REVIEW — IODINE AND ITS COMPOUNDS. 
220 
likely to end in unsatisfactory results, than the testing of medi- 
cines. Dr. Glover read a paper to the Royal Medical Society 
(of Edinburgh), in which he appeared to prove that idiosyn - 
crasy is the only constant source of uncertainty in our science, 
though this idiosyncrasy is itself subject to variation, from the 
varying constitution of an individual at different times; not to 
mention the physical causes ever operating to complicate and per- 
plex our investigations, and the attention constantly demanded 
of us to numerous considerations of a chemical nature. People 
tell us, “ one fact is worth a dozen theories in allusion to which 
the late esteemed and lamented Dr. Birkbeck has more than 
once reminded the writer of this, th&t facts are not always truths. 
It was a remark of Dr. Gregory, in his discourse on the duties of 
a physician, that there are more false facts than false theories in 
science : at the time of making which, he may be conceived to 
have had therapeutics more particularly in his mind. Indeed, 
when we come to consider the idiosyncrasy of the patient, the 
ever-varying circumstances, physical and chemical, he is more or 
less influenced by, as well as, in some instances, the varying na- 
ture of the medicinal itself, we shall feel less surprise and disgust 
at the apparently incongruous and irreconcileable reports of dif- 
ferent practitioners on the supposed virtue or efficacy of medi- 
cines of recent introduction. 
Iodine, however, is one of those remedies which, though novel 
as regards its name and true nature, yet comes into practice with 
an established reputation as a remedy of indisputable service. It, 
as iodine , found its way into medicine in consequence of an idea 
which, about the year 1820, suggested itself to Dr. Coindet, that 
the ashes of the fucus vesiculosus f long celebrated for the cure of 
bronchocele, might owe their specific virtues to the possession of 
this ingredient. This supposition very soon received ample veri- 
fication from the successful trials that were made with iodine ; 
since which it has become equally apparent, that the correspond- 
ing powers of burnt sponge , in which Dr. Fife detected the same 
principle, arise from no other source : thus affording, as observed 
by Dr. Herschel, ‘‘a splendid example of the re-action of pure 
science upon the physical necessities of the human race”. A re- 
trospect into medical history shews that, at a very early date, 
burnt sponge was applied to the treatment of scrofula, and other 
glandular and goitrous enlargements, and of catarrhal affections, 
and where the kidneys required to be ^stimulated. In the thir- 
teenth century, Arnoldus de Villa Nova, a celebrated physician and 
alchemist, born at Villeneuve, in France, taught the use of burnt 
sponge as a remedy for enlargements of the thyroid gland : from 
which period, down to the era of Coindet’s discovery, its name 
