■G34 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
[February 3,1872. 
which was omitted in Professor Robinson’s printed edi¬ 
tion, apparently because Dr. Robinson thought all such 
speculations erroneous. 
The lecture was concluded by an account of Dr. 
Black's later years and peaceful death. 
A very interesting discussion followed the reading of 
this paper, in which the Chairman, Messrs. F. Reynolds, 
►S. Taylor, E. Yewdall and others took part, and upon 
the motion of Mr. F. Reynolds, seconded by Mr. 
Hardman, a cordial vote of thanks was given to Mr. E. 
'Thompson. 
HraretMngs jof Scientific Societies. 
PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF PHARMACY. 
At the meeting of the Philadelphia College of Phar¬ 
macy, on December 19, 1871, Professor Parrish called 
•attention to the new excipient for making pills, intro¬ 
duced by Mr. J. B. Barnes at a recent meeting of the 
Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain—soluble cream 
•of tartar; bitartrate of potash in a solution of borax, in¬ 
spissated to the consistence of mucilage. He also showed 
pills of Dover’s powder, of sulphur, and of chloral hy¬ 
drate, made with it and minute quantities of tragacanth. 
Those of chloral hydrate, though round and firm, are 
•covered with crystals, they are necessarity kept in a vial. 
In allusion to the difficulty of making salts of iron, 
•especially sulphate, into pill, owing to the crumbling of 
the mass, Professor Parrish mentioned that if a paste of 
•dextrine is used as the excipient, there is no difficulty in 
making a perfectly plastic mass; he exhibited pills of 
dried sulphate of iron, each containing three grains, 
very nearly equal to five grains of the crystals made 
with dextrine; they were of convenient size. He re¬ 
marked that when this mass crumbles it is from a defi¬ 
ciency of water, and when water is again added it be¬ 
comes quite plastic, though it is more bulky on each 
addition of water. The soluble tartar excipient does not 
appear well suited to this salt. Mr. Robert England ex¬ 
pressed a preference for manna as an excipient in making 
•difficult masses. Dr. Pile and others use a mixture of 
tragacanth and glycerine with satisfactory results. 
Some fine specimens of bicarbonate of soda in powder 
and pseudomorphic masses from the Pennsylvania Salt 
Works at Natrona were exhibited with a letter from the 
manager of the works, a former graduate of the College, 
stating that a single charge of the carbonating chamber 
from which they were taken amounted to 525,000 lbs. 
ACADEMIE DES SCIENCES. 
M. PASTEUR ON FERMENTATION. 
At the sitting of the French Academy, on Monda} 7- , 
December 18th, a note was presented by M. Pasteur in 
-reply to some statements made in Baron Liebig’s memoir 
on fermentation, a translation of which has already ap¬ 
peared in our columns.* Remarking that this memoir 
appeared to be a profound criticism of some of his own 
observations, and that he was unable, from want of 
leisure, to. follow it step by step, M. Pasteur expressed 
his intention of dealing specially with two negations in 
which were concentrated all the objections of the Ger¬ 
man chemist, and which went to the root of the question. 
The following is an abstract of M. Pasteur’s argu¬ 
ment :— 
In the first of these two negations Baron Liebig had 
formally contested the production of beer yeast and 
alcoholic fermentation in a saccharine mineral medium, 
where an extremely small quantity of yeast had been 
.sown. This, in effect, was the touchstone of the truth. 
* See 3rd Ser. Yol. I. pp. 61, 81, 101, 122, 141. 
M. Liebig, as was known, looked upon fermentation as 
a phenomenon correlative, so to speak, with death. Ac¬ 
cording to him, all substances, especially those known 
as albuminoids,-—albumen, fibrine, caseine, etc.—or the 
organic liquids containing them,—milk, blood, urine, etc. 
—have a property that is developed by exposure to the 
air of conveying movement to the molecules of ferment¬ 
able matter. This matter is then resolved into new pro¬ 
ducts, but without anything being taken from, or im¬ 
parted to the substances causing the change. M. Pasteur, 
on the contrary, looked upon all fermentation, properly 
so called, as correlative with life, and he claimed to have 
proved that fermentation never goes on without an in¬ 
cessant interchange between the living cells which grow 
and multiply, and the fermentable matter which they 
partly assimilate. While the doctrine of Baron Liebig 
was in full favour, he had shown, in the first place, that 
in all real fermentation there were necessarily present 
special organisms, and that in what had been looked 
upon as dead albuminoid matter life appeared correlative 
with fermentation, the two phenomena commencing and 
terminating at the same time. In the second place he 
had shown that fermentation would become impossible 
even in free contact with air, the sole condition being 
that the air should be prevented from carrying to the fer¬ 
mentable matter the organic germs that are continually 
present in it in the neighbourhood of the earth’s surface. 
To illustrate this point, he called attention to some in¬ 
fusion of hay that had been placed in an open vessel in 
1864, which still remained limpid, and free from any trace 
of fermentation or putrefaction, only because the neck of 
the vessel had been so bent that dust was prevented from 
reaching the surface of the liquid. The same result 
followed when the hay infusion was replaced by other 
fermentable liquids. But if some of the dust that covered 
the outside of the vessel was brought into contact with 
the liquid, various changes or fermentations proceeding 
from the living cells, carried in with the dust, would 
appear after a few days. Nevertheless it has been satis¬ 
factorily proved that where fermentable liquids are pre¬ 
vented from fermenting by exclusion of the suspended 
germs, they undergo a perceptible oxidation and chemical 
alteration in the presence of the pure air. 
M. Pasteur said he prepared fermentable media in 
which but three kinds of substances existed,—the matter 
capable of fermentation, mineral salts suitably chosen, 
and the germs of ferment. For example, he had found 
that the ferment of lactate of lime was a vibrion. To a 
solution of very pure crystallized lactate of lime he had 
added the phosphates of ammonia, magnesia, and potash, 
small quantities of sulphate of ammonia, and lastly the 
vibrion either in the germ state, or fully developed. 
After some days’ interval, the lactate had entirely dis¬ 
appear .id, and an infinite multitude of vibrions had made 
their appearance. As long as any lactate remained the 
vibrions multiplied, and were active in the liquor, but 
as soon as it was all decomposed they fell dead to the 
bottom of the vessel. The other fermentations, and the 
ferments peculiar to them, give the same result, espe¬ 
cially with beer-yeast. In this particular branch of the 
investigation great care is required; repeated experi¬ 
ments are necessary, as other organisms may intervene 
and prevent the development of the ferment that has 
been sown. Certain infusoria, the lactic ferment, and 
various other organisms find their appropriate nourish¬ 
ment in the mineral medium, and may more or less pre¬ 
vent alcoholic fermentation. M. Pasteur thinks that 
these are the difficulties that Baron Liebig has been un¬ 
able to overcome; but he considers that the obstacles 
themselves are fresh proofs of the truth of his conclusions, 
—the production of the lactic ferment in a saccharine 
mineral medium having the same signification, in a gene¬ 
ral point of view, as the production of beer yeast. 
M. Pasteur next proceeded to deal with the second 
negation of Baron Liebig, in reference to acetic fer¬ 
mentation. Pointing out that he was the first to esta- 
