eat may be steeped in a solution of it,
which given to sparrows or chickens will destroy them.

VII. Absorption of the matter from venereal ulcers. No ulcer can heal,
unless the absorption from it is as great as the deposition in it. The
preparations or oxydes of mercury in the cure of the venereal disease seem
to act by their increasing the absorption of the matter in the ulcers it
occasions; and that whether they are taken into the stomach, or applied on
the skin, or on the surface of the ulcers. And this in the same manner as
sugar of lead, or other metallic oxydes, promote so rapidly the healing of
other ulcers by their external application; and probably when taken
internally, as rust of iron given to children affected with scrophulous
ulcers contributes to heal them, and solutions of lead were once famous in
phthisis.

The matter deposited in large abscesses does not occasion hectic fever,
till it has become oxygenated by being exposed to the open air, or to the
air through a moist membrane; the same seems to happen to other kinds of
matter, which produce fever, or which occasion spreading ulcers, and are
thence termed contagious. See Class II. 1. 3. II. 1. 5. II. 1. 6. 6. This
may perhaps occur from these matters not being generally absorbed, till
they become oxygenated; and that it is the stimulus of the acid thus formed
by their union with oxygen, which occasions their absorption into the
circulation, and the fever, which they then produce. For though collections
of matter, and milk, and mucus, are sometimes suddenly absorbed during the
action of emetics or in sea-sickness, they are probably eliminated from the
body without entering the circulation; that is, they are taken up by the
increased action of one lymphatic branch, and evacuated by the inverted
action of some other lymphatic branch, and thus carried off by stool or
urine.

But as the matter in large abscesses is in general not absorbed, till it
becomes by some means exposed to air, there is reason to conclude, that the
stimulus of this new combination of the matter with oxygen occasions its
absorption; and that hence the absorption of matter in ulcers of all kinds,
is still more powerfully effected by the external application or internal
use of metallic oxydes; which are also acids consisting of the metal united
with oxygen; and lastly, because venereal ulcers, and those of itch, and
tinea, will not heal without some stimulant application; that is, the