12 CHEMISTRY 



had either to seize upon and exploit this British 

 weakness or to remain in penurious obscurity. 

 Germany chose the former alternative, and we now 

 see the English textile industry, amounting to some 

 two hundred millions per annum, embarrassed for 

 lack of a million or so pounds worth per annum of 

 German dyestufrs. 



The ignominy of this situation is, however, 

 small in comparison with many other accompani- 

 ments of the Continental control of dyestuffs; 

 the war has forced upon us a vast number of other 

 troubles in this connexion, some small and some 

 large. In illustration of one of the smaller kind 

 attention may be called to the treatment of piro- 

 plasmosis, one of the most fatal diseases to which 

 domestic and agricultural animals are liable in our 

 tropical colonies ; Professor Nuttall explains in this 

 volume that injection with a coal tar dyestuff, 

 Trypan blue, constitutes a fairly certain cure for 

 this otherwise fatal disease. The Trypan blue is 

 produced in the German colour works and supplies 

 are now cut off. Again, photographic plates can 

 be rendered sensitive to the red, yellow and green 

 regions of the spectrum by bathing in dilute solu- 

 tions of certain dyestuffs ; these dyestuffs are made 

 only in Germany and the production of ortho- 

 chromatic and panchromatic plates, which are 

 largely used in aeroplane photography, is now in 

 jeopardy. These may perhaps be regarded as the 

 pinpricks of the present situation; of enormously 



