13 Maguire, Medical Record N.Y., Feb. 3, 1883.
The mouth should be frequently cleansed by syringing, douching, spraying, or washing with disinfectant solutions, such as chlorinated soda liquor, one part to ten; carbolic acid, one to twenty. Lemon-juice is sometimes an agreeable application, as in some other varieties of stomatitis. Constitutionally, tonic and supporting treatment is demanded, even in those instances where the appetite is well maintained and the general health apparently well conserved. Soups, milk, semi-solid food, egg-nog, egg and wine, wine whey, milk punch, finely-minced meat, should be administered as freely as the state of the digestive functions will permit. If necessary, resort should be had to nutritive enemata. Quinia and tincture of chloride of iron are the medicines indicated. When sufficient alcohol cannot be given with the food, it should be freely exhibited in the most available form by the mouth or by the rectum. The apartment should be well ventilated, the linen frequently changed, the discharges promptly removed.
Toxic Stomatitis.
DEFINITION.—An inflammation of the interior of the mouth due to poisoning, especially by drugs, and chiefly by mercury, copper, and phosphorus.
Mercurial Stomatitis.
DEFINITION.—An inflammation of the mucous membrane of the mouth, eventually ulcerating, the result of systemic poisoning by the absorption of mercury.
SYNONYMS.—Stomatitis mercurialis; Mercurial ptyalism, Ptyalismus mercurialis; Mercurial salivation, Salivatio mercurialis.
ETIOLOGY—Predisposing and Exciting Causes.—Special vulnerability to the toxic influence of mercury, and special proclivity to inflammatory affections of the mouth and the organs contained therein, are the predisposing causes of mercurial stomatitis. The exciting cause is the absorption of mercury into the tissues of the organism. The susceptibility of healthy adults is much greater than that of healthy children. The susceptibility of adults varies very greatly. Constitutions deteriorated by prolonged disease, undue exposure, and the like are much more promptly influenced in consequence. Tuberculous subjects do not bear mercury well.
Idiosyncratic susceptibility to toxæmia by mercurial preparations is now and then encountered in practice, and instances have been published14 in which fatal results have ensued, after prolonged suffering, from the incautious administration of a single moderate dose of a mercurial drug.
14 For example, see in Watson's Practice of Physic a case of furious salivation following one administration of two grains of calomel as a purgative, the patient dying at the end of two years, worn out by the effects of the mercury and having lost portions of the jaw-bone by necrosis.