398 
ACTION OF THE IODIDE OF POTASSIUM. 
disease. The symptoms are precisely those observed in the 
cattle, viz., vomiting, purging, extreme nervous agitation and 
prostration. Collapse and death invariably follow the inges- 
tion of the diseased animal products, the degree of violence 
of the symptoms being proportioned to the amount of the 
poisonous principle operating in the animal at the time when 
the milk was drawn, or the flesh dressed for food, though no 
symptoms of disease had yet been manifested, and no evidence 
whatever existed that the poison was in operation in the 
animal. 
Again, the animal may be so mildly attacked as to be 
scarcely, or not at all, noticeable when unsuspected, and to 
recover without betraying the disease ; at the same time that 
the milk, butter, and cheese, spread far and wide by the 
avenues of trade, will sicken all who are so unfortunate as to 
make use of them, which has the effect to make consumers 
in the vicinity of such localities careful to inquire where such 
products came from, and by whom they were made. 
But ordinarily the producer and his family are the first 
sufferers, and that determines the destruction of the contents 
of the dairy, and stops the spread of this dreadful and mys- 
terious affection, which in man is variously named — the milk- 
sickness, sick-stomach, swamp-sickness, puking fever, &c. 
If the cow has a calf, it contracts the disease of its mother 
through the medium of the milk, and its veal causes the same 
results when eaten as the flesh of the mother-cow. 
I should be glad to give more particulars of this obscure 
and much-dreaded disease ; but I am unable to do so, not 
having been in the districts where it is endemic for a number 
of years, not since I have made medicine a study, and I have 
never given the subject special attention ; but, thinking it had 
a direct bearing upon the subject in question, and might be 
of interest in that connection, I have concluded to send you 
this hastily prepared and imperfect account of milk-sickness. 
Yours, &c., 
J. Bart. Mint urn, M.D. 
Paris ; April 11, 1857. 
(. Medical Times and Gazette .) 
ACTION OF THE IODIDE OF POTASSIUM. 
Dr. Sieveking, in a paper read by him before the 
Harveian Society, says, " that of the remedies we owe to the 
advancement of modern chemistry, none had obtained a 
higher place in the estimation of medical men than the iodide 
