June 29, 1872.] 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. 
1059 
limiting the time of manufacture to a small portion of 
the year. He added that he thought it of great import- 
.ance that the Ecole Superieure de Pharmacie should 
-exercise a careful supervision over the preparation of the 
alkaloids or active principles of plants, such as atropine, 
aconitine and digitaline, which under the form of granules 
•or otherwise are met with so frequently in pharmacy, 
■and which have the inconvenience of not possessing the 
■desired uniformity, together with inexactness of dose, 
such granules and dragees not being generally prepared 
in pharmaceutical laboratories. 
M. Mayet thought that it would be useful to call the 
attention of pharmacists and medical men to the danger 
dhat might result from the employment under the same 
name of very different substances, such as the digitaline 
■of M. Nativelle compared with that of M. Homolle, and 
the aconitine of M. Duquesnel compared with that of M. 
Hottot. 
M. Grassi showed the importance of this point by giving 
the details of a recent case of poisoning caused by the 
successive use in the making up of a prescription of 
-amorphous aconitine and crystallized aconitine. 
M. Roucher said that, besides the digitalines of M. 
Nativelle and M. Homolle, which differed from each other 
in many respects, there was the German digitaline, 
which, unlike both t)ae others, did not sublime partially 
tinder the influence of heat. 
M. Bussy considered that although these new products 
•extracted from aconite and digitalis recommended them- 
-selves to the pharmaceutist by the characters of chemical 
purity and uniformity that they possessed, at present 
their medical action is not sufficiently determined to 
justify their substitution for the substances hitherto used 
in therapeutics. Until medical experience was more 
•definite upon this point, the pharmacien should only use 
the substances prepared according to the Codex in the 
dispensing of prescriptions. 
M. Poggiale thought that this question was of great 
interest; and even if it could only be decided by medical 
■experience, the Society of Pharmacy could at least furnish 
the materials for this investigation by establishing the 
nature of the substances that should serve as a base, and 
by making a comparative study of their physical and 
chemical properties. While admitting that the Academy 
•of Medicine had, according to law, the sole right to pro¬ 
pose new formulae, he did not think their society should, 
therefore, renounce the study of such questions as were 
of chemical and pharmaceutical interest. He proposed 
that a commission should be appointed to investigate the 
■subject. 
This proposition was agreed to; and the members 
nominated were MM. Bussy, Boudet, Grassi, Duquesnel, 
Lefort and Roucher. 
M. Bussy gave a resume of the sittings of the Academy 
of Sciences, and mentioned that M. Personne had recog¬ 
nized the presence of selenium in the sulphuric acid of 
-commerce. 
M. Duquesnel communicated the results of his ob¬ 
servations upon sulphate of eserin (physostigmatin). 
Having noticed that a solution of this salt acquired a 
red colour in a short time, and apparently spontaneously, 
he sought if this alteration led to a weakening of the 
.active properties of the medicament. The colouring 
matter, isolated by treatment succesively with potash 
and chloroform, had but little or no effect; from whence 
he infers that, if it represents, as he is led to believe it 
does, a product of oxidation of the eserin, the sulphate 
■of that alkaloid will become less and less active as the 
solution becomes more and more coloured. 
M. Desnoix presented to the society a duck’s egg in 
which he had found two yolks, and which enclosed 
-beside another egg, itself containing two yolks. 
CHEMICAL SOCIETY. 
Phof. Cannizzaro’s Faraday Lecture.* 
This lecture was delivered on May 30th, by Prof. 
Cannizzaro. The lectureship was founded by the Chemi¬ 
cal Society in honour of the illustrious Faraday, to be 
held by some eminent foreign savant, who, during the 
term of his tenure, is to deliver a discourse before the 
Society. Dr. Frankland, in introducing the lecturer, 
said that in 1869 M. Dumas had honoured them with his 
presence there, and on that night they were to listen to 
Prof. Cannizzaro, of Palermo. After alluding to the 
numerous investigations which the Professor had made 
in organic chemistry, and amongst others the discovery 
of benzylic alcohol, the first normal aromatic alcohol that 
had ever been prepared, and to the important theoretical 
views which he had originated, the President, in the 
name of the Society, presented to him the Faraday 
Medal, struck in honour of his visit. 
Prof. Cannizzaro said that when he received the flat¬ 
tering invitation to deliver the Faraday Lecture, he was 
placed in very unfavourable circumstances to respond to 
it, as he had no definite results to lay before the Society, 
and was, moreover, on the point of suspending his la¬ 
bours and abandoning his old laboratory in order to re¬ 
move to Rome and establish a new one there. In this 
difficulty a subject for a discourse fortunately presented 
itself,—one which the celebrated French chemist Dumas 
had promised to treat of in 1847, namely, the form which 
the theory of chemistry should take at the present time. 
Although this could not bo fully discussed in so short a 
space of time, it would at least have the advantage of 
directing the attention of chemists to a question of great 
importance in the transition stage which our science is at 
present going through. 
In recalling the promise which M. Dumas had made 
to the Academy of Sciences of Paris in 1847, to examine 
the form which theoretical instruction in chemistry 
should take in the present state of the science, the lec¬ 
turer proposed to consider in his discourse the limits 
within which the exposition of general theories should 
be included in teaching chemistry, and the form that it 
was desirable that they should assume. Whilst giving 
a broad sketch of the progress of modern chemistry, he 
showed that the atomic theory had become more and 
more intimately interlaced with the fabric of chemistry, 
so that it is no longer possible to separate them without 
rending the tissue, as it were, of the science; and that 
up to the present time we have been unable to enunciate 
even the empirical laws of chemical proportion inde¬ 
pendently of that theory; for those who employ the 
term equivalent in the sense that Wollaston did commit 
an anachronism. Consequently, in the exposition of the 
value and use of symbols, formube and chemical equa¬ 
tions, not only are we unable to do without the atomic 
and molecular theory, but it is inconvenient to follow the 
long and fatiguing path of induction which leads up to it. 
By one of those bold flights of the human mind we can 
at once reach the height whence we discern at a glance 
the relations between facts. 
He then went on to show that the solid basis, the 
corner-stone of the modern molecular and atomic theory, 
the crown of the edifice of which Dalton laid the founda¬ 
tion, is the theory of Avogadro and Ampere, Konig and 
Clausius, on the constitution of perfect gases, to which 
chemists, unknown to themselves, have been led in the 
progress of their science. He thought the time had 
arrived for reversing the order which had hitherto been 
followed in teaching chemistry, that instead of setting 
out from the criteria for determining the weight of mole¬ 
cules, and then showing their ratio to the vapour densities, 
they ought, on the contrary, to commence with the latter, 
with the theory of Avogadro and Clausius, demonstrating 
it from physical considerations ; to found upon that th e 
proof of the divisibility of simple bodies,—that is to say 
* Reprinted from ‘ Nature,’ June 20, 1872 
