Use of Phenylmercuric Nitrate in Tinea and Yeast Infections of the Skin

During the past three years, Weed and Ecker1reported on two new mercurials showing unusual bactericidal and fungicidal properties coupled with low toxicity for man and animals. Of chief interest and importance was phenylmercuric nitrate. They studied the effect of phenylmercuric nitrate on twenty pathogenic fungi of man and it was shown that with the exception of Achorion violaceum all the implanted fungi failed to grow in mediums containing 5 and 1 per cent of the saturated solution of phenylmercuric nitrate. Subcultivation on new mediums proved that the majority were killed, since only two (Trichophyton acuminatum and Achorion violaceum) from the medium containing 5 per cent saturated solution of phenylmercuric nitrate grew. However, from the medium containing 1 per cent five subcultures showed growth. They also showed that phenylmercuric nitrate readily killed six strains of wood-destroying fungi. Hatfield,2one year later, corroborated the fungicidal value not only of