50 



NA TURE 



[November 21, 1907 



and device— which are to be found in their glass 

 factories. But perhaps, after all, this is only the 

 author's method of adorning his tale and of pointing 

 his moral — to enable him, in fact, to bring out in 

 high relief, and by forcible contrast with this story 

 of confusion and waste, how the science of glass- 

 making is studied and practised at Jena. 



" The romantic deportment of the nitrogen atom " 

 — due to a certain " temperamental nervousness " 

 " which sends it flying on the slightest pretext from 

 one atomic community to another," is, he confesses, 

 fascinatingly interesting, and this interest prompts 

 him to follow the vagaries of this "labile element" 

 — this " versatile restless nitrogen " — until it is 

 caught and transformed into what he calls " Kalt- 

 stickstoff," whence it passes into carrots and 

 potatoes. The story, as a story, loses nothing 

 in the telling as told by Mr. Duncan, but the serious 

 student who eagerly desires " to know the significant 

 results of modern knowledge " will be saddened, but 

 not made wiser, by the total lack of accurate state- 

 ment of ascertained facts in connection with " the 

 problem of the fi.xation of nitrogen and what man 

 may do when he must," which constitutes the sub- 

 ject-matter of chapter iii. 



America has recently grappled with the subject of 

 industrial alcohol, and Mr. Duncan deals with the 

 new departure in characteristic fashion. As regards 

 the alcohols in general, " the one bearing the pecu- 

 liarly graceful name of Ethyl is the flower of the 

 sisterhood and the subject of chapter vii." In be- 

 ginning to enumerate its properties, " it is em- 

 barrassingly plain " that its properties " are not in 

 one bundle"; "it is the most perplexing substance 

 with which man has ever had to deal" — "a perfect 

 femininity of varying and conflicting properties " 

 functioning " ubiquitously and contrariously in the 

 affairs of man." But chequered and dubious as is 

 the reputation of " the flower of the sisterhood " — 

 " the theme of poets, and contrariwise, the rage of 

 publicists," this "angel-demon" is sweetness and 

 purity when compared with " the wine of wood " — 

 methyl alcohol — of which it appears some ten million 

 gallons " have, yearly, been floating about America in 

 various use." 



" .\ not inconsiderable quantity of it is absorbed by 

 the low negro populations of the country, who drink 

 it under the appellation ' white horse ' or 'old mule,' 

 or by a pleasing mode of rhetorical transition, and 

 in order, perhaps, to distinguish it from ' Ethyl,' as 

 'Maude.' Much of it again has appeared in 'witch 

 hazel,' 'bay rum,' ' eau de Cologne,' 'Florida 

 water,' es.sences, ' Jamaica ginger,' ' extract of 

 lemon,' 'liniments,' patent medicine nostrums, and 

 red ink. Poor and decadent people drink these things, 

 and barring individual idiosyncrasies, whether it be 

 n man in Indian Territory who drinks red ink, or 

 a man in North Dakota who drinks ' Jamaica 

 ginger,' there is apparently a fairly uniform result. 

 Out of ten men who drink four ounces each of pure 

 methyl alcohol in any form \vhatever, four will prob- 

 ably die, two of them becoming blind before death ; 

 the remaining six may recover, but of these two will 

 probably be permanently blind. Even the absorp- 

 tion of its vapour through the lungs, or of the liquid 

 through the skin, may produce permanent blindness. 

 The ' hearings ' before the Committee on Ways and 



NO. T9S6, VOL. 77] 



Means afford ample confirmation of this in the pro- 

 cession that filed before it of blind wrecks that had 

 once been hat stiffeners, varnishcrs or shellackers, 

 men who did not drink methyl alcohol, but who 

 merely handled it as a solvent. The harm wrought 

 by the substance has been greatly accentuated in the 

 last few years by its manufacture and sale in a puri- 

 fied form, the so-called 'deodorized' methyl alcohol, 

 whose smell gives no warning of its deadly nature." 



Let the sporadic drinkers of methylated spirit in 

 this country now take warning from this fearful re- 

 cital of the risks they run. Perhaps, too. the users 

 of industrial alcohol among us may congratulate 

 themselves that the revenue authorities now require 

 only half the former quantity of this pernicious sub- 

 stance to be used in " methylation." And perhaps, 

 too, they may see some justification, in the interests 

 of the community, for the maintenance of llie present 

 high duty on " potable " methyl alcohol. It was, of 

 course, the relatively low price of this alcohol in 

 .■\merica — 70 cents as against 2 dollars and 8 cents 

 for the taxed ethyl alcohol, that led to such a wide- 

 spread substitution of the wood alcohol for the 

 alcohol of fermentation. 



What with the "whisky trust" "nobbling" the 

 "wood naphtha trust," and the druggists forcing 

 up the retail price of industrial alcohol to ninety 

 cents a gallon — "a disgrace," says the author, "to 

 commercial decency " — .America is only at the be- 

 ginning of her troubles in this matter, and there are 

 already signs that the present regulations will have 

 to be considerably modified if her manufacturers are 

 to reap the full benefits of untaxed spirits. 



The other chapters of the book deal with the indus- 

 trial applications of catalysis ; the use of the rare 

 earths in illumination; the electric furnace, the 

 manufacture of synthetic perfumes and of medicines; 

 opsonins and inoculation, and the applications of cellu- 

 lose. The last chapter gives an account of a scheme 

 of industrial fellowships to be held in connection w-ith 

 a university which, like that of Kansas, enjoys the 

 advantage of a department of applied chemistry, and 

 the author illustrates its working by its application 

 to the discovery of improvements in the chemistry of 

 laundering, with the object of discovering " how 

 the swift and progressive disintegration of the shirt " 

 in the laundry may be arrested. Considering that 

 the people of America pay a laundry bill of nearly 

 twenty-five million dollars a week, Mr. Duncan 

 thinks that a yearly subsidy ,of five hundred dollars, 

 payable monthly to the holder of the fellowship for 

 two years, in return for a comprehensive monograph 

 on the chemistry of laundering, is the merest trifle in 

 view of its bearing on the problem of the welfare of 

 .shirts. " \\'hat more can be desired by a young man 

 at the threshold of his activity, even if it means th.it 

 he must leave the ' nook merely monastic ' of a pro- 

 fessor in embryo for a life of industrial alarums and 

 strenuous war? " 



I>ut this is only one of the many " exasperating, 

 vitallv important " problems which await solution at 

 the hands of him who will combine the practical 

 knowledge of the workshop with the special know- 

 ledge that awaits him in the class-rooms at Lawrence, 

 Kansas, L^.S..'^. 



