THE METIIYLIC ALCOHOL TEST. 
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vance the science of medicine, we cannot altogether divorce pharmacy from 
physiological research, any more than a physician can neglect pharmacy and 
materia medica in favour of his pathology, or divorce animal chemistry 
from his physiology. 
It surely cannot be wrong for a chemist, any more than it is for a barrister, 
to be versed in the first principles of physiology. Every intelligent man, in 
fact, should know the laws of his constitution; and the chemist, above all, who 
is too apt to overrate the powers of his pet science, should have some smat¬ 
tering of a science so closely allied and so intimately and transcendentally 
mingled with it. 
We cannot value too highly papers like Dr. Daniell’s at our evening meet¬ 
ings. In more favoured climes than our own for vegetation, richer in medicinal 
virtues, yet undiscovered by a Wallich or a Itoyle, gems may yet be found to 
adorn the science of medicine,—like quinine, morphia, and strychnia. I have 
had repeated testimony from men who have had excellent opportunities of 
judging in India and Ceylon, that even the untutored natives use plants we 
have no knowledge of in our class-books, to alleviate their sufferings ; and I 
feel certain there is a vast field of research before us, if we could organize 
•some plan to obtain more information about these matters from our immense 
possessions and other quarters of the globe, and the cultivated intellect brought 
to bear upon them, which is now but too often exerted uselessly to dress up 
our own minerals in new garments, to amuse the doctor longing for more re¬ 
liable remedies, and tantalizing us. 
Consumption, cancer, scarlatina, the innumerable maladies of the alimen¬ 
tary tube, the motley skin-diseases, and other disorders of a still more loath¬ 
some class, still remain an opprobrium to the healing art, and cry to the same 
intelligence for help that has afforded the means to stem the torrent of the 
plague, the cruel variola, and modified at least the awful cholera. 
There is indeed much to be done, and to do the work of our generation the 
doctor and the pharmaceutist must go even more hand-in-hand ; and the more 
we chemists learn, the less shall we be disposed to tread on the heels of the 
medical practitioner, who, with even his long and varied training, can bring 
so little to resist the progress of diseases that so often slay prematurely our 
neighbours and our dearest friends. 
“ Ignorance makes a lion, where wisdom would a lamb create.” 
When we consider what the inorganic world has furnished us, how much 
may we anticipate from a correct and extended appreciation of the organic ! 
that from whence we derive our common sustenance seems naturally that 
most pregnant with our specific food. We seek not the philosopher’s stone, 
but the Rosetta stone of organic medicine is a prize worth seeking for. And 
who will be our Napoleon P 
I am, your obedient servant, 
George Mee. 
8, Torrington Place, Gordon Square, 
November 6, 1861. 
THE METIIYLIC ALCOHOL TEST. 
TO TIIE EDITOR OF THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
Sir,—Had I been so well acquainted with a Mr. E. Reynolds’s proposed me¬ 
thod for detecting “wood spirit” previous to the meeting of Conference, as 
since, I should in all probability have adopted my usual course of saying nothing, 
unless of a favourable nature, or until a given subject has been fairly tried. 
