514  Influence  of  Calomel  on  Fermentation.  ■[^"'•/'i^'vl'oo*'""- 
«^  1.      Oct.,  1883. 
(which  I  understaud  is  not  unfrequently  sent  out  by  wholesale  houses) 
should  certainly  not  be  dispensed,  and  as  the  crystalline  and  granular 
varieties  may  be  either  good  or  bad,  their  strength  should  be  ascer- 
tained and  stock  replaced  if  necessary. — Pharm.  Jour.  Trans.,  Aug., 
1883,  p.  121. 
INFLUENCE  OF  CALOMEL  ON  FERMENTATION  AND 
THE  LIFE  OF  MICRO-ORGANISMS. 
By  N.  p.  Wassilieff. 
Calomel  has  always  held  a  foremost  place  amongst  those  remedies 
which  are  confidently  resorted  to  in  certain  gastric  and  intestinal  dis- 
orders, especially  of  childhood,  but  the  precise  nature  of  its  beneficial 
effect  has  heretofore  been  unexplained.  Recent  works  on  pharmacology 
pass  over  the  question,  and  only  Kohler  refers  to  the  favorable  action 
of  the  drug  in  typhus,  cholera,  dysentery,  and  other  diseases,  as  being 
due  to  its  germicidal  and  anti-fermentative  qualities.  No  evidence  in 
support  of  this  view  is  adduced.  Voit,  however,  had  noticed  in  1857 
that  egg-albumin  and  blood,  when  mixed  with  calomel,  remained  for 
days  without  undergoing  putrefaction.  Hoppe-Seyler  also  mentions 
an  aseptic  influence  of  calomel,  and  ascribes  to  it  the  well-known  green 
color  of  bowel  discharges  after  an  administration  of  calomel. 
The  author  undertook  this  investigation  at  the  request  of  Hoppe- 
Seyler,  first,  in  regard  to  the  behavior  of  calomel  towards  the  so-called 
unorganized  ferments  of  the  digestive  fluids  (enzymes,)  and  secondly, 
as  to  its  action  on  the  lower  organisms  associated  with  the  processes  of 
fermentation  and  putrefaction. 
•  The  first  series  of  experiments  were  made  in  order  to  determine  the 
influence  of  calomel  on  the  normal  process  of  digestion  in  the  stomach. 
The  results  proved  that  its  presence  in  no  way  interfered  with  the 
properties  of  the  gastric  juice,  fibrin  being  digested  in  the  same  time, 
whether  calomel  was  present  or  not. 
In  the  next  series,  the  influence  of  calomel  on  the  process  of  pan- 
creatic digestion  was  investigated.  It  is  now  known  that  three  separate 
ferments  exist  in  the  pancreatic  secretion  by  which  albuminates,  fats, 
and  carbohydrates  are  severally  transformed  and  fitted  for  assimilation 
in  the  system.  The  object  in  view  was  to  observe  the  possible  influence 
of  calomel  on  each  of  these  respective  ferments.  For  the  purpose  of 
experiment  a  watery  extract  was  prepared  from  the  finely  minced  gland, 
