Calx.—Lime; Kalk, Ger.; chaux, Fr. Calcii Carbonas Praecipitatus.— Precipitated calcium carbonate. A fine, white powder, insoluble in water. Dose, gr. v— Эj. Creta Praeparata.—Prepared chalk. Dose, gr. v—Э j

Liquor Calcis

Lime-water. A saturated solution of lime in water.

Liquor Calcis Saccharatus

Dose, 3 ss— 3 ij. (Unofficial.)

Mistura Cretae

Chalk mixture. Dose, 3 j— ozss.

Syrupus Calcis

Sirup of lime (lime 65 grm. to 1,000 c. c. of sirup and water). Dose, a teaspoonful or more.

Calcii Chloridum

Calcium chloride. A colorless or whitish salt, sometimes translucent, very deliquescent. It is soluble in two parts of water, and also in alcohol. Dose, gr. v—Эj, and is preferably administered in milk. This should not be confounded with chlorinated lime. (Other salts of calcium are included under phosphates, hypo-phosphites, sulphides, and bromides.)

Antagonists and Incompatibles, and Synergists, the same as for potassium.

Physiological Effects of Calcium Salts

The important position of phosphate of lime in the organism has been already set forth under the appropriate head. It is only necessary to state in this connection that the lime salts are antacid, or alkaline, and as such they neutralize the acid of the gastric juice. They act locally as sedatives to the mucous membrane. Some of them have a local action merely, but the chloride is very diffusible, and the carbonate feebly so. Entering the blood in small quantity, they promote constructive metamorphosis; but the habitual use of large quantities hastens waste, or the retrograde metamorphosis of the tissues.

Administered in the ordinary way, however, the lime salts furnish materials needed by the organism in its growth. The carbonate of lime is taken up in limited quantity by the stomach-juices and re-enforces the same constituent in the blood. The chloride of calcium has a different office in the economy. It acts in a similar manner to the other chlorides, and has close relationship to the iodides. Clinical experience has shown that it possesses the ill-defined property known as alterative, removes certain toxic or morbific materials, and secures their excretion by the organs of elimination. The recent studies of the therapeutical actions of chloride of calcium have shown it to possess the remarkable property of an antagonist or antidote to the strumous constitution. No mere physiological investigation could have demonstrated this power; it is an empirical fact which we can not explain as yet by physiological methods. It has been shown, however, that under its use enlarged and cheesy lymphatics gradually resume their normal condition, tubercular deposits undergo a process of calcification, and ulcerating cavities discharge their contents and cicatrize. It can not, of course, be asserted that such surprising changes frequently occur, but, that they do sometimes take place, clinical experience has proved. From this point of view, then, chloride of calcium assumes a high degree of importance.

Therapy of the Calcium Salts

No remedy is more frequently prescribed for vomiting than lime-water. It is given very often with milk, one half, one fourth, as may be, and the combination is effective in arresting vomiting due to acute troubles of the abdominal organs, and also useful in vomiting of cerebral and reflex origin. When the milk-cure is prescribed, lime-water is frequently added to enhance the digestibility of the milk. Carbonate of lime is a useful restorative and antacid in the acid indigestion, and in the diarrhoea of strumous children. By Dr. Warburton Begbie and by Dr. Coghill the chloride of calcium is strongly urged, as the most efficient remedy in the feeble digestion and disordered secretions of strumous children. The latter especially commends the use of the chloride in "children when the sleep becomes restless and troubled, the breath fetid, the tongue foul and coated, the tonsils enlarged, the evacuations irregular and offensive, with deficient secretion of bile." In the colliquative diarrhoea of the strumous, it is said to be curative, even when accompanied by enlargement of the mesenteric glands. According to the published observations of Begbie, Coghill, and Bell, we possess no agent so valuable in the wasting diseases of children of strumous origin, in glandular enlargements, etc. The testimony which has been lately published in respect to the curative power of chloride of calcium in consumption is certainly very striking.