iQisl Edgar G. Miller, Jr. 207 



intended to overcome the defects of the original method due to the 

 use of ether alone, but Bunting merely evaded important deficien- 

 cies of one kind to introduce serious imperfections of another. 

 Bunting has not proved, by any experimental procedura, that his 

 new method is more delicate quantitatively than the conventional 

 f erric chlorid process ; he has merely indicated that the colorations 

 obtained with his new method are more striking in some propor- 

 tions — " more vivid " — than those observed with the f erric chlorid 

 test as commonly applied. He has not shown that any given pro- 

 portion of sulfocyanate which could not be detected by the conven- 

 tional process would be revealed by his new method, which is the 

 heart of the matter. He seems to have deluded himself into think- 

 ing that, because the colorations obtained with his new process are, 

 in certain selected proportions, more intense than those for the 

 same selected proportions with the conventional ferric chlorid test, 

 the new method itself is more distinct, therefore more accurate, 

 and consequently more useful. H he had followed these compar- 

 ative colorations step by step to their vanishing points for each test, 

 with adequate controls, he would have avoided this fallacy in his 

 Claims. 



With the aid of the conventional ferric chlorid process, it is not 

 at all difficult to detect i part of sulfocyanate — potassium salt, Kahl- 

 baum preparation — in 4,000,000 parts of water. Neither of us has 

 been able to do so with Bunting's process. Bunting himself claims 

 that "by careful technic a distinct color (the yellow of ferric 

 chlorid?) may be obtained from a sol. which contains o.oooi per 

 cent. — only i part in 1,000,000 — of KCNS." Our comparative 

 tests with saliva have given us equally striking differences in favor 

 of the conventional method. All our tests were suitably controlled, 

 of course, and very slight though significant differences in color 

 were easily observed as a consequence. 



[The senior author opened the discussion of Dr. Bunting's paper, on this 

 " improved " method, af ter its original presentation at a meeting of the Academy 

 of Stomatology of Philadelphia, March 28, 1914. The foregoing facts were pre- 

 sented in that discussion. For further details see Dental Cosmos, 1914, Ivi, 

 p. 856. 



In the printed version of his reply to the senior author's remarks, Bunting 

 said that "no dilution of ferric chlorid is anything but yellow" (p. 866). This 



