57S 
PROVINCIAL TRANSACTIONS. 
LIVERPOOL CHEMISTS’ ASSOCIATION. 
The Thirteenth General Meeting was held at the Royal Institution, April 23rd, 1868 ; 
the President, Mr. R. Sumner, in the chair. 
Mr. Murphy read a letter from the Secretary, who was detained in London profes¬ 
sionally, and at his request assumed the secretarial duties. 
The President hoped that members would make every allowance for Mr. Davies, and 
would contribute as far as possible to make the meeting an interesting one, in the ab¬ 
sence of the paper which Mr. Davies had undertaken to read that evening. 
Donations to the Library of the Proceedings of the Liverpool Architectural Society 
and the Proceedings of the Polytechnic, were announced, and thanks voted to the donors. 
Mr. Robinson remarked that he thought it was desirable that more attention should 
be devoted to the Museum, aud that the large collection in the hands of the Association 
should be kept in an efficient state, and the several sections of it enlarged as far as 
possible. 
The President feared that the desires of the Subcommittee in reference to the con¬ 
templated rearrangement of the Museum had not been fulfilled, but trusted that much 
would be done during the summer months. 
Messrs. Jones, Robinson, and other members offered remarks respecting the compa¬ 
rative advantages of various methods for preserving the specimens. Mr. Murphy sug¬ 
gested that a thorough desiccation of the specimens would contribute much to their 
preservation, and that this could be most effectually done by means of ether vapour. 
Mr. Murphy then observed that considerable advantages were gained by extracting 
the active principles of medicinal and therapeutic agents in a pure state, and so applying 
them to the cure of disease. These advantages are, ease and simplicity in compounding 
medicines and the far more constant and definite effects which would result. He in¬ 
stanced cantharidine as bearing on the subject, and described the methods hitherto em¬ 
ployed for extracting this substance from the Spanish fly. After alluding to the diffi¬ 
culty of preparing pure cantharidine by those methods, he directed the attention of 
members to a process introduced by M. Fumouze, which was the simplest and best which 
had come under his notice. 
The President agreed that a decided advantage was gained by the use of pure active 
principles of medicinal substance, and thought that there was a progressive tendency to 
the use of them instead of the impure or crude drug. 
Mr. Murphy then alluded to a recent research of M. Prat, a French chemist, having 
for its object the isolation of fluorine. The confirmation of M. Prat’s results was still 
looked for, but so far as they went, they showed that fluorine is a greenish gaseous 
body, exhibiting powerful affinities, and, as anticipated, manifesting properties closely 
resembling those of chlorine, bromine, and iodine. The isolation of fluorine would be 
no mean triumph of modern progress in chemical science. 
The President then referred to the paper which was to have been read that evening. 
He had no doubt that Mr. Davies would be present to enlarge on the subject at the next 
meeting, and without desiring to forestall the arguments which might be adduced, he 
considered that the adoption of a metrical or decimal system would conduce to the fa¬ 
cilitation of the education of the humbler classes, and would be of considerable benefit 
in commerce. He instanced the adoption of the cental in the corn trade as a step in 
this direction. The meeting then closed. 
Fourteenth General Meeting, held May 7th, 1868 ; the President in the chair. 
Mr.W. Price, 74, St. Anne’s Street, was unanimously elected an Associate of the Society. 
The following donations were announced:—The Pharmaceutical Journal for May; 
The Chemist and Druggist; The New York Druggists’ Circular. Thanks were voted 
to the donors. 
Mr. Shaw said that he had heard that English rhubarb had been sent to China and 
reimported, owing to the scarcity of Russian rhubarb. 
The President thought that it would be a very bad speculation, as the fraud would 
be at once detected. He did not think that English rhubarb was used to anything like 
the extent which had been stated. Sometimes a substance went out of use from want 
