New therapeutic agents are often endowed at the time of their induction with striking curative virtues that later prove illusive. Time, braced by the accumulated experience and impartial criticism of clinicians, leaves few to weather the storm. The seriousness of syphilis and the limitations of the present therapeutic armamentarium have kept chemists and physicians constantly on the alert for something more destructive to the causative organism and less dangerous to the host. For this reason, there is now a swing to colloidal drugs, in the hope that, owing to the finer division of particles and the resultant higher dispersive phase, an increase in therapeutic effect will be obtained.
Syphilis has proved itself very resistant to the attainment of a perfect therapeutic score by any agent, and mercuric sulphide has not been able to establish a classic position in this respect.
In order to establish the real value of this chemical