The New York Medicalfournal, January, 1874, published "Forty Cases of Diphtheria Treated by Local Application of Sulphate of Iron." The present writer in that paper says: "About 1865 I became confident that some local treatment would best cure the disease, and often wondered what chemical re-agent would destroy and counteract the source of fever, the putrid mucus, pseudomembrane, continuously exuding, and at the same time not cauterize and irritate the still living, although infiltrated, membrane of the throat..... Creosote suggested itself to be considered (this was just before the carbolic acid discovery or invention), but it was not tested. Another agent, the subsulphate of iron, Monsel's styptic, in some now forgotten way was brought to notice. My first application to the throat in diphtheria determined with me its efficiency, etc. . . .
"You will sometimes induce a little vomiting at first, an effect not injurious—on the contrary, possibly beneficial