The great importance of Nitric Acid in practice appears to me to be founded, almost like that of the gold, in the abuse of Mercury. It is mostly the antidotal virtues of this remedy which makes it one of the most important of our Materia Medica Although this medicament is known to the Allopaths, too, in this regard, it can hardly be possible to see so many cure with it in the common large doses as prescribed by them as with the mild and small doses of Homoeopathy.

By comparing Nitric Acid to Mercury, we see most clearly the predominance of the dynamic relation over the chemical, since really it is not a quantity of remedy which is required for the saturation of Mercury, but only the specific quality of the drug without regard to quantity. It is something else to determine which one of the specific antidotes of Mercury corresponds to a given case of mercurial intoxication, whether it is Nitric Acid, Gold, Sulphur, or china. On this point I am in position to give some pointers, from my own experince.

Nitric Acid meets most energetically and most effectually the deleterious passage of the Mercury into the tissues, it corresponds to the general appearance of the Mercurial cachexy, which is recognized through the various pathological forms without limitation upon any determined organ in the different systems of the body.

Hence the first symptoms of lues secondaria, the buboes, the syphilitic exanthem, the tetters, the corona veneris, the rhagades in the hands; further, the liver affections, after the use of Mercury, etc., are the most prominent forms to which Nitric Acid is suitable. In regard to the several affections and their relation to this remedy, the following may be said; In inveterate chancers, against which large doses of mercury have already been given without effect, and which instead of becoming smaller have grown still larger under this treatment, or when the Homoeopathic doses of Mercurius remained ineffectual, too, then is Nitric Acid the best remedy, which generally is sufficient alone for a perfect cure, or at least promotes the receptivity of the system for suitable following remedies. The buboes require for their cure Nitric Acid especially; as soon as a bubo appears, I repeat, in not too distant intervals, the Nitric acid, according to its quicker or slower growth, until it is either ripe or resorbed under the pressure of a hollowed pebble (as I often saw them used with success in the Charite in berlin). The patient gets well generally very soon after the opening of the abscess, when Nitric Acid is then still oftener repeated.

In the treatment of fig warts, which I do not recognize as something different from the syphilitic forms, Nitric acid, even when given alternatively with Thuja, seemed to me nevertheless to accomplish the most, although many forms of condyloms, especially those that stand alone, will not be cured either with Nitric acid or with Thuja. In the lues universalis I have seen many excellent results from the use of Nitric acid, and if I did not fear tire my readers I could tell of many cases where Dzondi’s, Berg’s Zittmann’s and Rust’s curess, even the Hydropathy in one case had been used without success, and Nitric acid brought about a radical cure with small doses.

So much about the effects of Nitric acid against syphilis and its secondary forms besides those I found it very efficient in the following cases:

In chronic throat troubles with the feeling of continual soreness in the throat, when there is not always much redness perceptible in the throat, Nitric acid has often proved very useful. At any rate it seems to possess a specific relation to the throat organs, and to effectually act against all the pseudometamorphoses of the orgnic activity of these parts. Thus is this drug the most efficacious remedy in chronic obstruction of the custachian tube, which is a very frequent cause of dullness of hearing and deafness. This particularly happens in persons who lost their hearing is scarlet fever in consequence of a very violent angina; the external car is entirely healthy, there are properly no troubles of the nervous action in the car, often there seems to be present not only an obstruction, but rather a conglutination of the walls of the eustachian tube as sequel of increased plasticity, also in the hypertrophy of the tonsils from the same cause whichthrough their enlarged volume narrow down the opening of the eustachian tube and cause dull hearing.

In the proliferations of the cornea [cell-genesis] as a result of scrofulous inflammations Nitric acid besides cannabis and Calcar,Carb. Is an Execellent remedy.

Non-syphilitic buboes in the inguinal region are generally removed the quickest with Nitric acid.

But Nitric acid has superior curative powers in two forms of disease which, through their obstinacy, must make it very desirable to the physician to be armed with an effectual weapon against them; they are baldness and the chilblains. Baldness finds especially its cure in the Nitric acid when chronic headache of hysteric or rheumatic nature the hemicrania has preceded it, and there are present great sensibilities of the scalp; while after grave acute diseases, nervous fevers, etc., Lyeopod. And silicea prove more effectual (In both kinds hepar sulph, can be relied upon. R-1.) Nitric acid is a capital remedy against chilblains in escitalte patients with very delicate skin and much redness of the frozen parts; only here it works often nothing in small doses and must frequently be used externally as lotion, a few drops of the diluted acid in a quart of water. In all the other mentioned forms of disease I have found this drug very usefull according to the present receptivity in the smallest dose, as well as in many case the pure acid given in solutions of a few drops.