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 mercury and copper in nitric acid, and precipitating by vinegar. This was also used in syphilis.

Homberg put a little mercury into a bottle and attached it to the wheel of a mill. The metal was thereby transformed into a black powder (the protoxide.)

By a careful and very gradual precipitation of a solution of nitrate of mercury by ammonia Hahnemann obtained what he called soluble mercury. Soubeiran proved that this precipitate was a mixture in variable proportions of sub-nitrate and ammonio-proto-nitrate of mercury.

Calomel was introduced into practice by Sir Theodore Turquet de Mayerne about the year 1608. It has been said that he was the inventor of the product, but as it was described and, perhaps, to some extent used by other medical authorities, Crollius among these, who lived and died before Turquet was born, this was evidently impossible. Theodore Turquet de Mayerne had been a favourite physician to Henri IV, but he had been compelled to leave Paris on account of the jealousies of his medical contemporaries. His employment of mineral medicines, antimony and mercury especially, was the occasion of bitter attacks, but his professional heresy was perhaps actually less heinous than his firm Protestantism. Both James I and Charles I accepted his services and placed great confidence in his skill. He was instrumental, as explained in another section, in the independent incorporation of the apothecaries, and was also one of the most active promoters of the publication of the "London Pharmacopœia."

It appears likely that Turquet invented the name by