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Various drugs were tried to stud) - their elfects on the duration 
of malarial crescents in the blood. It is well known that quinine 
has not much action on them, and this was seen to be the case in the 
patients under my care. In the cases under observation, although 
quinine was always administered in 15 grain doses at the least, there 
was very little reduction noticed. 
Picric acid has long been recommended in malaria, but to my 
knowledge it is not stated what effects it is supposed to produce on 
these organisms. In a case of tertian malaria this acid was tried 
without the least benefit. Its study was taken up in cases of crescents, 
such of the cases as had the ring forms also present in the blood had 
the standard treatment with quinine ; injections of the latter were 
also resorted to in severe cases. As control to the picric acid treatment 
some of the cases were treated only with quinine, either by the 
mouth alone or with injections as well ; whilst others had quinine 
together with mercury perchloride, arsenic, salol and potassium iodide. 
The cases treated with picric acid were specially selected for the 
severity of infection with crescents. 
18 cases had picric acid by mouth. 
4 cases had injections of picrate of soda (3 c.c. daily of a 
4 per cent, solution). 
28 cases had quinine (with injections in six cases). 
6 cases had quinine together with mercury, arsenic, etc. 
The dose of picric acid was gr. 2 twice or thrice a day. 
Enormous quantities of quinine (between 500 and 700 grains in 
different cases, as much as 915 grains having been used in one case) 
were administered both per os and hypodermically without any 
marked effect on the crescents, but on the whole under picric acid 
treatment the crescents seemed to disappear sooner than by any 
other treatment, as can be clearly seen from Table ‘ A.’ During the 
time the patient is having the acid, the skin, the nails and the sclerae 
of the eyes show a yellow tinge as in jaundice, and the urine, too, 
presents a similar misleading appearance. But on adding an 
inorganic acid, e.g., hydrochloric or nitric acid, the colour gets paler 
and not deeper as in the case of urine containing bile. In 
Table ‘ A ’ is shown the number of days during which the crescents 
were found after quinine treatment alone, as compared with those 
