Organic compounds of mercury / by Frank C. Whitmore.

  • Frank C. Whitmore
Date:
1921
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Organic compounds of mercury / by Frank C. Whitmore. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/408 page 7
    AUTHOR’S PREFACE Organic compounds of mercury have been studied by many in- vestigators from 1850 to the present time. The interest in these sub- stances has increased in recent years because of the need for some non-ionized mercury compound for use with the organic arsenicals in the treatment of syphilis. The total amount of work which has been done on organic mercury compounds is probably greater than that done on the arsenicals but it has received much less publicity. Al- though a number of monographs have been written in English and in German on the arsenic compounds none has appeared in any language on the mercurials. Originally the writer hoped to include in the present monograph all of the organic compounds which contain mercury in any form. It soon became evident that the work could not be all-inclusive. Atten- tion will therefore be confined almost entirely to the true organic mercury compounds in which mercury is attached directly to carbon. These substances have practically none of the properties of mer- curic salts. The 0 — Hg compounds such as the salts of the organic acids, the N — Hg compounds such as the mercury acid amide com- pounds, and the S — Hg compounds such as the mercuric mercaptides will be touched on very lightly as most of their properties are the properties of inorganic mercury salts. The great mass of biological and pharmacological studies which have been made on organic mer- curials will not be included both because of lack of space and because of the unsatisfactory condition of the literature of this phase of the subject. Another subject of considerable interest which cannot be dis- cussed is the host of “double compounds” of mercury compounds and organic substances. These subjects which are not discussed are made available for further study by the supplementary bibliographical lists in the Appendix. In this way the writer has attempted to include in one form or another all of the material which has been gathered in the preparation of the work. The monograph will be arranged to serve both the general chemist who wishes to get a conception of what has been done in the field as
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