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ROPIJLAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
CHEMISTRY. 
A Pure Dextrin from the Action of Diastase on Starch has been recently 
described by M. Bondonneau (in the “Bull. Soc. Chim.” II. xxiii. 98). A 
kilogram of dry starch, diffused in two litres of water, was treated in the 
cold with an extract of 250 grams of bruised malt in 500 grams of water ; 
the whole being heated on the water-bath to 75° until the starch had dis- 
appeared. The liquid was then carried to boiling to destroy the diastase, 
filtered through animal charcoal, and concentrated to 32° — 33° Baume. To 
free the dextrin in this solution from the glucose (dextrose) present, it was 
first reprecipitated five or six times with alcohol, then treated with a copper 
test made with cupric chloride and sodium hydrate ; this latter treatment 
destroying the dextrose. As thus obtained, the dextrin showed no color- 
ation with iodine, gave only feeble indications with the copper test (equi- 
valent to 1*85 per cent, dextrose), reduced gold chloride and ammonio- 
silver nitrate, gave an abundant precipitate with a solution of barium 
hydrate and with ammoniacal lead acetate, but none with lead sub-acetate. 
The dextrose present the author believes to be produced by small quantities 
of non-coagulable albuminoids present, acting as ferments. By care and 
rapidity in operating, dextrin may be obtained devoid of reducing power. 
The rotary power of the dextrin thus obtained is aj = 176° to the right j 
that produced by torrefaction being aj = 183°. 
A Substance in the Urine after taking Chloral Hydrate. — In a late number 
of the u Comptes Rendus,” MM. Musculus and De Merme have published a 
paper on this important subject. They say that foreign substances introduced 
into the human organism are rejected in states which may be divided 
into three groups : — 1. Bodies which pass unaltered through the system, 
such as creatin, acetamid, &c., and are found unchanged in the urine. 2. 
Bodies which are decomposed, and whose decomposition products are found 
in the blood, the saliva, and the urine, such as leucin and glycocoll, which 
yield urea. 3. Bodies which combine chemically with some product of 
the organism, and thus pass into the urine. The type of this group is 
benzoic acid, which combines with glycocoll, and is eliminated as hippuric 
acid. In the urine of dogs poisoned with chloral hydrate, Eeltz and Ritter 
have recently discovered chloral, sugar, and another organic substance pre- 
cipitable by the basic acetate of lead. It is an acid which forms stellar 
groups of crystals resembling those of tyrosin, and containing — 
Carbon . . . 31-60 
Hydrogen 4-36 
Chlorine 26*70 
It is not expelled from its salts by acetic acid. At the boiling-point it 
reduces alkaline solutions of copper and bismuth, and salts of silver, and 
decolourises sulphate of indigo. It turns the plane of polarisation to the 
left. The authors hold that chloral should rank in the third group with 
benzoic acid, and propose for the acid found the provisional name of 
urochloralic. 
Milk in Health and Disease, — This important subject has been lately 
