Amono tho numerous remedies with which chemistry has gifted modern medicine is iodoform. It is one of the handsomest of drugs, its shining'crystalline scales resomblingchlorido of gold in color. It is soluble in alcohol, but insoluble in water and in glycerine ; is slightly volatile, with a faint, sickish, saffron-like odor ; and in this state of vapor is said to be anesthetic, though inferior to chloroform. Speaking chemically, it is a tcriodido of formyle [O1 H P ], forming ono of a complete

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... eries of chomical compounds, of which others, such as bromoform and chloroform, are used in medicine. They are all combinations of some compound radical, in this case formyle [0a il I, with three equivalents of an element such as bromine or iodine. Iodoform contains twenty-nine parts in thirty of its weight of iodine. Ilcnco the therapeutist would infer that wherever iodine was indicated iodoforni would be of service, and experience proves the surmise to be not far from correct. Its action, however, differ« from that of iodine in many important respects. It is not in tho least irritant, whereas iodine is remarkably so. Like iodine, it is alterative, and like iodine, also, its action is speedy ; but, perhaps, its most valuable property is its anodyne influence, often subduing tho most violent and chronic neuralgias. Every physician knows how wide a field is open to an anodyne alterative ; and iodoform has accordingly been tried in a great many diseases, and in many with eminent success, llinger praises it in syphilis, in bedsores, and in neuralgia. Prof. Fordyce Barker, of New York, highly recommends it as a suppository in cancer of the womb, which it robs of its pains at the same time that it seems to delay the course of flint malignant disease. Besides this, it. has been used in chronic rheumatism and gout, in consumption, in scrofula, ophthalmia, in painful affections of the neck of the bladder and of the prostate, and in cancer of the rectum. Iodoform is found in tho shops as a light * yellow powder of small, pearly crystallized scales. It is used both externally and internally; externally as an ointment :-ft. Iodoform, grs. xxx.-Ix. ; simple cerate and lard, each one half 0Z. M. Or, better still, is simply dusted upon the surface and a rag smeared with cerate or a bit of lint dipped in glycerine placed above ; internally, tho best form of administration is in pills containing two or three grains each of iodoform. The power of iodoform is greatly enhanced by adding to these'pills Valleix's iron, which is protected from combining with the iodine of the iodoform by the insolubility of the iodoform in water. These pills, if preferred, may be sugar-coated. The greatest objection to using iodoform at the present time is its expense, which is about a dollar an ounce, a price unwarranted by its simple and easy manufacture, and which can only bo accounted for by the novelty of the drug. Given in overdoses, iodoform causes, says Ringer, a species of intoxication, succeeded by convulsions, with tetanic spasms. It imparts its peculiar odor to the breath of the patient, a fact which the writer has often noticed on entering a room in which patients taking the drug have been lying.