Although the use of soap dates from a rather remote period, the chemist is still living, at an advanced age, to whom we are indebted for a knowledge of its composition and mode of formation.  Considerably more than a generation has elapsed since Chevreul announced these facts, but a full appreciation of the principles involved is scarcely realized outside of the circle of professional chemists.  Learned medical and physiological writers often speak of glycerin as the “sweet principle of fats,” or term fats compounds of fatty acids and glycerin.  Indeed, there is little doubt that the great popularity of glycerin as an emollient arose from the view that it represented the essential base of the fats.  With regard to soap, also, much erroneous and indistinct impression prevails.  Its detergent action is sometimes supposed to be due to the free alkali, whereas a well-made soap is practically neutral.

A desire to secure either an increased detergent, cleansing, or other local effect has led in recent years to the introduction into soaps of a large number of substances, some of which have been chosen without much regard to their chemical relations to the soap itself.  The result has been the enrichment of the materia medica with a collection of articles of which some are useful, and others worse than useless.  The extension of the list of disinfectant and antiseptic agents and the increased importance of the agents, in surgery, have naturally suggested the plan of incorporating them with soaps, in which form they will be most convenient for application.  Accordingly, the circulars of the manufacturing pharmacists have prominently displayed the advantages of various disinfecting soaps.

Among these is a so-called corrosive sublimate soap, of which several brands are on sale.  One of these, containing one per cent. of corrosive sublimate, is put on the market in cakes weighing about sixteen hundred grains, and each cake, therefore, contains sixteen grains of the drug—­a rather large quantity, perhaps, when it is remembered that four grains is a fatal dose.  Fortunately, however, for the prevention of accidents, but unfortunately for the therapeutic value of the soap, a decomposition of the sublimate occurs as soon as it is incorporated in the soap mass, by which an insoluble mercurial soap is formed.  This change takes place independently of the alkali used in the soap; in fact, as mentioned above, a well-made soap contains no appreciable amount of free alkali, but is due to the action of the fat acids.  Corrosive sublimate is incompatible with any ordinary soap mass, and this incompatibility includes not only other soluble mercurial salts, but also almost all the mineral antiseptics, such as zinc chloride, copper sulphate, iron salts.  Some of the preparations of arsenic may, however, be incorporated with soap without decomposition.