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BRITISH PHARMACEUTICAL CONFERENCE. 
lie acid produced a prophylactic effect as regards many diseases, and he had seen this 
especially in checking the spread of scarlet fever. Again, he might quote the instance 
of a recent outbreak of intermittent fever at the Mauritius. The medical officers in 
charge of the troops had the pluck—he would use that word to inject carbolic acid, 
and the result was highly satisfactory. An official report of the case had been pub¬ 
lished. There could be no doubt that many diseases were produced by germs conveyed 
through the atmosphere. Again, the human body threw off organic emanations, which 
soon acquired highly deleterious qualities. Thus, Dr. Angus Smith had made an expe¬ 
riment upon a room in a fort where twenty soldiers slept. A pailful of water placed in 
the room became putrid within forty-eight hours, but a similar pailful placed in the 
open air remained good for several weeks. It was to the life of these germs that car¬ 
bolic acid was peculiarly destructive, and he could adduce a large mass of medical evi¬ 
dence to show that it arrested the spread of disease. 
Mr. W. W. Stoddart said that he was in a position to corroborate all that Dr. Crace 
Calvert had said about the successful use of carbolic acid during the outbreak of fever at 
the Mauritius, since it was his (Mr. S.’s) brother-in-law who had used it; and his letters 
described the effects as Dr. Calvert had done. He might also mention another use to 
which the acid had been put. The inhabitants of some houses in Bristol, near the 
floating harbour, suffered from an eruption on the skin, which ultimately was traced to 
the bites of mosquitoes. The medical inspector wetted cloths with carbolic acid and 
hung them in the rooms, which put an end to the annoyance immediately. It also an¬ 
swered for getting rid of flies. . . „ . .. . 
Dr. Calvert replied to Mr. Yewdall’s inquiry to the following effect: Olive oil is 
preferable to linseed oil as a vehicle for using carbolic acid in surgical cases, because lin¬ 
seed oil absorbs oxygen from the atmosphere, and heat is developed as a consequence, 
which is not the case with olive oil. . . . 
Dr. Calvert placed on the table a specimen of carbolic acid of great beauty, exhibit¬ 
ing needle-like crystals of several inches in length. 
THE STRENGTH OF DIFFERENT SAMPLES OF DONOVAN’S 
SOLUTION. 
BY W. E. HEATH FIELD, F.C.S. 
Great as has been the value to medicinal practice of the preparation sug¬ 
gested by Dr. Donovan, and designated by his name, it has been open to the 
serious inconvenience that those contributors to pharmaceutical science who 
have proposed alterations in the formula for its manufacture have either 
recommended an alteration in the original strength, or have advised such a 
variation m the mode of manipulation as to alter the character, such as w as 
contemplated by the distinguished physician who first proposed its introduc¬ 
tion, and then generously gave the formula to the profession. 
There are, at least, five published formulae for Donovan’s solution to be 
found in the archives of pharmaceutical contributions, and not one of which 
is precisely in accordance with the other. On examining the products which 
are the result of these processes, they vary considerably, and all differ in 
analytical constitution from that proposed by Dr. Donovan, and thus that 
reliance on uniformity of strength, which the physician and the dispenser 
alike should secure, is entirely merged in the aim to improve or modify. 
The formulae that have been chiefly recommended are as follows 
