IN the October number of the Practitioner Mr. J. Ashburton Thompson continues his remarks on the powers of Phosphorus in neuralgia, and mentions several preparations as having been employed by him with varying success. Among others he instances six cases of neuralgia treated with Zinc phosphide. "This preparation is said," he writes, "to contain one fourth of its weight of pure Phosphorus, of which only a half is available for therapeutic purposes." What he means by that is not clear to us; we would be inclined to think that the whole dose of the medicine given was available for therapeutic purposes, but as Zinc phosphide, not in any way as Phosphorus, which is quite a different thing. However, let that pass; there are other things that strike us in this notice of Zinc phosphide. The writer, it seems, "inadvertently prescribed a quantity equivalent tond of a grain" in two cases. One of these was a young lady suffering from chronic gastritis, the other a young man debilitated by excessive mental work; neither of them had ever had neuralgia, though one of them had a neuralgic sister, so might be "a favourable subject for the disease." The sequel shows that the other was an equally VOL. XXXII, NO. CXXVII.—JANUARY, 1874.