A handbook of local therapeutics / edited by Harrison Allen.

Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A handbook of local therapeutics / edited by Harrison Allen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    271/554 (page 259)
    Albumin is an antidote for corrosive sublimate, since it forms a comparatively harmless and insoluble compound with it. Solutions of corrosive sublimate are neutralized by their contact or admixture with secretions, such as those in leucorrhoea or with cancerous ichor. On account of the albumin present it is also neutralized by blood, serum, and muscle fibre The addition of a small portion of tartaric acid to the solution prevents the forma- tion of an albuminate, and so increases its antiseptic power. It should be remembered, however, that tartaric acid bichloride solution is, by the very fact that the bichloride is not converted into an insoluble albuminate, much more rapidly and certainly absorbed than is the ordinary solution, and that risk of toxic impression attending its use is thereby increased. i ir j u f YeUmv tvash (lotio flava, aqua phagedsenica) is made by mixing one-half drachm o\ corrosive sublimate with eight fluidounces of lime-water. Collodions containing corrosive sublimate in proportions varying from ten to forty per cent, are sometimes used. Tablets containing nearly equal parts of corrosive sublimate and chloride of ammonium, and so weighted that one dissolved in a pint of water furnishes a solution of one part of corrosive sublimate in 1000 parts of the solution, are much used in surgery. The various surgical dressings, gauzes, cottons, wools, catgut, silks, etc., impregnated or made antiseptic by corrosive sublimate, are familiar and are too numerous to be enumerated. Bichloride of mercury is antiseptic, antiparasitic, discutient, excitant, and caustic. It is, on the whole, the most valuable of the germicides. While by actual test less destructive than the biniodide of mercury, it possesses advantages in its cheapness and degree of solubility. According to the observations of Sternberg, Koch, and Jalan de la Croix, solutions of 1-10,000 to 1-40,000 destroy the spores of bacilli. It is well to state that Klein (^The Practitioner, October, 1884) denies the germicidal properties of corrosive sublimate. In regard to the power of chloride to destroy the microorganisms of pus it ranks relatively to other germicidal agents as follows: Bichloride solution acid, 0.005 per cent.; permanganate of potash, O.I2 percent.; carbolic acid, i per cent.; zinc chloride, 2 per cent.; creasote, 0.5 per cent.; iodine, 20.2 per cent. (Sternberg, Re- port to the American Pub. Health Ass'n, 1888, p. 50.) Laplace has found that the addition of small quantities of hydrochloric acid (five parts in 1000) to solutions of the bichloride of mercury has the same disinfecting power in albuminous as in non-albuminous fluids. For convenience corrosive sublimate is usually carried in solid form in the coinpressed tablet where tartaric acid is substituted for the hydrochloric acid in the same quantity. In hospital practice a ten per cent, solution may be kept on hand, from which any dilution desired can be prepared. A compressed pellet, containing seven and one-half grains, being added to a pint of water makes a solution of i-iooo, which will be found a convenient and reliable means of preparing solutions for use in private practice. Anti- septic bichloride solutions are used in strengths from 1-500 to 1-5000. The stronger solutions, 1-500 and i-iooo, are only used for disinfecting