118 TRANSACTIONS OF THE [MAR. 21, 
Some of these bodies are not new to the chemist, but the synthetic 
production of some new alkaloidal substances led the physician to 
experiment with other products of the chemical laboratory, until 
to-day there are probably 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. 
Kimer & 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 I 
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. Boiron expressed his appreciation of the very interesting 
and valuable paper by ProreEssor ELuiort, 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 [831. He described the process in the January number (1832) 
of the Am. 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. Chim. 
Phys. for February, 1831. Guthrie’s chloroform was first employed 
