On the colouring matter of the pink and red vulcanite used in dentistry : with remarks on the occassional occurrence of symptoms of poisoning, probably dependent upon the verilion used as a pigment / by W. Bathurst Woodman.

  • Woodman, W. Bathurst (William Bathurst), 1836-1877.
Date:
[between 1800 and 1899]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the colouring matter of the pink and red vulcanite used in dentistry : with remarks on the occassional occurrence of symptoms of poisoning, probably dependent upon the verilion used as a pigment / by W. Bathurst Woodman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    also contained traces of arsenic, but traces only. Bed lead, sometimes used as a cheap substitute for vermilion, is not suitable for dental purposes, from its property of blackening by sulphuretted hydrogen. I have found no trace of this in any of the specimens. Orfila, Mialhe, and other foreign toxicologists and pharmaciens assert that vermilion is an almost inert substance. They do so, chiefly on the ground that large doses, such as half an ounce or more, have been given to clogs without symp- toms of poisoning. A similar argument might be used to show that calomel also is inert, since enor- mous doses have been given in cholera and other diseases, to human beings, with slight, if any, re- sults. But the experience of the men who work the cinnabar mines, Dr. Sutro's case, mentioned before, and the experience of Surgeons and Physicians who use it in the form of vapour- baths for syphilis, tend to show, that in this form at least, it is anything but an inert sub- stance. Mialhe, in his Chimie appliquee a la Physiologie et a la Therapeutique, p. 396 et seq., has shown, of calomel and some other mercurials, that, when exposed to the action of solutions of the chlorides of ammonium, sodium, and potassium, a certain portion is converted into the [per]chloride, or corrosive sublimate. He supposes the decom- position to be something like this