PEROXIDE OF HYDROGEN AND ITS USE IN EAR DISEASES.Read in the Section of Laryngology and Otology, at the Forty-third Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association, held at Detroit, Mich., June, 1892.

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Peroxide of hydrogen, H₂O₂, as it is popularly called, is chemically and correctly the dioxide of hydrogen. It was discovered accidentally in the year 1818 by a French chemist, M. Thenard, but was little used either in manufacturing or in the arts until within the last decade. Pure anhydrous peroxide of hydrogen is a liquid of syrupy consistence, colorless, having an acid reaction, yielding four hundred and seventy-five times its own volume of oxygen on decomposition. The compound is very unstable, constantly on the slightest exposure undergoing decomposition and breaking up into its component parts nascent oxygen and water.

Bizett reports that the pure solution, anhydrous, readily destroys living tissues. Marchand writes "whatever will be the concentration of the peroxide of hydrogen, as long as it is made by the process which I employ in manufacturing the medicinal H₂O₂ it is always a harmless remedy, but it is unnecessary