Potassium iodid is a striking example of the uncertainty, unrest and dissatisfaction so characteristic of therapeutics at the present time, and, as I have long had some convictions on the subject, I accepted with pleasure the invitation of the Section officers to present them at this meeting. There can be no objection to therapeutic unrest in the sense of an intelligent striving for something better than we have, with the actual and known base as a point of departure, and the problems of the future clearly stated. But in this instance, as in so many others in modern practical therapeutics, the movement is hampered by ignorance, obscurantism, fallacious statements as to the old, and questionable, if not actually misleading assertions as to the new.
I shall not speak of the theoretic knowledge of the subject, including, as it does, the knowledge of iodin and all its combinations