It would be superfluous to designate specially every inflammatory affection in which mercury may be used. So far as the mere inflammation is concerned, there is no exception to the general rule. There are contraindications offered by the state of the blood, or the special vice of the system in certain diseases, which forbid the use of the medicine, even though called for by the local affection; but, so far as the inflammation itself is concerned, I believe that it is always indicated. These contraindications will be noticed hereafter.

The inflammations which may be considered as specific, generally yield to the remedy, with not less facility than the phlegmonous.

In acute rheumatism, after due depletion, mercurialization will in general, according to my experience, either at once put an end to the disease, or very favourably modify its course. The plan which I have usually pursued in this complaint is to treat the case for the first week or ten days by bleeding, purging, citrate of potassa or the antimonials, and Dover's powder, with which a little calomel is given at bedtime; and if, at the end of this time, the disease should not have yielded, to give two or three grains of calomel with ten of Dover's powder, every eight, six, or four hours, or smaller doses at shorter intervals, until a decided impression is made on the mouth; then to diminish the mercurial, but without allowing the effect to subside until the disease is cured, or the plan altogether abandoned. in chronic rheumatism there is, I believe, no one remedy comparable in efficiency with mercury, carried to a decided impression, and continued for a considerable time. To the subacute and nervous variety the medicine is less adapted; to the former, because the disease in general readily yields to other measures; to the latter, because there is no inflammation to encounter.

In erysipelas, when indisposed to yield to the ordinary measures, I have found mercurialization useful; but it is seldom necessary, as the disease, in ordinary cases, almost always ends favourably without it; and, in the malignant cases, it is not so much the local affection as the state of the blood, or otherwise depraved state of the system, which is the source of danger, and mercury has no favourable influence over the latter conditions.

To scrofulous inflammation mercury is generally considered inapplicable; and yet it has often been found effectual, especially when locally used, in dispersing glandular swellings supposed to be of that character. When the inflammation is produced and supported by tubercles, as very often happens, the medicine can be of no use; for it has no curative power whatever over that deposit. But, so far as concerns the pure inflammatory process, occurring in scrofulous patients, without such complication, it is probable that mercury has the same influence as over inflammation in general. There are, however, serious objections to its use; for, admitting that the external non-tuberculous swellings might yield to it, there is great doubt as to the propriety of dispersing such swellings, which may serve as an outlet for tendencies that might otherwise show themselves by tuberculous deposition in the internal organs; and, as will hereafter be more fully stated, mercurialism has anything but a favourable influence over the scrofulous diathesis.

b. Antisyphilitic Action. - Powerful as mercurialization is in ordinary inflammation, it is certainly not less so in the specific inflammation of syphilis. The experience of centuries cannot have been mistaken upon this point. From the first introduction of mercury into general use as an antiphlogistic agent, an almost unbroken voice has come from the past in support of its efficiency. it is only our own age that has doubted. To me it seems utterly impossible that our predecessors for so many ages, men quite as capable of observing as ourselves, should have been mistaken in a mere matter of fact, such as that now under consideration. Their views may have been, and no doubt often were erroneous; and they were certainly mistaken in their opinion of the exclusive efficacy of mercury in this disease. They erred also in believing that the curative efficiency of the medicine had any relation to its local effects, and greatly erred in the enormous extent to which they often carried it in their blind reliance. But that they generally cured syphilis with it, and that without it the disease was fearfully destructive, I cannot conceive how any one, not altogether distrustful of human testimony, can doubt. To say that my own observation has coincided with that of our predecessors on this point, can add no weight to their testimony; but each one will necessarily be, in the end, guided by his individual experience, and mine has been such that I cannot but believe in the great efficiency of mercury in syphilis, as firmly as I believe any other fact in medicine. Nor do I believe that any other single known medicine approaches it in anti-syphilitic virtues. There is, I think, no stage of the disease in which it cannot be efficiently used, from the first appearance of the chancre, to the last stage of ulceration and cachexia. Though chancres will undoubtedly get well without mercury, yet they will, so far as I can judge from personal observation, yield more readily under its influence; and I have seen the lowest condition of shattered health, which for years had resisted various treatment under the idea that it was mercurial disease, get well under a careful administration of the blue mass, as if cured by a charm. There are, no doubt, depraved states of system occurring in syphilitic-patients, as in others, in which mercury proves injurious by further impairing the blood. These will be referred to directly. But in the pure uncomplicated disease, with no taint of scurvy, scrofula, or other depravity besides its own, I have no doubt that mercury is the most reliable remedy in all its states and stages, with the single exception of iodide of potassium in the rheumatic pains, and periosteal swellings, which often linger after the other symptoms.