4S6 
CASE EOE A BENEVOLENT EUND. 
TO THE EDITOR OF THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL. 
Sir,—Will you permit me to appeal, through your pages, to the benevolence of 
the members of the Society in favour of a case of real distress. 
A druggist of Birmingham, who was a member of the Society from soon after 
its commencement until the last few years, died last autumn, and as he was not 
a member at the time of his decease, he had no claim upon the Benevolent 
Fund. The reason he had discontinued his subscription was simply that of 
poverty, as he had failed in business, and since that time had struggled on in a 
very small way until his death of a lingering illness. 
He left a widow and seven children; the widow is in poor health, and the 
eldest child—a daughter, aged eighteen—assists her mother in a little shop, but 
this does not answer, as they are not able to stock it properly. One son earns 
8s. per week, and another is apprenticed to a Pharmaceutical Chemist. 
As local secretary, I have once had the pleasure of obtaining a grant from the 
Benevolent Fund for the family of a deceased member, and this case shows the 
importance of members keeping up their subscriptions. 
Any remittances may be made to me or to Mr. Bremridge, who is in posses¬ 
sion of the facts of the case. 
Yours respectfully, 
William Southall. 
Birmingham, January 4, 1867. 
REVIEW. 
Lecture Notes for Chemical Students. By Edward Frankland, F.E.S,, For. Sec. 
C.S. London: John Van Voorst, Paternoster Kow. 
To the student of modern chemistry this work will prove of great value. If he be old 
in chemical knowledge, he will here find levelled heaps of anomalies over which he may 
formerly have stumbled; if commencing study, the book will enable hun to journey 
easier, more rapidly, further, and enjoy a wider view than those who travelled before 
him. The elder student will best appreciate the volume; to the younger it will be of 
most value. 
The chief feature of these ‘ Notes ’ is the aid they afford in the acquirement of all that 
is known regarding the constitution or internal arrangement of the constituents of 
chemical substances, the power an atom has of attaching itself to another atom, or form¬ 
ing one of a group. The elements are pictured for us as little circles from whose cir¬ 
cumference issue one, two, three, four, five, or six arms, forcibly reminding us of the 
prehensile organs of animals. Thus the atoms of hydrogen, chlorine, bromine, iodine, 
potassium, sodium, and silver, are represented as individuals having but one arm with 
which to form bonds of union between themselves or other elements; barium, calcium, 
magnesium, zinc, mercury, and copper, as having two such arms; gold, three; carbon, 
aluminium, platinum, and lead, four; nitrogen, phosphorus, arsenic, and antimony, 
five,—like some monkeys that hold on as well by their tail as their feet; and, lastly, 
sulphur, iron, and others, which offer six arms, or claws, or points of attachment, for 
the embrace of other hexads, pentads, tetrads, triads, dyads or monads, and which, when 
their predilections are satisfied, afford figures that recall one’s ideas of the suckers, arms, 
and head of Victor Hugo’s devil-fish. These figures, introduced some years ago by 
Crum Brown, and now elaborated by Frankland, will undoubtedly afford assistance to 
the student in his endeavours to realize the nature of atomicity, the chemical value of 
the atoms of elementary and other radicals, and the part they are supposed to play in 
compounds. The apparently varying atomicity of an element is very ingeniously ex¬ 
plained. That an atom of sulphur, for example, which in its hexad character offers six 
points of combination to other atoms, should be engaged by three atoms of two-armed 
oxygen to form sulphuric anhydride, is what might be expected; but that being a hexad, 
