386 Miscellanies. 
thirds of whiskey do very wells This lamp may prove very useful in 
mining districts, as a constant light that may be depended upon, if 
the reservoir is periodically replenished.—Jbid. , 
..6. A new metal discovered.—M. Dulong read, on the 7th of Feb- 
ruary last, to the French Institute, a letter from Berzelius, which 
announces the discovery of a new, simple substance by Mr. Sestrom, 
director of the mines of Fahlun in Dalecarlia. Mr. Sestrom being 
engaged in examining an iron, remarkable for its softness, discovered 
in it a substance, which appeared to him to be new, but in such small 
quantity, that he could not determine with accuracy all its properties. 
Afterwards, however, he found it more abundantly in the scorie of 
the iron, and was thus enabled to prove that the substance in question 
was a new metal, to which he gave the name of Vanadium, after an 
ancient Scandinavian deity. We have had communicated to us the 
following additional notice. Humboldt presented to the Institute spe~ 
cimens of vanadium, the new metal recently discovered in the iron of 
Esterholm by Mr. Sestrom, and which also exists in Mexico, in a 
brown ore of lead of Zimapan. M. Del Rio, Professor in the school 
of Mines, of Mexico, had extracted from that ore-a substance, which, 
to his apprehension, resembled a new metal, to which he gave the 
name of Erythronium. M. Collet Descotils, to whom he sent a 
specimen, could not admit that erythronium is a single substance, and 
believed he had demonstrated that it was an impure. chrome. lt 
would appear that Prof. Del Rio agreed in ce, and there 
was no longer any idea of its being a new metal. But since the dis- 
covery of Sestrom was known to Voller, he, struck with the resem- 
blances which exist between the properties of Vanadium and that 
which the Mexican chemist attributes to his erythronium, has repeat- 
ed the analysis of the brown ore of lead of Zimapan, and from which 
he has obtained a simple body perfectly identical with that of the iron 
ore of d’Esterholm. It is. worthy of remark that so rare a meta 
should have been discovered in two places so far asunder as Scandi- 
navia and Mexico.—Jbid. 
' MEDICAL CHEMISTRY. 
1. Efficacy of Iodine.—A report was made to the French Acade- 
iny, on the 3d of January, 1831, by Duméril and Magendie, on the 
treatment of scrofulous diseases, by preparations of iodine, at the hos- 
pital St. Louis, by M. Lucou. “The Academy has already been 
informed by the report which we had the honor to make, with what 
success M. Lugol treats those diseases. This success is such that a 
rig 
