- 9 8 - 



the trituration of cloves, roses, walnuts or coloquints, has often led to cases 

 of unconsciousness. Snake root and bug wort have a very faint unpleasant odour, 

 which, however, occasionally is sufficient to produce headache or even nausea. 

 There are also people who cannot tolerate the smell of freshly ground coffee, 

 which in rare cases is even capable of causing vomiting, although it has a 

 refreshing and appetising action on the olfactory nerves of most people. Tests 

 have now also been made with the view of employing certain odours for 

 medicinal purposes. The perfume of vanilla and heliotrope is said to render 

 valuable services, by soothing very nervous persons. The observation is also 

 said to have been made, that workpeople, both male and female, occupied 

 with the preparation of a perfume, or in its neighbourhood, are generally in 

 a better state of health than other workpeople. But it can hardly be expected 

 that perfumes will ever form an important addition to materia medica\ they 

 will probably remain as hitherto an object of luxury, although it cannot be 

 denied that at least some of them possess a stimulating action of which the 

 occasional usefulness has nothing to do with fashion or effeminacy". 



With due consideration to the existing earlier work, C. Harries 1 ) 

 has published the results of his interesting researches "On the action 

 of ozone on organic compounds". The author was led to the 

 more detailed study of the oxidising properties of ozone through 

 observing its action on caoutchouc, which is thereby converted, under 

 suitable conditions, into an oily product. Further experiments then 

 showed, that the manner in which ozone acts on unsaturated hydro- 

 carbons in the absence of water, must be regarded as the absorption 

 of one molecule ozone each by a double-linking present: — 



° o o 



\/ 



o 



In bodies which, besides an ethylene linking, also contain a car- 

 bonyl group, the reaction occurs according to the following diagram, 

 for example: — 



3N )c = CH-CO-CH 3 + 3 + 0= 3 \c_CH-C-CH 3 

 CH 3 / CH 3 /| | || 



G — O O 



\S II 



o o 



These products, called "ozonides", are, as a rule, colourless syrups 

 with an unpleasant suffocating odour; they are partly highly explosive; 

 a few, however, can be distilled in vacuo without decomposition. With 

 potassium iodide, indigo solution, and potassium permanganate they 

 show the reactions of peroxides. With concentrated sulphuric acid 



*) Liebig's Annalen 343 (1905), 311. 



