The result
has been the enrichment of the materia medica with a collection of
articles of which some are useful, and others worse than useless. The
extension of the list of disinfectant and antiseptic agents and the
increased importance of the agents, in surgery, have naturally
suggested the plan of incorporating them with soaps, in which form
they will be most convenient for application. Accordingly, the
circulars of the manufacturing pharmacists have prominently displayed
the advantages of various disinfecting soaps.
Among these is a so-called corrosive sublimate soap, of which several
brands are on sale. One of these, containing one per cent. of
corrosive sublimate, is put on the market in cakes weighing about
sixteen hundred grains, and each cake, therefore, contains sixteen
grains of the drug--a rather large quantity, perhaps, when it is
remembered that four grains is a fatal dose. Fortunately, however, for
the prevention of accidents, but unfortunately for the therapeutic
value of the soap, a decomposition of the sublimate occurs as soon as
it is incorporated in the soap mass, by which an insoluble mercurial
soap is formed. This change takes place independently of the alkali
used in the soap; in fact, as mentioned above, a well-made soap
contains no appreciable amount of free alkali, but is due to the
action of the fat acids.
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