Biographical Memoir of the late Dr Turner. 241 



A third was his " Analysis of Sour Clay,"'"'* a very singular 

 mineral production brought from Persia by Lieut. Alexander, 

 where it is used for acidulating sherbet, and which Dr Turner 

 discovered to consist almost entirely of sulphate of lime with free 

 sulphuric acid, derived in all probability from the combustion 

 of sulphur. Of much greater interest to us, however, are his 

 two other papers of the same year, *' On the Detection of Anti- 

 mony in Mixed Fluids," -f- and " On the Effects of the Poison- 

 ous Gases on Vegetables."" t The former is one of the most 

 beautiful monographs with which I am acquainted in the whole 

 range of Toxicological Chemistry ; and must excite great regret 

 in every admirer of this branch of medical knowledge, that it 

 was not enriched by farther contributions from so accurate 

 and acute an inquirer. In the present paper he shews that in 

 every form in which antimony is at all likely to present itself to 

 the notice of the Toxicologist, it is brought into the fluid con- 

 dition by means of tartaric and muriatic acids ; — that from all 

 states of solution it is thrown down of a peculiar tint by sul- 

 phuretted-hydrogen gas ; — and that the sulphuret so obtained 

 may be characteristically reduced on the most minute scale by 

 means of a current of hydrogen gas aided by heat. Such is the 

 method now generally followed for discovering antimonv in toxi- 

 cological researches ; I have often employed it with great suc- 

 cess ; and I am wholly at a loss to understand how any man 

 should have found it, as some say they have done, unmanage- 

 able. In the investigations upon which his other medico-legal 

 paper is founded, I had again the happiness to be his coadjutor. 

 It is well known that actions at law have repeatedly been brought 

 against manufacturers of black ash, carbonate of soda, and other 

 substances where acid vapours are largely disengaged, on ac- 

 count of the destruction alleged to be occasioned to vegetable 

 life in their vicinity. In one of these actions Dr Turner and I 

 were consulted ; and we were requested to supply a gap which 

 had been unaccountably left in all the previous cases of the same 

 nature, by making expuess trial of the effects on vegetation aris- 

 ing from exposure to the acid vapours disengaged from the ma- 



' • Edin. New rhilos. Journ. jv. 243. 1827. t Edin. Med, and Surg. 



Joum. xxviii. 71. J 827. * Ibidem, 356. 



