Observation on the Use and Abuse of Mercury, and on the Precautions Necessary in its Employment

The following Observations are addressed to the Public, with a view, on the one hand, to do away certain erroneous prepositions respecting the effects of Mercury, which impede the necessary employment of it; and on the other, to call its attention to the impropriety of an indiscriminate use of this medicine, by which much harm is often done, and the medicine itself brought into disrepute. The best way to effect these purposes seems to be, to make the public acquainted with what is really to be apprehended from an improper use of mercury, and the circumstances in which its bad effects shew themselves; by which every one may be enabled to distinguish these effects from such as proceed from other causes, as well as be warned against a use of this medicine which has become too prevalent.

Physicians will agree, that we do not possess a more valuable medicine than mercury. Not to mention the diseases for the cure of which it was first introduced, which, without its aid, almost uniformly prove fatal, and in which it is almost uniformly successful, we may appeal for the truth of this observation to its effects in some of the most dangerous forms of scrophula, in dropsies of different kinds, in inflammations, particularly chronic inflammations, and induration and enlargement of the different viscera.

If we except worm cases, in which mercury probably acts on the worms themselves, the various diseases in which mercury is useful, may perhaps be reduced to the two heads of inflammation and glandular obstruction. I believe there is nothing more erroneous than the opinion, that mercury will occasionally succeed in almost all diseases. This opinion has led to its employment in improper cases, and tended consequently to bring it into discredit. I have never found it successful except in the diseases here alluded to.

For many years after its introduction into practice, it was confined to a few diseases. At length it occurred to physicians, that a remedy, which in these proved so efficacious, might produce similar effects in other cases; and such has been the success of the trial, that during the last twenty years mercury has been coming into general use, with a rapidity unequalled in the history of any other medicine. But the more we are assured of its value, the more cautious we ought to be in its employment; both because it is of the greater consequence to prevent any prepossession against it, and because we know that there is no active medicine which can safely be trifled with.