+--As has been said, mercury is given
principally in three ways at the present time. It can be given by the
mouth, in the form of pills and liquids, and in this form is not
infrequently incorporated into patent medicine blood purifiers. Mercury
in pills and liquid medicine has the advantage for the patient of being
an easy and inconspicuous way of taking the drug, and for that reason
patients usually take it willingly or even insist on it if they know no
better. Even small doses taken in this way will hide the evidences of
syphilis so completely that only a blood test will show that it exists.
If it were true that large doses taken by mouth could always be relied
on to cure the disease, there would be little need for other ways of
giving it. But there is a considerable proportion of persons with
syphilis treated with pills who do not get rid of the disease even
though the dose is as large as the stomach can stand. Such patients
often have all the serious late complications which befall untreated
patients. It seems almost impossible to give enough mercury by mouth to
effect a cure. Thus pill treatment has come to be a second-best method,
and suitable only in those instances in which we simply expect to
control the outward signs rather than effect a cure.

The mercury rub or inunction, under ideal conditions, all things
considered, is the best method of administering mercury to a patient
with the hope of securing a permanent result. In this form of treatment
the mercury made up with a salve is rubbed into the skin. The
effectiveness of the mercurial rub is reduced considerably by its
obvious disadvantages. It requires time to do the rubbing, and the
ointment used seems uncleanly because of its color and because it is
necessary to leave what is not rubbed in on the skin so that it
discolors the underwear. The mercurial rub is at its best when it is
given by some one else, since few patients have the needed combination
of conscientiousness, energy, and determination to carry through a long
course. The advantages of the method properly carried out cannot be
overestimated. It is entirely possible in a given case of syphilis to
accomplish by a sufficient number of inunctions everything that mercury
can accomplish, and with the least possible damage to the body.
Treatment by mouth cannot compare with inunctions and cannot be made to
replace them, when the only objection to the rubs is the patient's
unwillingness to be bothered