LIVERPOOL CHEMISTS’ ASSOCIATION. 
The Secretary mentioned the advantage which he had found in using tincture of 
turmeric instead of litmus in testing vinegar. By using this, the indication of neutra¬ 
lization in a coloured solution was sharper and more satisfactory, and some results of 
analyses were cited. The process is one which has been recently published. 
Several other miscellaneous communications were made, after which the President 
delivered his Valedictory. Address :— 
We have now arrived at the close of another Session, bearing with it its events to mark 
its benefits or otherwise in coming time to those who have shared with us in its working, 
or neglected the advantages which it has afforded. Our design and avowed purpose at 
the outset were self-improvement and the public good ; how far these have been accom¬ 
plished may not be so self-evident even to those who have been the most benefited. 
There is, however, in the foreground of this Session one feature peculiar to itself, which 
deserves our first notice, I mean the course of lectures which your Honorary Secretary 
has delivered on the evenings of our regular meetings. I may congratulate all you who 
have attended them, and on your part and my own express our thorough appreciation, 
and tender our warmest thanks to Mr. Davies for the labour he has bestowed and the 
ability he has brought to bear upon his subjects. I am fully persuaded that if their ad¬ 
vantages were more known, they would have been more numerously attended; but as 
only about one-half of his course is exhausted, and he has signified his determination to 
complete his engagement with your Committee in what remains of the course, I may 
express my sanguine hope that next Session will witness a very full attendance. 
It is gratifying, too, that the subjects which have been brought before us at our 
meetings have been mainly, if not entirely, contributed by members of our own Asso¬ 
ciation ; and although, it must be confessed, we have drawn heavily upon a few of our 
members, when we remember the ability and the inexhaustible resources from which so 
much has come, we feel that we have still a storehouse that will not fail us in the 
future. 
I could have wished that some of these papers had been more fully reported, particu¬ 
larly those which dealt so fully, yet so fairly, with the puffing mania of the present 
time. 
A proprietary article no sooner makes its appearance in print than we have half a 
score originals for its father. What an unseemly contest for parentage! Would that 
some of it could be turned into other channels, and transferred to those hapless but in¬ 
numerable instances which lead to the degrading infanticide of the present time, and 
which have become, not only a reproach to a Christian community, but reduce the human 
infinitely below the brute creation. An evil this which will never be remedied until the 
law steps close and sharp upon the heels of the father, to compel an unwilling paren¬ 
tage, and a greater burden of support both of mother and child. 
To see a scientific publication become more and more a medium of puffing before the 
world, contentious for “ the original ” and “ only genuine,”—the praise of one’s own, and 
by name disparaging others,—is a matter to be deplored, but by no means so easy to con¬ 
trol, for a censorship is all but impossible; nor, perhaps, should we expect to see the 
remuneration derived from such advertisements disregarded. 
There is need, however, for making the ‘ Pharmaceutical Journal ’ more specially 
scientific. The Society established itself as an educational body, and to it we must look 
to lead, and to publish the increasing development of chemical and pharmaceutical 
science. 
In this we are encouraged at present by the medical profession, who, from whatever 
cause, seem disposed, if not determined, to leave the pharmaceutical chemist full field 
for this work. How far this is a disadvantage, both to the medical profession and 
suffering humanity, time and its results will show. It is, however, a prevailing impres¬ 
sion that medical students of the present day do not work themselves into a practical 
knowledge of chemistry to the same extent as in bygone time. Why it should not 
form a most prominent place in their studies is hard to understand, when a want of such 
knowledge may lead sometimes to prescribing that which will neutralize the very thing 
they wish to accomplish ? 
An artist who knows nothing chemically of his colours may produce that which shall 
outlive Vandyke, but where the chemist and the artist are centred in the same man, 
he will be able to affirm with more certainty what his work shall be when he is not. 
I am aware these are compounds difficult to find in the same person, and frequently 
