s a writer are well known to the public.

Two months have elapsed since these observations were written,[16] and
the same remedy, during that period, has been assiduously applied, but
without any further success. The progress of the cancers seems to be
checked by the fixed air; but it is to be feared that a cure will not be
effected. A palliative remedy, however, in a disease so desperate and
loathsome, may be considered as a very valuable acquisition. Perhaps
NITROUS AIR might be still more efficacious. This species of factitious
air is obtained from all the metals except zinc, by means of the nitrous
acid; and Dr. Priestley informs me, that as a sweetener and antiseptic
it far surpasses fixed air. He put two mice into a quantity of it, one
just killed, the other offensively putrid. After twenty-five days they
were both perfectly sweet.

In the ULCEROUS SORE THROAT much advantage has been experienced from the
vapours of effervescing mixtures drawn into the _fauces_[17]. But this
remedy should not supersede the use of other antiseptic
applications.[18]

A physician[19] who had a very painful APTHOUS ULCER at the point of his
tongue, found great relief, when other remedies failed, from the
application of fixed air to the part affected. He held his tongue over
an effervescing mixture of potash and vinegar; and as the pain was
always mitigated, and generally removed by this vaporisation, he
repeated it, whenever the anguish arising from the ulcer was more than
usually severe. He tried a combination of potash and oil of vitriol well
diluted with water; but this proved stimulant and increased his pain;
probably owing to some particles of the acid thrown upon the tongue, by
the violence of the effervescence. For a paper stained with the purple
juice of radishes, when held at an equal distance over two vessels, the
one containing potash and vinegar, the other the same alkali and
_Spiritus vitrioli tenuis_, was unchanged by the former, but was spotted
with red, in various parts, by the latter.

In MALIGNANT FEVERS wines abounding with fixed air may be administered,
to check the septic ferment, and sweeten the putrid _colluvies_ in the
_primae viae_. If the laxative quality of such liquors be thought an
objection to the use of them, wines of a greater age may be given,
impregnated with mephitic air, by a simple but ingenious contrivance of
my friend Dr. Priestley.[20]

The patient's common drink might also be medicated in t