]34 C. U. C. P. ALUMNI JOURNAL August, 1918 



lard in their ointments. Since glycerin is also excluded from use in medicinals, 

 agar-agar, tragacanth, etc., cannot be used as ointment bases since they require 

 glycerin to keep them moist. There are a great many lard and glycerin free 

 ointment bases and I give you the formulas of a few, which I find published in 

 I he Chemist and Druggist: 



(a) Paraffin, white, hard i^^ ounces 



Paraffin, white, soft '. I4}4 ounces 



This is claimed to be entirely satisfactory for use in making ointment of 

 ammoniated mercury, sulphur ointment, etc. Other formulas are : 



(b) White petrolatum oil ■ 14 ounces 



White wax 4 ounces 



Hard paraffin 4 ounces 



Powdered borax 3^ ounce 



Hot water' 12 ounces 



The following four formulae are claimed to answer for most ointments: 



(a) Lanolin 30.00 



Soft paraffin 10.00 



(b) Soft paraffin 70.00 



Spermaceti 5.00 



Distilled water q.s, to make 100.00 ;^ 



(c) Anhydrous lanolin 65.00 



Liquid paraffin 30.00 '^ 



Ceresin 5.00 



Water 30.00 



(d) Beeswax 



Lanolin aa partes eq. 



Such are the difficulties under which our European colleagues labor. I have 

 outlined only a very few of the more important ones ; to even mention all of them 

 would require considerable time. The reply "sorry, we are all out of it" is now 

 heard many times a day in the chemist's shop and the customer no longer evinces 

 any surprise. 



Before passing on I beg to mention that in a governmental report on post- 

 bellum problems it is recommended that the metric system be officiallly adopted 

 and that a decimal coinage system be introduced. In a bill now pending in the 

 House of Lords it is proposed to coin i, 2, 3 and 4 mil pieces of bronze, 5 and 10 

 mil pieces of nickel, quarter florin, half florin and florin of silver. One florin will 

 be equivalent to 100 mils. If this bill passes the time honored shilling and pound 

 will disappear. There is also a movement to revolutionize pharmaceutical edu- 

 cation, the details of which are very interesting to the teacher in pharmacy but go 

 beyond the limits of this paper's subject matter. 



And now let us devote a few minutes to some conclusions which we are jus- 

 tified to draw from the consideration of conditions as they now exist in Euro- 

 pean countries and as they are beginning to shape themselves slowly but una- 



