316 
MISCELLANY. 
soda or potash, as it prevents the possibility of fermentation while in a 
damp state, and dries more rapidly, 
P. S. Ammonia will be found preferable to potash or soda in remov- 
ing glutinous matter from vegetable fibre, for the purposes of woven 
fabrics, or other manufactures. — Chemist. 
On the dosing of Iodide of Potassium. By A. Duville. — Six months 
ago I was witness of a fact which proves the high dose in which iodide 
of potassium may be employed. 
If this note appears to you at all interesting to the practice of phar- 
macy, I beg you to communicate it to the Society (of Pharmacy) of 
which I have the honor to be one of the corresponding members, and to 
cause it to be inserted in the Journal which it publishes with so much 
impartiality. 
Towards the end of 1843 I was charged with preparing, for a patient 
attacked with a venereal bubo in the left groin, an ointment thus 
composed : — 
Iodide of potassium 16 
Lard 30 
This ointment was made according to the Codex, bruised on 
porphyry. It was to be employed in frictions, three times a day, and 
at the same time the patient had to swallow, also three times a day, 
lumps of the size of a nut of an antiblenorrhagic opiate composed of 
balsam of copaiba, cubebs and caustic magnesia (to solidify the 
copaiba.) 
By a mistake, which might have been fatal to him, but which will 
easily be understood, when it is known that the patient was compelled, 
for certain reasons, to follow up the above treatment secretly, the first 
friction having to be made at night, he did it in the dark, and used for 
this purpose the astringent opiate; immediately after he swallowed (I 
know not how he could have done it) a lump of the ointment prescribed 
of the size of a muscovado nut. He continued the same mode of treat- 
ment, and always in the same error, until the two pots where finished. 
In this case he did as many patients do, who, in such cases, often exceed 
the limits of the prescription, in the hope of being more speedily cured, 
and took the whole in forty-eight hours, (46 grammes of ointment and 
64 of astringent opiate employed in frictions.) 
Great was my surprise when, after the error noticed, he told me that 
the bubo had changed its place, and that it was now situated in the 
middle of the thigh. 
I leave physicians to decide whether this is possible, and whether the 
