_Of the different Mercurial Preparations employed in Medicine._
METALLIC substances in general, when employed for the purposes of
medicine, have been used in many different forms: But none of them,
perhaps, has been exhibited in a greater diversity of preparations than
mercury. Some mercurial preparations have never been employed in the
cure of _lues venerea_; and many formerly in use are entirely banished
from the present practice in this disease. All these may be considered
as unconnected with the subject here treated of. But that the nature of
those preparations which are at present most frequently employed, may be
more clearly understood, there will be no impropriety in taking a
general view of all the preparations of mercury.
The mercurial preparations admitted by the Colleges of London and
Edinburgh, contain the most useful and most elegant forms employed in
practice, at the time when the last editions of their Pharmacopœias were
published. But even at that time they were by no means to be considered
as compleat lists. And, since that time, other preparations of utility
in practice have been discovered.
A more full view of mercurial preparations than can be obtained from
these lists, and, at the same time, some information with regard to the
circumstances in which they differ from each other, may be had from a
table of mercurials lately published by Dr Saunders of London. In that
table, which, with a very few inconsiderable alterations, is the same
with one formerly given out by Dr Cullen, when professor of chemistry at
Edinburgh, the different mercurial preparations are reduced to general
heads, according to the means employed to render them active. From it,
the following is almost entirely copied. The names of the different
preparations are here printed in Italics, and taken from the London and
Edinburgh Dispensatories, from the new Dispensatory, and from the
Edinburgh Pharmacopœia Pauperum. To these are added, some mercurials
introduced by Boerhaave, Astruc, Keyser, and Plenck. From the letters
subjoined to each, it will appear from whence the preparations are
taken; and, where an asterisk is prefixed to any one, it denotes, that
it is to be considered as perfectly analogous to that immediately
preceeding.
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