November 5, 1870.] THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
evaporate the filtrate with the exclusion of air, as car¬ 
bonic acid has the tendency to decompose it. It crystal¬ 
lizes in the form of needles; by evaporating’ to dryness 
it forms a white fusible mass. It is soluble in alcohol, 
very deliquescent, and decomposes when fused in contact 
with air, forming oxide of calcium and free iodine. To 
make the syrup of iodide of calcium, the following for¬ 
mula is proposed. Take of— 
Iodine.... 4 oz. 
Iron (in form of wire). 7^ dr. 
Distilled water. q! s. 
Milk of lime (fresh). q. s. 
Sugar...28 oz. 
Simple syrup. q. s. 
Mix 3 oz. of the iodine with the iron and 4 oz. of water, 
in a thin flask with long neck; shake occasionally until 
the reaction has ceased and the solution assumes a pale 
green colour ; filter the solution and add the remainder 
of iodine; heat to the boiling-point, and add milk of 
lime until all of the iron is precipitated; filter and wash 
the precipitate with hot water until all the iodide is 
washed out, then bring the whole to the measure of 
20 oz.; add the sugar and dissolve by a gentle heat; to 
the solution add enough simple syrup to make it mea¬ 
sure 40 oz.; mix thoroughly, and fill into 2 oz. bottles, 
well corked. 
The syrup is a transparent, colourless liquid, which 
does not tinge starch paper blue. Mixed with sulphuric 
acid it gives a white precipitate of sulphate of oxide of 
calcium and turns the supernatant liquid brown, which, 
by heating, emits violet vapours of iodine. 
THE MULLEIN PLANT. 
The Mullein (Verbascum Thapsus) is a biennial plant, 
with a straight, tall, stout, woolly, generally simple stem, 
occasionally with one or two branches above, winged by 
the decurrent bases of the leaves, and from three to five 
feet high. The leaves are alternate, oblong, acute, rough 
and densely tomentose on both sides. The flowers are a 
golden yellow colour, rotate, nearly sessile, and are ar¬ 
ranged in a dense, spiked, club-shaped raceme; calyx 
five-parted and downy; corolla five-lobed, rotate. 
Mullein is common in the United States, growing in 
recent clearings, along the sides of roads, in slovenly 
fields, etc., flowering from June to August. Some bota¬ 
nists consider it to have been introduced from Europe. 
The leaves and flowers are the parts used. They have a 
faint, rather pleasant odour, resembling that of a mild 
narcotic, and a somewhat bitterish, albuminous taste, and 
yield their virtues to boiling water. Mullein is demul¬ 
cent, diuretic, anodyne and anti-spasmodic. The infusion 
is useful in coughs, catarrh, haemoptysis, diarrhoea, dys¬ 
entery and piles. Its diuretic properties are rather 
weak, yet it is very useful in allaying the acridity of 
urine which is present in many diseases. It may be 
boiled in milk sweetened and rendered more palatable 
by the addition of aromatics, for internal use, especially 
bowel complaints. A fomentation of the leaves also 
forms an excellent local application for inflamed piles, 
ulcers and tumours. The leaves and pith of the stalk 
form a valuable cataplasm in white swellings, and in¬ 
fused in hot vinegar or water, it makes an excellent 
poultice to be applied to the throat in cynache tonsillaris, 
cynache. maligna, and mumps. The seeds are said to 
pass rapidly through the intestines, and have been success¬ 
fully used in intestinal obstructions. They are narcotic, 
and have been used in asthma, infantile convulsions and 
to poison fish. The infusion may be drunk freely. The 
flowers, placed in a well-corked bottle and exposed to 
the sun, are said to yield an excellent relaxing oil.— 
New York Druggists' Circular. 
3U5 
DARWINISM IN CHEMISTRY. 
A writer in the Medical Times and Gazette asks the 
question whether the groups of elements which resemble 
each other so strangely can be composed of isolated spe¬ 
cies of matter, or whether they are not rather formed of 
individual members of a family having a community of 
origin F Towards the elucidation of this subject he brings 
forward the following statements:— 
The existence of natural families of elements has long 
been recognized by chemists. Chlorine, bromine and 
iodine form ope such family; potassium, sodium and 
lithium (to which the metals caesium and rubidium have 
been added by Bunsen’s spectrum analysis) constitute 
another. The group barium, strontium and calcium, as 
also the group magnesium, zinc and cadmium, are well 
recognized. There is also the very extensive nitrogen 
family, comprising nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, anti¬ 
mony, vanadium, bismuth, boron and some others. Then 
there is the carbon family, comprising carbon, silicon 
and tin. Oxygen, sulphur and tellurium form a group. 
Lastly, there is the singular group comprising aluminium, 
chromium, manganese, iron, nickel and cobalt. The 
place of the metal copper is difficult to assign; silver 
likewise presents difficulties. Hydrogen is placed by 
some in the chlorine family, but is commonly taken to 
belong to the potassium family; in short, nearly every 
element has been assigned to one or other natural family. 
In the first-mentioned example, viz. chlorine, bromine 
and iodine—the family likeness is not in the obvious 
physical characters of the elements themselves: chlorine 
is a greenish-yellow gas under ordinary atmospheric 
pressure and temperature; bromine is a brownish-red 
liquid; iodine a dark crystalline solid, yielding violet . 
vapour on being heated. Many compounds of these ele¬ 
ments, however, require analysis to distinguish them. 
Hydrochloric acid, hydrobromic acid and hydriodic acid 
are colourless gases, very strongly fuming in moist air, 
and very soluble in water. They need to be subjected 
to some chemical test, or else to have their density de¬ 
termined in order to become distinguishable. Again, 
chloride, bromide and iodide of potassium are very much 
alike. 
There is also a close parallelism between the possible 
combinations of chlorine, bromine and iodine with other 
elements. Thus, there are the chloride, the bromide and 
the iodide of potassium or of sodium, etc. Chloride of 
ethyl is represented by bromide and iodide of ethyl, and 
chloroform finds its analogues in bromoform and iodo¬ 
form. But the parallelism, although close, is not abso¬ 
lute. Thus, there appear to be more oxides of chlorine 
than of iodine. The chloride of copper does not appear 
to have an iodine representative; and probably there are 
many complex organic chlorides which admit of no cor¬ 
responding iodides; inversely, compounds of iodine, with 
iodides of the compound ammoniums, seem to be unre¬ 
presented by corresponding chlorine compounds. 
In the second group—that of the metals potassium, 
sodium, and lithium—there is in their compounds a re¬ 
semblance very often so close that chemical analysis has 
to be called in to distinguish whether there be potassium, 
sodium, or lithium in the compound. There is, again, 
the closest parallelism between the possible compounds 
of these metals. Not a single potash-salt of any one of 
the thousands of possible acids but has its fellow sodium- 
salt. The only breaches of the parallel that occur to the 
writer are in the oxides of the metals and in the degree 
of hydration of the salts—potassium- and sodium-salts 
taking up different numbers of atoms of water of crystal¬ 
lization ; the individual uncombined members of the po¬ 
tassium group present also a physical similarity. All are 
solids under ordinary conditions; potassium and sodium 
having veiy nearly the same melting and boiling points. 
Between the chemical equivalents of the different 
members of a natural family some very curious and in¬ 
teresting relations have been traced. Thus, the equiva- 
