The Treatment of Thrush With Gentian Violet

Although in the majority of instances thrush yields, in from four to ten days, to simple cleansing with mild alkaline washes or weak solutions of formaldehyd, it is occasionally very intractable and even dangerous. While usually a minor disease, it is readily transmissible and constitutes one of the major contagious problems in hospital wards for very young infants. For a long time the need has been felt of a local antiseptic which would be prompter and more reliable both as a curative and, in the presence of epidemics, as a preventive agent than those in general use. For such purposes the dyes recently introduced into clinical therapeutics by Young and his associates appeared to us to deserve a trial. In several instances in which we used mercurochrome-220 soluble (from 1 to 2 per cent. aqueous solutions) definite improvement occurred but not with striking rapidity, and moreover we feared that repeated