June 9, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



877 



Booth had few, if any, superiors as a 

 teacher of practical chemistry.' From 

 1836 till 1845 he held the chair of chem- 

 istry applied to the arts in the Franklin 

 Institute, delivering three courses of lec- 

 tures extending over three years each. He 

 was the author of an ' Eneyclopfedia of 

 Chemistry' (Philadelphia, 1850) and with 

 Campbell Morfit of a report 'On Recent 

 Improvements in the Chemical Arts,' pub- 

 lished by the Smithsonian Institution in 

 1852. His appointment to the mint was 

 coincident with the discovery of gold in 

 California, and the new processes required 

 to prepare the bullion for coinage were 

 largely of his own invention and many of 

 them, to use his own words, 'were not 

 known outside the mint.'* 



It is well known that prior to 1850 and 

 for some time thereafter Philadelphia was 

 the acknowledged center for the manufac- 

 ture of chemicals for medicinal use. To 

 collect the details of the many improved 

 methods for the production of these chem- 

 icals would be a long and difficult task, and 

 would require more space than I have at 

 my command in this article. The names 

 of such firms as Powers, Weightman 

 and Rosengarten and Sons are readily 

 recognized as those of manufacturers of 

 standard chemicals. M. I. Wilbert has 

 recently published a paper, entitled 'Early 

 Chemical Manufacturers : A Contribution 

 to the History and Rise of the Development 

 of Chemical Industries in America,' to 

 which I must refer you for further in- 

 formation concerning their growth and 

 progress.! 



I am reminded in this connection that 

 the name of Edward Robinson Squibb 



* A sketch of his career by Patterson Du Bois 

 was presented before the American Philosophical 

 Society on October 5, 1888, and has since been 

 issued as a separate of eight pages. 



f Journal of the Franklin Institute, CLVII., 

 1904, p. 365. 



(1819-1900) is one well worthy of deserved 

 recognition among manufacturers of chem- 

 icals. The ether prepared by him by 

 processes of his own invention has long 

 been accepted as standard. For a brief 

 period during the early fifties of the last 

 century Dr. Squibb was associated with J. 

 Lawrence Smith (1818-83) in Louisville, 

 Ky., in the commercial production of chem- 

 ical reagents and of the rarer pharma- 

 ceutical preparations.* It is also proper 

 to add the name of the Baker and Adamson 

 Chemical Company of Easton, Pa., as that 

 of a corporation which has established a 

 reputation for the manufacture of pure 

 chemicals by processes, many of which are 

 of their own devising. The success of this 

 young firm is generally admitted to be due 

 to Edward Hart (1854- ), who fills the 

 chair of chemistry in Lafayette College. 



Eben Norton Horsford (1818-93) made 

 distinct contributions to technical chem- 

 istry and among these may be mentioned 

 his invention of condensed milk. Accord- 

 ing to Charles L. Jackson, he originally 

 prepared this most valuable article of food 

 for use in Dr. Kane's Arctic expedition 

 and afterwards presented the process to 

 one of his assistants, who then sold it to 

 Gail Borden. His name, however, is more 

 commonly associated with his invention of 

 a phosphatic yeast powder, the object of 

 which is to return to the bread the phos- 

 phates lost in bolting the flour, and %vhieh, 

 as is well known, form such an essential 

 constituent of the food of animals. He 

 also devised 'a marvelously compact and 

 light marching ration of compressed beef 

 and parched wheat grits,' which found 

 some use at the time of the Civil War, and 

 his name is also attached to the preparation 



* See ' Original Researches in Mineralogy and 

 Chemistry,' by J. Lawrence Smith (Louisville, 

 Ky., 1884), p. xxxviii. 



