1864. | Chemistry. 223 
In these days of falsification it may be of some interest to give a 
simple test for artificially-coloured wines, which we owe to Blume. 
He saturates a piece of bread crumb with the wine to be tested and 
places it in a plate full of water. If the wine is artificially coloured, 
the water very soon becomes reddish violet, but if the colouring 
matter is natural, the water, after a quarter or half an hour, is but very 
little coloured, and a slight opalescence only is perceptible. 
From its ready liberation of sulphurous acid, hyposulphite of soda 
is likely to become a valuable bleaching agent; M. Artus has applied 
it very successfully to the bleaching of sponges. He first washes 
them in a weak solution of caustic soda, and then, after thorough 
rinsing with water, transfers them to a weak mixture of hyposulphite 
of soda and dilute hydrochloric acid. In a short time the sponges 
become nearly white, without having their valuable qualities injured in 
the least; they are then to be taken out and well washed. 
The Calabar bean has been well investigated physiologically in 
this country, but the alkaloid, to which it owes its wonderful property 
of contracting the pupil of the eye, has only very recently been isolated 
by MM. Jobst and Hesse;* they have given it the name of Phyto- 
stigmine, and as yet have only found it in the cotyledon. It is a 
brownish-yellow amorphous mass, easily soluble in ether, alcohol, and 
benzol, and slightly soluble in cold water. Its aqueous solution has 
a decidedly alkaline reaction. It produces very strong contraction of 
the pupil, and one curious fact observed, is that the poison produces 
contraction of the pupil when applied to recently-dead animals. Now 
that Calabar bean is so extensively used by ophthalmic surgeons, the 
isolation of its active principle cannot fail to be of value. 
Poison bottles and poison corks, poison caps and poison stoppers, 
have all successively been tried, with the object of preventing careless 
or sleepy nurses from giving medicines out of the wrong bottles and 
thereby poisoning their patients ; but they are all open to the objec- 
tion that when the liquid for which they have been originally used is 
exhausted, the very nice-locking bottle is generally replenished with 
eau de cologne, tincture of senna, or such-like innocent compounds, and 
the object of having a peculiarly-contrived bottle is thereby defeated. 
Perhaps the most unobjectionable of all these attempts to substitute 
a mechanical contrivance for ordinary caution and common sense, has 
been recently brought forward by Mr. Thonger before the Phar- 
maceutical Society. It consistsof a patent label having a border of 
sand-paper round it, thus appealing strongly to the sense of touch, 
which it is presumed will warn the holder that danger is near. These 
labels are applicable to dispensing bottles and to the smallest phials, 
and possess an advantage over any other contrivance, as they can 
be stuck on any vessel, and as readily removed when the poisonous 
contents are done with and the bottle is required for something else. 
The Society of Medical Sciences of Brussels some time ago offered 
a prize for the discovery of a substitute for the Cinchona alkaloids. 
* ¢Annalen der Chem. und Pharm.’ exxix. 115. 
