■856 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[April 26, 1873. 
very carefully analysed one of the samples given him (the 
other, still sealed up, being produced in Court) and found 
19’5 per cent, of curdy and farinaceous matter, and 19’4 
per cent, of water. For the defence a number of butter 
merchants were called, who considered the butter good, as 
American ; and it was proved that two samples from the 
same kit had been given to Dr. Wallace for analysis. Dr. 
Wallace said he had analysed them, and found in one 11 
per cent, of curdy matter, and in the other 1*5 per cent. 
There was also salt and water which he did not estimate. 
There was no farinaceous matter in the samples. The 
magistrate held that there were great difficulties in the 
way of comparing the analyses, and as to whether the 
•different samples were the same butter; but he was 
satisfied that a guilty knowledge of the adulteration on 
the part of Gibson had not been proved. The case was 
then dismissed .—Glasgow Herald. 
At the Clerkenwell Police Court, on Friday, April 18, 
Charles Deveson, a dairyman living in the Hornsey Road, 
appeared in answer to a summons which charged him 
with having adulterated milk for sale. The inspector of 
nuisances stated that he went to defendant’s shop and 
purchased a quart of milk, and told him it would be 
analysed. When examined the milk was found to be 
adulterated, the analyst being of opinion that two-thirds 
■of it was water ; the look of the milk would show that it 
was not pure. In cross-examination he stated that the 
lactometer could “easily be cheated.” The magistrate 
imposed a fine of £5 and costs.— Times. 
Contrasts. Dedicated to the Ratepayers of London. 
Strahan and Co. 1873. 
“Ignorant impatience of taxation” is a phrase which 
probably owes more of its vitality to alliteration than to 
truth, and it is a question whether it be not more correct 
to say that to ignorance is due the patience with which 
taxation is borne. For in the book which under the title 
of 4 Contrasts’ is dedicated to the London ratepayer, there 
is enlightenment amply sufficient to cause him to reverse 
the original dictum. Written by a man who, unlike the 
needy knifegriftder, has a tale to tell, and who persists in 
telling it in his own deliberate fashion, there is a tone 
■about it which prepares the reader to give credence to the 
startling “ contrasts” that are occasionally placed before 
him, because he feels that if the author should not be 
always correct in his conclusions he is at least well in¬ 
formed in his subject. And that it is no new theme with 
him there is evidence in the fact that we recognize a con¬ 
siderable portion of one section of the work as having 
appeared anonymously some four years since in the pages 
of a now defunct magazine to which the author occa¬ 
sionally contributed. As there w r ere some rather sur¬ 
prising statements in the original article, we have been 
-curious enough to compare them with those given in the 
book, and find that they are substantially the same, and 
we suppose therefore that their correctness has not been 
impeached. 
Out of so much that is of the greatest interest to the 
heavily taxed ratepayer it is difficult to make a selection, 
but perhaps the following will present parochial relief in 
a new light to some of our readers. A dock-labourer, 
earning 18s. per week, is from some cause thrown out of 
work. He has a wife and four young children, and after 
various struggles they have to go into the workhouse. 
Our author says—“Instead of admitting them, it would 
have been better policy for the guardians to have said to 
the. man, ‘ My dear fellow, give yourself no further un¬ 
easiness about your family. You say you can earn 18s. a 
week; go and smoke your pipe, loaf about the streets, 
spend your time in the public house or anywhere you like 
. . . . Your money will be paid you regularly every Satur- | 
day till work becomes plentiful again.’ ” The reason 
given being that on an average every man, woman, or 
child in the workhouse costs the ratepayer 10s. a week. 
Some forcible contrasts are drawn between well managed 
industrial schools and orphanages, where the cost ranges 
from <£'13 to £15 a child, and the pauper schools at An- 
nerley, Plashet, and Hanwell, where the average is £25 
a head annually. And many a ratepayer who has to 
struggle to keep the wolf from the door would endorse 
the words of the report attributed to a Holborn ratepayer 
who had been deputed'to visit the Hanwell Schools. 
But although rather hard upon parochial authorities, 
including the vestry, with its characteristic debate of 
three hours upon the material of a beadle’s button, some 
contrasts are drawn in which they appear in a favourable 
light, and it is shown that the guardians—and ratepayers 
too—have suffered pretty considerably through the legis¬ 
lation following the Lancet investigation of workhouse 
infirmaries. An attempt is made to test the justice of the 
outcry against workhouse infirmaries by comparing the 
proportion of recoveries in them with those in hospitals. 
Putting aside ordinary cases,—because since the hospitals 
receive a larger proportion of acute cases, they would 
naturally have a larger proportion of deaths,—reference 
is made to the statistics of the lying-in wards, and it is 
found that the mortality in the lying-in charities is five 
times greater than in the workhouse infimaries. To quote 
an extreme instance, our author states that during the six 
years the model wards in a well-known hospital were 
open—in the building of winch everything that skill could 
suggest had been lavished,—the mortality averaged about 
one in twenty-three, while during the same time in eleven 
metropolitan workhouses there were 2,413 deliveries with¬ 
out one death. But in answer to the public panic, Mr. 
Gathorne Hardy’s Act was passed, and now we have the 
Metropolitan Sick Asylums to use, to look at, and to pay 
for. A footnote calls attention to the fact that patients 
confined in workhouse infirmaries are attended by women. 
Other contrasts are presented in extracts from the 
original charters of some of our public hospitals, public 
schools, and livery companies, and the manner in which 
those institutions are managed at the present day; show¬ 
ing how money enough to relieve all our necessitous sick 
and educate all our poor children has been diverted from its 
original purposes. One hospital, originally endowed for 
very similar purposes to our present sick pauper asylums, 
with its cost of £800 per bed, is contrasted with another 
that cost £30 per bed. The enormous cost of education 
in our endowed charities is compared with that of educa¬ 
tion of at least equal quality in well-managed schools. 
But room will not allow the enumeration of all the topics 
dealt with. The book itself should be read by every per¬ 
son interested in the subject. 
JUSTUS YON LIEBIG. 
The forebodings respecting Baron Liebig have been but 
too painfully realized, and about the time on Friday after¬ 
noon when the lines in last week’s Journal announcing his 
dangerous illness reached the hands of some of our readers, 
that great chemist breathed his last. Few names of 
scientific men are nearly such familiar “household words,” 
even in their own country, as that of Liebig is throughout 
the civilized world. The general public in this country is 
more than usually appreciative of the great loss science has 
suffered, while amongst men of scientific training phar¬ 
macists are peculiarly interested from the fact that the 
deceased spent a portion of his youth in a pharmaceutical 
establishment, and was an Honorary and Corresponding 
Member of the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain. 
Born in 1803 at Darmstadt, Liebig studied in the 
Gymnasium of his native city. From his earliest years 
he had shownr an aptitude for natural science, especially 
