24  Glycerol  of  Nitrate  of  Bismuth.       {Am 'fS'-J***' 
purpose  for  which  I  had  designed  it),  but  also  quite  as  much  in  uterine 
diseases.  I  am  encouraged,  therefore,  to  propose  now  a  soluble 
preparation  of  nitrate  of  bismuth,  if  such  a  proposition  is  not  too  absurd 
to  be  listened  to. 
The  value  of  bismuth  as  an  application  in  a  great  variety  of  skin 
diseases  is  well  known,  but  its  use  in  this  direction,  and  indeed  as  I 
may  say  for  every  purpose  for  which  bismuth  has  yet  been  employed 
as  a  remedy,  has  always  been  much  crippled  by  the  difficulties  that  have 
always  hitherto  existed  in  the  way  of  obtaining  a  solution  of  bismuth. 
There  is  of  course  the  liquor  bismuthi  et  ammoniae  citratis  of  the 
"  Pharmacopoeia,"  but  it  is  a  matter  of  doubt  whether  this  double  salt 
presents  the  properties,  as  a  local  application,  of  a  simple  salt  of 
bismuth.  It  is  of  course  merely  as  a  local  application  that  bismuth  is 
employed  in  medicine,  that  is  to  say  as  a  local  application  to  the  stomach 
in  cases  of  painful  digestion  or  of  waterbrash,  and  its  use  in  skin 
affections,  in  gonorrhoea,  and  so  forth,  is  equally  of  the  character  of  a 
topical  application. 
The  difficulty,  or  rather  the  impossibility,  of  making  an  aqueous 
solution  of  nitrate  of  bismuth,  otherwise  than  in  the  presence  of  a 
large  excess  of  nitric  acid  (an  agent  which  renders  that  solution  per- 
fectly useless  for  any  purpose  for  which  bismuth  is  serviceable),  arises 
from  two  causes,  the  one  the  feeble  basic  properties  of  teroxide 
of  bismuth,  and  the  other  the  basic  properties  of  water, — the 
water  robbing  the  nitrate  of  bismuth  of  the  greater  portion  of  its  nitric 
acid,  and  so  precipitating  nearly  all  of  the  bismuth  in  the  form  of  the 
so-called  trisnitrate. 
It  occurred  to  me,  accordingly,  that  by  the  employment  of  glycerin 
as  a  solvent  in  place  of  water,  both  of  these  drawbacks  might  be  cir- 
cumvented, if  only  it  should  prove  that  nitrate  of  bismuth  should  be 
capable  of  solution  in  glycerin.  I  find  that  it  is  freely  soluble  in 
glycerin,  and  that  it  dissolves  without  decomposition.  As  I 
think  there  is  likely  to  be  a  large  demand  for  this  solution, 
I  think  it  necessary  to  communicate  this  fact  to  the  pharmaceutical 
body  through  their  journal.  For  example,  I  applied  to  one  of  the 
first  pharmaceutical  chemists  of  this  city  for  a  solution  of  nitrate  of 
bismuth  in  glycerin,  and  I  was  told,  firstly,  that  the  salt  would  certainly 
not  dissolve  in  glycerin,  so  that  he  could  not  supply  me  with  such  a  solu- 
tion, and  in  the  next  place  he  told  me  that  the  nitrate  was  not  kept  by 
any  chemist  because  there  was  no  demand  for  it. 
