SULPHUROUS ACID some years ago became one of the most popular articles in our pharmacopceia. This sudden popularity was mainly due to the researches of a Scottish provincial physician, Dr. Dewar, of Kirkcaldy,who, from beginning his experiments on cattle, during the period of the cattle plague of 1866, extended them to other animals and to man, and obtained remarkable satisfactory results (see Medical Times and Gazette for 1867, vol. i., pp. 492, 548). There is, of course, nothing new in applying sulphur fumes—which in reality are composed of sulphurous acid gas—as a disinfectant. The classical scholar will recollect that Ulysses employed them to remove the unpleasant smell arising from the dead bodies of Penelope's murdered lovers. " Bring brimstone, the relief of evils," he exclaims, "and me fire that I may sulphurize the house." —Horn. Od. xx. 481, 482. It is also recorded by Ovid (Fasti, iv. 735) and other writers that the shepherds of Italy yearly purified their flocks and herds with " the blue smoke of burning sulphur." Professor Graham's remark, that of gaseous disinfectants, sul phurous acid (obtained by burning sulphur) is preferable on theoretical grounds Ito chlorine, and that no agent checks so effectually the first development of animal and vegetable life, may be said to contain all that was known with regard to the medicinal value of this gas, till Mr. Dewar began his investigations. In his experiments in con nection with the cattle-plague he found that the most safe and convenient apparatus consists of a chafer full of red cinders, a crucible inserted in the cinders, and a piece of sulphur-stick. A piece of sulphur as large as a man's thumb will burn for nearly twenty minutes, and will suffice for a cowhouse containing six animals; and it appears undoubted that if there be due ventilation, this process may be performed four times a day for at least four months with positive advantage to the animals. When this system had been efficiently carried out—and it has been largely tried by his friends—no case of illness, not to say of death, occurred. In Mr. Crookes's report an the Applica tion of Disinfectants in arresting the Spread of the Cattle-plague, that able chemist observed that " the value of sulphurous acid in arresting the progress of the cattle-plague has been proved beyond a doubt by the experiments of Dr. Dewar, and my own results entirely confirm his." His experiments in relation to the cattle-plague led Dr. Dewar to the fur ther discovery of the value of sulphur fumigation in other departments of veterinary medicine. Peripneumonia, ringworm, mange, are among the diseases which rapidly disappear under its influence; and in the sudden undefined illnesses know in Scotland
.as " drows " and " towts," to Which most of our domestic animals are liable, sulphurous fumigation, if applied at the outset, rarely fails to cut short the attack.
In medical practice there are three different forms, independently of the sulphites, in which sulphurous acid may be employed—viz. ; (1) As the sulphurous acid of the Brit ish Pharmacopceia, which contains 9.2 per cent by weight, or about twenty times the volume of sulphurous acid gas dissolved in water; (2) in the form of spray, which es capes from the preceding compound under the action of an apparatus called a spray producer; and (3) as a gas evolved by sprinkling at intervals small quantities of "flowers of sulphur" on red-hot cinders placed on a common shovel, resting on a stool in the mid dle of the room, or by burning bisulphide of carbon (Lancet for 1876, vol. ii. pp. 712, 811). A mixture of equal parts of sulphurous acid and water has been recommended in all cases of "breaches of the skin," as primary wounds (whether resulting from injuries or surgical operations), in ulcers, burns, bed-sores, chapped hands, chilblains, saddle sores (whether of man or beast), sore nipples, and in cases of bruises, such as black eye, etc. Moreover, in erysipelas, its soothing properties, if diluted with two or three parts of water, are very striking. According to Dr. Dewar, the feverish irritability of young children is speedily relieved by dropping from time to time a few minims (5 to 30, ac cording to age) of the acid on a few folds of muslin fastened on the breast: here, how ever, the action is not local, but is due to the evolution of the gas which is inhaled. Amongst the cases in which the acid is serviceable when applied in the form of spray or inhaled as gas, are asthma, bronchitis, catarrh, croup, diphtheria, facial neuralgia, laryngeal affections, phthisis (at all events as a palliative), scarlatina, and typhoid. Dr. Dewar ascribes the healing action of sulphurous acid to its power of destroying fungi. That the acid has this power, we freely admit, but we cannot so readily admit the cor rectness of his view that all the diseases in which he has found it serviceable (including piles and chilblains) are dependent on fungous growths. Dr. Dewar reports a case of severe sciatica, in which immediate and perfect relief was afforded by the injection of an ounce of sulphurous acid in a breakfast-cupful of gruel into the rectum. There is one affection of this class, to which Dr. Dewar does not refer, in which it has been pre scribed with advantage—viz., the form of gastric disorder in which sarcina ventriculi (q.v.) occurs in the vomited matter, the dose being half a dram, largely diluted with water.