The treatment of syphilis / by F.J. Lambkin.

  • Lambkin, F. J.
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The treatment of syphilis / by F.J. Lambkin. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    8/84 page 260
    MERCURY After having been employed in the treatment of syphilis for at least four hundred years, and having passed through the furnace of fierce and heated discussions, mercury is now firmly established in the estimation of all syphilologists as the true specific and anti- dote for syphilis ; and, since the discovery by Schaudinn of the Spirochaete pallida, observations of the action of mercury on the latter have strengthened more than ever the position of that metal as a specific.1 Personally, I would say that in the whole category of therapeutics there is—with the possible exception of quinine in malaria—no other drug more worthy of the name * specific ’ than mercury. This position, which has been attained and preserved in the face of extraordinary vicissitudes, will, I believe, always be maintained, owing to its powerful action on the disease, which must be evident to every observer, and cannot be denied. Mercury fell into utter disrepute in the treatment of syphilis at one period, and it was accounted as being the cause of half the misfortunes which had hitherto been attributed to the disease itself. No doubt it was owing to the barbarous treatment to which syphilitic patients were formerly submitted, when the virtues of the remedy were attributed to its salivating action, and when unfortunate patients were condemned to continued saliva- tion. Donald Munro, writing in 1780, says : c Where there are evident symptoms of a confirmed pox, the only method of ciiT,e 1 This was written prior to the completion of a series of experiments which I was making at the Military Hospital, Rochester Row, with reference to the treatment of syphilis with the meta-arsenic-anilide salts, the completion of which have convinced me of the important fact that we have in these salts an undoubted second specific for the disease. Whether they will eventually prove as efficacious or more so than mercury time and experience can alone tell (see pp. 308-11).
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