On syphilitic eruptions, ulcerations, and other secondary symptoms : with especial reference to the use and abuse of mercury : illustrated by cases / by Thomas Hunt.

  • Hunt, Thomas, 1798-1879.
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On syphilitic eruptions, ulcerations, and other secondary symptoms : with especial reference to the use and abuse of mercury : illustrated by cases / by Thomas Hunt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    19/96 (page 19)
    observed to result from the use of mercury in cases in which syphilis has neither been pre- viously contracted, nor inherited. No practice is now more common than the exhibition of mercury for various forms of visceral inflamma- tion. Mercurial treatment has, in fact, to a great extent, taken the place of depletion, and is very frequently pushed to ptyalism; and yet, to whatever extent the gums, or the salivary glands, or the bowels, become affected, we never find eruptions or ulcerations resembling syphilis, produced by this treatment. The cheeks and the gums, the lips, the throat, and the tongue, may all become the seat of mercu- rial ulceration ; but the ulcers do not resemble those of syphilis. They are more superficial, less persistent, usually healing when the mer- curial irritation subsides, and they never re- semble syphilis in affecting distant parts in a certain order. In these and other respects they bear no resemblance whatever to syphilitic affections; and when the system is really free from lues, the difference between these mercu- rial ulcerations and the sores of syphilis, must be as obvious to the most superficial observer, as is the distinction between the eczema mer- curiale and the lepra syphilitica. 11. The morbid effects of mercury are pecu- liar, and well-defined ; and, with the exception