As I have given hundreds of intramuscular injections of enesol in cases of lichen planus, it is interesting to record one case in which a typical nitritoid crisis followed the injection.
Enesol is a French product, a combination of arsenic and mercury. The manufacturers state that it is a masked resultant chemical combination in which there is a molecule to molecule combination of oxymercuriosalicylic anhydride with mercury methylarsinate; for brevity, after its combination it is called salicylarsinate of mercury.
The following claims are made on the basis of many hundreds of reports: ". . . we can also assert that enesol, as shown in published notes of cases, never gives rise either to a violent Herxheimer reaction or to the nitritoid crisis described by Milian,''1 and ". . . to cause death in an adult man weighing 65 Kg. we should have to inject 16¼ grains (1.05 Gm.) of enesol.''2
The drug