crust surmounting the clot, indicated that this constituent was not in a healthy condition, probably not in a state fit for the proper nutrition of the tissues. The abundance of ashes was sufficient to prove also that a large amount of the saline ingredients was not appropriated in the ordinary way. This may suggest a cause for the tendency to loss of vitality and consequent separation of portions of bone commonly observed in adults labouring under old venereal affections, and to the determination of a rachitic condition of the osseous system in children. The peculiar aspect of the surface of a venereal ulcer has been several times mentioned. Its most striking feature is its ashy colour, having a tint of yellow, or greenish yellowness, differing widely from the cream colour of a healthy simple sore. The seat of this coloration is a coating of secreted matter, a kind of pyogenic membrane, covering the surface of the ulcer. It is of considerable thickness, highly plastic, and adheres with considerable tenacity to the part upon which it rests. These qualities in the specific ulcer bear a very striking analogy to the serum of the blood of one specifically tainted, in colour, plasticity, and density. CHAPTER V. TREATMENT. THE modes of treatment which have been at different times employed and recommended for the removal of syphilitic affections form a subject of no small extent and importance, upon which the attention of medical men has been engaged for ages past; and although the results obtained by a multitude of observers of great learning and experience have been recorded, the question as to an uniform practice still remains far from being settled. To examine, even in the most cursory manner, the relative merits of the many contributions to this branch of therapeutics, would be impracticable: I shall therefore confine my observations, after a few preliminary remarks, to such methods as have proved most beneficial in my own practice. There is perhaps no other disease in which so great a number and variety of remedies has been tried as in that of syphilis. The materia medica has been ransacked from beginning to end, and every medicine offering the least probability of success has been brought under trial. From an early period, mercury attracted favourable notice; but on account of its alleged injurious effects on the system in some instances, attributable most likely, when such was actually found to be the case, to its injudicious employment or improper application, other agents have been sought and tested with persevering assiduity and with variable results. Articles of indigenous production were much more extensively employed formerly than they are at present; but notwithstanding the reputation which some of these enjoyed for a period, and the extraordinary cures which it is stated, by men of credible authority, resulted from their employment, they have been almost entirely abandoned in later times. The arctium lappa (burdock) was in considerable repute as an anti-venereal remedy during the sixteenth century, and has since, until very recently, been in use amongst a certain class of practitioners. It is mentioned by Riverius, that Henry the Third, King of France, was troubled with a venereal affection which could not be cured by his ordinary medical advisers. Having been informed that one Pena, a physician then practising at Paris, had effected many cures of this disease by means of a peculiar medicine with which he had become acquainted from a Turk, the monarch had him sent for, and was cured by him. The medicine in question was a decoction of the root of the great burdock, with the addition of a little senna, in wine and water. The medicine was used in this form fifteen or twenty days, the patient being kept in a profuse perspiration a great part of the time, which action appears to have been materially assisted by the constant use of "decoction of China, or Sarsa-Perilla" instead of other liquids as an ordinary beverage. The diet also was suitably regulated. After the expiration of the period named, the decoction of burdock alone, without senna, was continued daily for five or six weeks longer, at the end of which period all the symptoms had entirely disappeared. Sarsaparilla, introduced into Europe from the West Indies about the year 1560, was looked upon as a medicine of great efficacy in lues venerea; but it soon fell into disuse, and was almost abandoned until noticed again by Dr. Wm. Hunter and Sir Wm. Fordyce, about the middle of the eighteenth century; "not, however (as Dr. A. T. Thomson remarks), as a remedy fitted to cure syphilis, but of much efficacy in rendering a mercurial course more certain, and after the use of mercury. Experience, however, has not verified the encomiums bestowed upon it; and the extensive observations of Mr. Pearson2 have fixed the degree of benefit which is to be expected from this root in syphilitic complaints."3 Mr. Pearson appears to have used it with success in some of the sequelae of the disease which he regarded as no longer of syphilitic nature, such as nocturnal pains in the limbs, painful enlargement of the knee and elbow joints, membranous nodes, and cutaneous ulcerations. There is no doubt however that these symptoms are truly syphilitic, and if sarsaparilla really be efficacious in the removal of such ailments, it is undoubtedly a valuable remedy. In my own practice, however, sarsaparilla, when used alone, has invariably failed to produce any beneficial effect whatever beyond what may result from the use of so much water, with a carefully regulated diet and abstinence from fermented liquors. For the sake of economy, patients sometimes purchase the root and prepare the decoction of it themselves. I have known it used in this way in enormous doses, augmented to several pints daily, for the space of three months uninterruptedly, and without the slightest result of a curative kind. It is highly probable that the preparation employed by Mr. Pearson and others was that in present use as the compound 1 Medical Observations and Inquiries, vol. i. p. 149. decoction, containing materials which are really efficacious in themselves,-sassafras, guaiacum, and mezereon. Sassafras, although not possessing anti-venereal virtues in the degree which practitioners formerly believed, is nevertheless acknowledged to be efficacious in certain forms of chronic rheumatism, gout, and cutaneous affections, and is therefore very properly introduced into the preparation above named. Mezereon is a remedy of less doubtful efficacy. It acts as a stimulating diaphoretic, and has been long used in chronic rheumatism, scrofula, lepra, and other eruptive diseases. As an anti-venereal, also, it has had a reputation, which it appears in some measure to have deserved, from an early date. Dr. Donald Munro is said to have been the first in this country to test its efficacy in syphilitic affections, for which he used extensively the celebrated Lisbon dietdrink, of which it forms an important ingredient. It was afterwards employed by Dr. Russell, physician to St. Thomas's Hospital, who found it effectual in removing venereal nodes. He made use of the decoction of the root. It was found necessary, however, in some instances, to combine with it the oxymuriate of mercury. Dr. Cullen informs us that Dr. Home has not only found the decoction of mezereon to cure the scirrhous tumours remaining after lues venerea and after the use of mercury, but that it has healed them when proceeding from other causes. (Thomson.) Soon after the outbreak of the venereal epidemic during the latter part of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth century, the large class of vegetable remedies then in use was in great measure laid aside in favour of Guaiacum, which was thought to possess anti-venereal properties in an eminent degree. This article, which also forms a principal ingredient in the compound decoc |