650 
NITRIC ACID AND SULPHUR AS AN ESCHAROTIC. 
“Mr. Cock has recently been employing in some cases under 
his care in Guy’s Hospital, as an escharotic, a compound of 
Nitric Acid and Sulphur. A paste is made by mixing the 
strongest nitric acid with sublimated sulphur, until of a 
proper consistence. This paste is applied to the diseased 
surface, the surrounding parts having been protected by 
plaster, as when chloride of zinc is used. The mixture does 
not run about. It appears to give less pain than the nitric 
acid alone, and acts longer, producing more of eschar. In 
one case Mr. Cock employed it to remove a prominent mass 
of granulations in fungous testis, and it succeeded w T ell. A 
cure, however, did not result, as a subsequent attack of in- 
flammation aggravated the condition. We understood Mr. 
Cock that the formula had been suggested to him by Sir 
Benjamin C. Brodie .” — Medical Times and Gazette. 
Some years since, we were made acquainted with a 
recipe, so-called, for the removal of warts from the horse, 
which consisted of Sulphuric Acid made into a paste with 
Sulphur, and applied around the base of the excrescence. 
Its action has been said to be most decided and effective. 
For some time a pretender sold the formula to the profes- 
sion, but Mr. Woodger having purchased it, at once made it 
known to us.] 
ON ALUMINIUM. 
It has been poetically said, that 
“ The ground we tread on once had life.” 
For a knowledge of this, we are indebted to the microscope, 
which, in the hands of Ehrenberg especially, has shown that 
the chalk formation, which in this country alone is many 
hundred feet thick, and many miles in extent, is made up of 
the skeleton shells of myriads of millions of extremely 
minute animals, as many as ten millions of them lying 
w ithin the space of a cubic inch. 
The same professor has also demonstrated, that the 
polishing slate — the Tripoli stone — is constituted of an aggre- 
gation of fossilized infusoria, much smaller than the chalk 
animalcule. A cubic line w ill contain twenty- three millions 
of these creatures, and a cubic inch has been designated as 
the cenotaph of forty thousand millions of them ! The iron- 
clay stone, and the lime-stone formations, are stated to have 
a similar origin. A kind of silicious marl is met with in 
