302 
ACCIDENTS FROM IGNITION OF PETROLEUM. 
lengthy formula is given for its preparation ; but in this country Irish moss performs: 
the same service without any preparation other than that given it by the curer. A cer¬ 
tain amount of the moss is boiled up with the beer. The fluid gelatine unites with the 
tannin of the hops and forms a flocculent mass, which, enveloping the suspended fecu- 
lencies, produces the clarifying action desired. The impurities are removed in the form of 
scum, while with isinglass they are carried to the bottom in the form of sediment. The 
beer is called “ stubborn” by the brewers when a disengagement of carbonic acid ga§ 
occurs, the flocculent particles being thereby kept moving about without clearing the 
beer. 
It is also used for fining coffee, and, if it has no other recommendation, it is certainly 
cheaper than eggs.— U. S. Agricultural Report for 1866. 
SHAM DRUGS. 
The following evidence was given by Mr. Holmes Coote before a Committee appointed 
to inquire into the venereal disease :— 
“ Q. 4221. What treatment would you adopt in that anaemic condition which you 
have just mentioned ?—I should recommend rest and moderately good diet, and mercury 
in very small doses, and sarsaparilla. 
“ 4222. Do you believe that sarsaparilla has any beneficial effect?—I have no doubt 
of it, if properly administered. If you give sarsaparilla to a person who is drinking half 
a bottle of port wine a day, it does no good } but if you put him on light diet and then 
give him sarsaparilla, it will produce an effect which is good. We give a very concen¬ 
trated essence of sarsaparilla at the hospital. 
“4223. Is it what is called the fluid extract?—Yes; we have our own preparation 
at the hospital. 
“ 4224. In private practice what do you use ?—The concentrated decoction as pre¬ 
pared by good chemists. 
“ 4225. Is it a decoction, or that of which you put a spoonful into a quantity of 
water ?—It is the latter. I should give it about five or six times as strong as it is ordi¬ 
narily given.” 
A correspondent to the ‘ Medical Times and Gazette ’ of Sept. 25th, in commenting 
on the above, states, as a singular fact, that the St. Bartholomew’s Pharmacopoeia, as 
abstracted by Mr. Squire in his ‘ Hospital Pharmacopoeias,’ substitutes hemidesmus for 
sarsaparilla ; the former a drug of low price, and once tried as a substitute, but now con¬ 
demned as worthless. He asks the question, “Does the cheap sham drug really do as 
well as the costly sarsaparilla ?” and, “ Are we to believe that good chemists use hemi- 
desmus, and charge fraudulently for sarsaparilla ?” Or are we to believe that, with all 
the pomp of an ancient endowment, the patients of St. Bartholomew’s are not supplied 
with what one of the surgeons believes to be a valuable remedy, because of its cost ? 
ACCIDENTS FROM IGNITION OF PETROLEUM, AND PENALTIES FOR 
INFRINGING THE PETROLEUM ACTS. 
Explosion of Petroleum Spirit at Bordeaux. —We have to record another 
of those lamentable accidents from this inflammable agent, which has resulted in 
the destruction of an immense amount of property. It appears that, on September 
28th, the steamship ‘ Count of Hainault ’ arrived in the Garonne from Antwerp, 
having on board a cargo of about forty tons of petroleum and petroleum spirit, and 
was moored at Lormont, about three miles below Bordeaux ; and, having complied 
with the precautions required by the port for ships with cargoes of this dangerous 
nature, proceeded to discharge her cargo into two barges, which was completed 
at six o’clock. About a quarter of an hour after this had been done, one of the 
men in charge of the barge containing the petroleum spirit, after having lighted a 
torch, threw the still burning match among the casks of petroleum, one of which im¬ 
mediately caught fire, producing a terrible explosion, by which the man who was the 
