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BRITISH PHARMACEUTICAL CONFERENCE. 
6 The act of sucking being instinctive, there is no choking nor sputtering, 
consequently no loss of medicine, nor uncertainty as to how much has been 
taken, and no soiling of the infant’s or nurse’s clothes. 
7. A dose may be given to the infant while asleep, without its being roused, 
the application of the teat to its lips being generally sufficient to make it suck 
in its sleep. 
It has been thought that adults should not be entirely excluded the benefits 
of anything which facilitates or felicitates the deglutition of drugs, for it is 
astonishing how many a man will behave himself like a baby when he has a 
dose of Gregory under his nose; nor yet is it to the weak-willed specimens of 
their species only that the adult’s siphon medicine glass will commend itself. 
It is simply an acid tube fitted to a graduated glass of a deeper p ittern than 
usual, and may be used with convenience and advantage wherever an acid tube 
is required. 
The humorous style of this paper excited much amusement. 
A FEW RESULTS OF A MICROSCOPICAL AND MICRO-CHEMI- 
CAL EXAMINATION OF THE ALKALOIDS.— (First Paper.) 
BY M. J. ELLWOOD. 
The object of this and subsequent papers, is to ascertain the practical value 
of the few tests already proposed for detecting the presence of impurities in 
commercial alkaloids ; and by further experiments endeavour to throw some ad¬ 
ditional light upon this important subject. I obtained for the present experi¬ 
ments seven samples of Sulphate of Quiniue, by the following makers :—Howard 
and Sons, of London ; Jules Thomas and Co., of Argenteuil; Lamoureaux and 
Gendrot, of Paris ; Thiboumery and Dubose, of Paris ; Fred. Jobst, of Stutt¬ 
gart ; and two samples purchased in England but evidently of foreign manu¬ 
facture. Five of the samples stood the tests of the British Pharmacopoeia, but 
De Vry’s iodide test showed the presence of traces of cinchonine and quinidine. 
The two samples purchased in England were not tested in this way, owing to 
the small quantity sent me. The remarkable purity of so many commercial 
quinines is highly gratifying. Having ascertained the value of the samples 
upon which I was to work, I next directed my attention to the different ap¬ 
pearances presented by the various samples, when seen under the microscope. 
Owing to the quinines having been packed in bottles, the crystals were some¬ 
what broken, but they still retained their shape sufficiently perfect, to make a 
comparative examination of some value. It would be interesting to determine 
how far the presence of an impurity in a crystalline substance modifies or mate¬ 
rially alters the normal shape of the crystals; and whether by careful crystal¬ 
lization, the microscope may not detect the presence of a crystalline impurity, 
by its separate crystallization. I have made several experiments on this point, 
and hope at a future meeting to bring the subject more fully before the mem¬ 
bers 5 for the present I am anxious to elicit the opinions of microscopists. 
An examination of the photographs will show you at a glance the appearances 
presented by Howard’s sulphate of quinine, and that by a Continental maker. 
Howard’s is composed of opaque and transparent crystals, many of the opaque 
ones being of a very large size, and appearing like bundles or masses of crystals 
banded together. The foreign quinines contain more of the transparent aud 
smaller crystals, but two of the samples contained amorphous quinine. I have 
