58 THE ALUMNI JOURNAL 



acid occurs also in bitter almonds, and .when their pulp is distilled 

 we obtain the most poisonous of our official oils. Prussic Acid is 

 another standby of those intent on self-destruction, not only in 

 real life, but in fiction. For instance, in Grant Allen's The Woman 

 Who Did, the heroine Herminia — after being^ abused by her daugh- 

 ter — kills herself by drinking- Prussic Acid. A remarkable feature 

 of this deadly poison is the astonishing rapidity with which it 

 causes death. A thief, who was pursued, swallowed a dose, stag- 

 gered a few steps, fell to the ground and very soon expired. A 

 drop of the pure acid can kill a frisky dog in a second. Professor 

 Doremus in an interesting letter to that monumental masterpiece, 

 the Standard Dictionary, says: "I have held a drop of anhydrous 

 hydrocyanic acid on a glass rod and brought it toward a live rabbit. 

 P>efore it reached the animal, he dropped dead from inhaling the 

 vapor." 



It is said that Scheele himself was suddenly killed by inhaling 

 the vapors of the terrible poison he discovered, but I hardly think 

 this is the case- 



The series of experiments which Scheele conducted in connec- 

 tion with Prussian l)lue- — laying the important foundation of our 

 [jresent knowledge of the Cyanides — has excited the enthusiasm 

 (:i modern chemists, and with a tribute on this topic from the 

 learned pen of Professor John Ferguson of the University of Glas- 

 gow, I close my meagre account of Scheele's momentous work: 



"In 1 782- 1 783 appeared a research which — of all those Scheele 

 conducted — exhibits his ex})erimental genius at its very best By 

 a wonderful succession of experiments he showed that the coloring 

 matter of Prussian blue could not be produced without the presence 

 of a substance of the nature of an acid, to which was ultimately 

 given the name of Prussic Acid. He showed how this body was 

 composed, described its properites and compounds, and mentioned 

 its smell and taste, utterly unaware of its deadly character. Noth- 

 ing but a study of Scheele's own memoir can give an adequate 

 notion of the manner in which he attacked and solved a problem 

 so difficult and complicated as this was at the period in the his- 

 tory of chemistry when Scheele lived. . . . His accuracy, qual- 

 itative and (|uantitative,;. considering his primitive apparatus, his 

 want of assistance, his place of residence, the undeveloped state 

 of chemical and physical science, — was unrivalled. He grudged 

 no labor to make the truth indisputable; and he evidently never 

 considered his work complete about any body unless he could both 

 unmake and remake it. For him chemistrv was both an analytic 

 and a synthetic science, and he shows this prominently in his re- 



