96 
April, 1882. 
THE CHEMIST AND DRUGGIST. 
for three days. Having filtered it, pour it on 1 lb. (avoirdupois 
weight) of sugar contained in an evaporating dish or other 
suitable vessel, and allow the alcohol to evaporate spontaneously. 
When dry dissolve in half-pint of water in which, if orange 
syrup is to be made, ounces of citric acid — if lemon, 2 
ounces of the acid and 2 drachms — are to be dissolved. This 
mixture, added to 11 pints of simple syrup, will produce fine 
flavoured syrups, which keep well. 
SECRET REMEDIES. 
In considering the subject a distinction should be made 
between “ secret remedies” and “ specialties.” A “ specialty” 
may be defined as any substance or product which, prepared 
according to an official formula, realises an improvement in 
the art of pharmacy, and presents special therapeutic advan- 
tages. A “secret remedy” is any simple or compound 
substance or medicine employed in the treatment of disease, 
which has not received official sanction or publication, and 
which has not been prepared for a particular case upon a 
medical prescription. One is the product of the professional 
skill and practical sense of the pharmacist, and is generally 
met with in competitions and industrial exhibitions. The 
other is a product of charlatanism and an inordinate desire to 
acquire a fortune rapidly ; it makes itself known especially 
by advertisements in the public prints. Even if the remedies 
of which neither the basis nor the proportions are known 
ought to be rejected from therapeutics, genuine specialties, 
which mark a progress in the pharmaceutic art, or are intended 
to facilitate the administration of certain medicines, might, 
up to a certain point, be admitted. The distinction between 
a specialty and a secret remedy is not, however, always easy 
to establish. 
The public has acquired a taste for secret remedies, and will 
continue to take them ; secret remedies eDjoy a prestige that 
imposes upon the public, and it will be difficult to fight against 
this infatuation. The word public is here used in the widest 
sense, as including the learned as well as the ignorant. And 
it is certain the public will have secret remedies as long as it 
has incurable invalids haunted by the hope of being healed or 
having their pains assuaged. The medicine that would appear 
without any value if it were given simply under the cover of 
the pharmacist, with his label, becomes a panacea, and imposes 
upon the public as soon as it is noisily advertised and covered 
with a stamp and a specious prospectus ; if, in addition, it be 
prescribed by a medical man, the confidence becomes un- 
limited . — Pharmaceutical Journal. 
INQUEST. 
Mr. Maunsell held an inquest on 6th March, at the Travel- 
lers’ Rest Hotel, Gerogery, on the body of William Francis 
Wilkes, chemist. The following evidence was taken : — James 
E. Britton deposed : I first met the deceased in Albury on the 
20th February, when he informed me he was hard up ; that he 
was a chemist by profession, and had been managing a shop in 
Chiltern. He told me his father was a medical man in Eng- 
land, and that he was expecting money from home. I saw the 
deceased the last time alive about a quarter of a mile from 
Brown’s Springs Station. He used to eat large quantities of 
salt and drink a great deal of water. He had a good appetite. 
Jesse Young, boundary rider, deposed : I found deceased lying 
dead on a rock about a mile from the station on Tuesday last. 
He was lying on his face, and there was no appearance of any 
struggle. There was no blood on him. Henry Lucas, manager 
of Brown’s Springs Station, corroborated the evidence of last 
witness. His hat and clothes were found half a mile from the 
place where he was found. Deceased had only his trousers on ; 
no shirt. Dr. J. Leonard, duly qualified medical practitioner, 
deposed : I find nothing to account for death, but from the 
evidence given I believe him to have died from exhaustion 
consequent on exposure. I think he must have had delirium, 
and, probably, had been drinking heavily recently. The jury 
found the cause of death was exhaustion and exposure. 
VICTORIA PHARMACEUTICAL SOCIETY’S MEDAL IN 
GOLD. 
School of pharmacy prizes presented by the Council — 
Chemistry (“elementary and practical”), botany, materia 
mediea, and pharmacy. 
At the end of each term a gold medal will be offered for 
competition. Students who have attended more than one 
term will be ineligible to compete. The medals can only be 
taken by students who have worked in the laboratory for not 
less than 75 per cent, of their period of study, and who are 
connected with the Society as registered apprentices of the 
same. On receiving the report of the examiners, the Council 
will award the prizes. 
jflotcs anb Abstracts. 
Fowler’s Solution. — Dannenberg does not regard the 
algaceous growth, occasionally observed in this liquid, as 
being of any importance concerning the arsenic present ; but 
he directs attention to the gradual oxidation, in partly filled 
bottles, of the arsenious to arsenic acid, as was shown by 
Fresenius many years ago. According to Frerichs and 
Wcehler arsenic acid is far less poisonous than arsenious acid, 
and it is obvious that it cannot be immaterial which of the 
two compounds is present. Fowler’s solution should be pre- 
pared only in small quantities and preserved in well-stopped 
vials. — Phar. Centralhalle, 1881, p. 319. 
Preparation of Sodium Ethylate. — Hager gives the 
following directions : — 100 grams absolute alcohol are placed 
into a glass flask of 350 ccm. (about 12 ozs.) capacity ; small 
pieces of the metallic sodium of the size of a pea or bean are 
then gradually added, and the flask is closed with a cork, 
through which a long open glass tube passes for the purpose 
of condensing the alcoholic vapours evolved during the reac- 
tion. The addition of sodium is continued, until 12 grams of 
the metal have been used, repeated agitation being required 
towards the end of the process. The hot thickish liquid is now 
poured into a porcelain dish, the flask is rinsed out with a 
little hot alcohol, any undissolved sodium is carefully removed, 
and the liquid is heated until, after cooling, it will completely 
solidify, when the mass is rubbed into a fine powder and care- 
fully preserved. Thus prepared, it contains some alcohol in 
combination, which may be expelled by heating it to 200° G. In 
contact with water it is decomposed into alcohol and sodium 
hydrate. Its action is milder than that of caustic soda, and it 
is more conveniently applied than the latter. Richardson’s 
sodium ethylate is a clear solution of 1 part of the above com- 
pound in three parts of absolute alcohol. Freshly prepared it 
is colourless ; but brown yellow if made from old ethylate. — 
Ibid., p. 359. 
Elastic Adhesive Plaster. — Dr. W. P. Morgan, in a 
communication to the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal , 
states that he has been trying to obtain an elastic adhesive 
plaster that, when attached to the skin, should yield to the 
movement of the muscles and parts beneath without the sen- 
sation of stiffness or an uncomfortable wrinkling. Not being 
able to obtain an article of this description, he procured some 
india-rubber, and, giving it a coat of plaster such as is recom- 
mended in Griffith’s Formulary under the name of “ Boyn- 
ton’s Adhesive Plaster” (lead plaster 1 lb., resin 6 drachms), 
he found the material he wished. After using it as a simple 
covering for cases of psoriasis, intertrigo, &c., he extended its 
use to incised wounds, abscesses, &c., and found it invaluable. 
Placing one end of the strip of plaster upon one lip of the 
wound, and then stretching the rubber and fastening the 
other end to the opposite lip of the wound there is perfect ap- 
position of the several parts, the elastic rubber acting con- 
tinually to draw and keep the parts together. When unable 
to get the sheets of rubber, one may use broad letter-bands 
(sold by stationers), by giving them a coat of plaster. — Ohio 
Medical Journal, September, 1881, p. 136. 
A valuable paper, by M. Paul Bert, on the administration 
of anaesthetics, has recently been read before the Academy of 
Sciences ( Comptes Rendus, Yol. xciii., p. 768). M. Bert finds 
by experiment that if an anaesthetic be mixed with variable 
quantities of atmospheric air there comes a point at which an 
animal made to breathe such an atmosphere exhibits anaes- 
thesia, and that this point bears a definite relation to the 
point at which the anaesthetic proves fatal. In experiments 
made upon dogs, mice, and sparrows, using chloroform, ether, 
amylene, and bromide and chloride of ethyl, it was found that 
the fatal dose was double that required to produce insensi- 
bility. In the case of protoxide of nitrogen the ratio is one 
to three. The result shows that chloroform acts not by the 
quantity inhaled, but by the amount of air mixed with it. 
This important result, although the experiments had not then 
been made upon mankind, shows that in all probability care- 
ful observation made by those who have the administration 
of chloroform in their hands may reduce its use to a minimum 
of risk and that in the future it may be employed with scien- 
tific precision. An instrument by which the amount of ad- 
mixture of air and chloroform could be easily regulated 
before inhalation seems therefore to be a desideratum. 
