118 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [mAR. 21, 



Some of these bodies are not new to the chemist, but the synthetic 

 produ(;tion of some new alkaloidal substances led the physician to 

 experiment with other products of the chemical laboratory, until 

 to-day there are prolmbly 200 materials used in medicine that ten 

 years ago were curiosities in the chemical museum or totally un- 

 known. 



If we try to trace the therapeutic effects to some particular class 

 of substances, we are in a very uncertain state of mind at the be- 

 ginning of comparisons ; but certain chlorine compounds derived 

 from marsh-gas, such as chloroform, are usually hypnotics. In the 

 list of antiseptics we have bodies called phenols, and this is the 

 chemical term we apply to carbolic acid, long known as an antiseptic. 



The antipyretics all contain nitrogen in a form similar to chino- 

 line. 



These are only general conclusions, and there are some important 

 exceptions. 



I have brought here to-night quite a number of specimens of these 

 new contributions from the organic chemical laboratory, and I am 

 indebted to Dr. Charles Rice, of Bellevue Hospital, and Messrs. 

 Eimer & Amend, for lending me this interesting collection, which 

 contains some of the latest additions. 



You will probably ask yourselves the question. What is the limit 

 to these productions? There is none. Perkin made the first aniline 

 color in 1856, and to-day there are over 500 colors known. Ten 

 years ago one or two of these synthetic remedies were known ; 

 to-day there are nearly 200 that have been used. 



To-day we have not yet made quinine — one of the most remark- 

 able and useful products of the vegetable kingdom — but there are 

 hundreds of chemists working at the problem, and even while T 

 utter these words some industrious worker may be recording 

 experiments that will teach us how to make it artificially. 



The lecture was illustrated by a large collection of new substances 

 used in pharmacy and medicine. 



Dr. Bolton expressed his appreciation of the very int(;resting 

 and valuable paper by Professor Elliott, and begged leave to call 

 his attention to the fact that chloroform was discovered in America, 

 as well as by Soubeiran, by Liebig, and by Dumas. Dr. Samuel 

 Guthrie, of Sackett's Harbor, New York, obtained chloroform, in 

 alcoholic solution, by distilling together chloride of lime and alcohol 

 in 1831. He described the process in the January number (1832) 

 of the Avi. J. Science (Silliman), and in the July number of the 

 same year he gives the method of obtaining the product free from 

 alcohol. He called the substance "chloric ether." 



Dr. Guthrie's discovery was certainly entirely original and inde- 

 pendent of Soubeiran, who published his process in the Ann. Ghim. 

 Phxjs. for February, 1831. Guthrie's chloroform was fi?-st employed 



