Excerpt from A Treatise on Materia Medica, Vol. 2: Including Therapeutics and Toxicology The injurious effects of small quantities of acid upon the body and the individual organs have been to some extent much exaggerated and inaccurately described. Under any circumstances these acids must be used forav'ery long time before any ill effects appear. These are said to be (for in stance after the excessive and long-continued use of food pre pared With vinegar) a wasting of the body, anaemia, and paleness of the skin; they are said to depend upon the di minished alkalescence of the blood and the destruction of the red blood -globules. In discussing the alkalies, we spoke of the probable importance of the alkalies to the normal processes of life, and cannot, therefore, deny that the above symptoms may be due to the diminished alkalinity of the blood and body; but we must insist that there is no positive proof that wasting and anaemia are due to this cause. As to the destruction of the red blood corpuscles it is positive that this has been observed in acute sulphuric -acid poison ing; it can also be seen by mixing blood directly with acids; but, from such coarse experiments we cannot draw any conclusions upon the effect of dietetic doses. As far as acetic acid is concerned, a direct proof that this has any de structive effect upon the blood-globules has not been shown. We therefore, for the present, think it best if we account for the thinness and anaemia simply by disturbances of digestion and nutrition; these are the only necessary results of too long and excessive use of the acids. Whether tuber culosis, as has been affirmed, occurs more often in the vine gar aniline than in other forms of anaemia, is also questionfi able. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.