618 
INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS. 
and taurine, a principle elaborated in the liver, by Strecker.’ 
This is not merely interesting, as illustrative of one of the 
profoundest mysteries of nature, but it is valuable, as giving 
a hope that certain highly useful, but rare articles of nature’s 
laboratory may yet be formed in man’s. 6 If quinine, for 
instance, to which Peruvian bark owes its efficacy, be, as it 
would appear from recent researches, a modified condition ot 
ammonia, why may not a Hofmann be able to produce it for 
us from its elements, as he has already done so many other 
alkaloids of similar constitution ?’ The learned doctor even 
glances at a possible artificial substitute for coal. Why not 
add, bread ? Meanwhile, c chemistry has given token of her 
powers, by threatening to alter the course of commerce and to 
reverse the tide of human industry. She has discovered, it is 
said, a substitute for the cochineal insect in a beautiful dye 
producible from guano. She has shown that our supply of 
animal food might be obtained at a cheaper rate from the 
Antipodes, by simply boiling down the juices of the flesh of 
cattle now wasted and thrown aside in those countries, and 
importing the extract in a state of concentration. She has 
pointed out that one of the earths which constitute the prin- 
cipal material of our globe contains a metal, as light as glass, 
as malleable and ductile as copper, and as little liable to rust 
as silver ; thus possessing properties so valuable, that when 
means have been found of separating it economically from its 
ore, it will be capable of superseding the metals in common use, 
and thus of rendering metallurgy an employment, not of 
certain districts only, but of every part of the earth to which 
science and civilisation have penetrated.” 
I need hardly add that this metal is aluminium, first as- 
certained to exist by Sir H. Davy, in 1808 ; although its 
true nature was not demonstrated by him. As yet, it can- 
not be said to be available for commercial purposes, nor does 
it possess all the valuable properties that have been attri- 
buted to it ; nevertheless, its obtainment from ordinary clay 
is an interesting chemical fact, whilst its source is inexhaus- 
tible. 
Sir J. Kay Shuttleworth, in his address on the Progress 
of Medical Science, says : “ The researches of Liebig and 
his school into the chemical constitution of organic fluids 
and structures, and on the nourishment, growth, and decay of 
living bodies, and those of Dumas and Boussingault on the 
Balance of Organic Life, concur in laying the only true 
scientific basis of a chemical pathology. To these have suc- 
ceeded the researches of Bernard into one of the functions of 
the liver in supplying the blood with sugar, which probably 
