists, 
and most prudent pharmaceutists, on the faith of tradition, 
always advise patients not to take any acid substances when 
calomel has been administered to them. M< Bauwens has 
made some investigations on this subject, and has obtained 
the following results. 
At the ordinary temperature, at 86°, and even 104° F., 
(30° and 40° C.) calomel, in prolonged contact with a con- 
centrated solution of tartaric or citric acid, gave no trace of 
corrosive sublimate. 
Calomel, which is insoluble in water, alcohol, and ether, 
does not instantly communicate to the tongue the styptic 
flavour of the soluble preparations of mercury ; but this taste 
is perceived when the alkaline haloid salts of the saliva come 
in contact with it, in consequence of the property possessed 
by alkaline salts of dissolving the mineral haloid salts to form 
double salts with them. 
Calomel appears to owe its anthelmintic and purgative 
properties to the haloid salts which it finds in the economy. 
If large doses of calomel act relatively less powerfully than 
small ones, it is because in the first case the mercurial salt 
does not find in the economy a sufficiency of alkaline salt to 
convert it all into soluble salt, whereas, in the second case 
there are sufficient alkaline salts in the intestinal canal to 
dissolve the mercurial salt completely. Consequently 
children who seldom take much chloride of sodium, can take 
more calomel in proportion than grown people. The phy- 
sicians of sea-side towns, where the water is generally brack- 
ish, seldom prescribe calomel, and the doctors of the fleet 
have been obliged to abstain from giving it to sailors who eat 
salt meat. 
Hydrochloric acid has not the property of uniting imme- 
diate^ with calomel, or to cause it to pass from the state of 
