On the Physiological and Medicinal Action of Hydrofluoric Acid and the Fluorides

Resident Physician, Medical College Hospital, Calcutta. As hydrofluoric acid has lately been used with apparent success in the treatment of goitre (E. Woakes in Lancet, p. 448, vol. I., 1881); and still more recently a fluorine salt?the ammonium fluoride has gained in Calcutta (Dr. Coates in p. 26 of Indian Medical Gazette for current year) not a little reputation for the discussion of enlarged spleens of malarial origin, other members of the medical profession in India are likely to be led to give the remedy a more extended trial in those two affections, so prevalent in this country. To these, it is hoped, the following contribution towards the elucidation of the properties of this new class of proposed remedies may be useful, seeing that neither hydrofluoric acid nor the salts of fluorine have a place in any of our works on Materia Medica. At the outset one is confronted by the difficulty of dealing with a class of substances which in their