138 
Progress  in  Pharmacy. 
/  Am.  Jour.  Pharm- 
X      March.  1908. 
for  colors;  curiously  enough  it  was  the  Pigmentarii  who  seem  to 
have  been  the  most  respected,  and  who  ultimately  absorbed  the 
trade  of  the  others.  (Chem.  and  Drug.,  December  28,  1907,  page 
968.) 
Pill  Excipient  for  Oxidizable  Substances. — Pills  of  readily  decom- 
posed chemicals,  such  as  silver  nitrate,  potassium  permanganate, 
gold  chloride  and  mercuric  iodide,  are  readily  massed  by  the  aid  of 
two  parts  of  kaolin  and  one  part  of  dried  sodium  sulphate  with  suffi- 
cient water  to  moisten. 
The  mass  must  be  carefully  and  rapidly  mixed  and  rolled  out 
without  delay,  as  it  remains  plastic  only  for  a  short  time.  The  pills 
are  said  to  dissolve  much  more  readily  than  pills  made  with  kaolin 
alone.    {Pharm.  Zeifg,  December  21,  1907,  page  1059.) 
The  Lumiere  Process  of  Color  Photography. — For  many  years 
experimenters  have  sought  for  a  simple  and  readily  followed  method 
for  fixing  color  by  photographic  means.  A  number  of  more  or  less 
complicated  processes  have  been  worked  out,  but  it  has  remained 
for  the  Messrs.  August  and  Louis  Lumiere  to  simplify  the  process 
so  that  it  is  now  possible  to  produce  photographs  containing  all  of 
the  shades  and  colors  of  the  original,  true  to  nature. 
The  Lumiere  process  is,  in  fact,  a  practical  application  of  the  well- 
known  three-color  processes,  and  consists  essentially  of  a  screen 
containing  the  color  elements,  orange,  green  and  violet,  in  the  form 
of  finely  divided  particles,  spread  evenly  over  the  surface  of  a 
specially  sensitized  plate.  These  colored  particles,  with  the  addition 
of  an  equalizing  screen,  are  utilized  to  act  as  a  color  screen  in  the 
taking  of  the  picture,  and  serve  to  reproduce  the  color  of  the 
original  object  when  the  resulting  picture  is  projected  on  a  screen 
or  viewed  by  transmitted  light. 
So  far  it  has  been  possible  to  produce  the  pictures  only  in  the 
form  of  glass  positives,  one  at  a  time.  Even  this  offers  a  wide 
field  of  usefulness,  as  the  resulting  pictures  can  be  utilized  as  trans- 
parencies, or  as  lantern  slides,  and  promise  to  be  of  great  educa- 
tional value. 
fi-Barbaloin. — Leger  has  succeeded  in  transforming  barbaloin  into 
an  isomeric  substance  which  he  terms  /5-barbaloin.  This  isomeric 
aloin  also  occurs  naturally  in  various  species  of  aloes. 
/9-Barbaloin  is  uncrystallizable,  but  yields  a  crystalline  chloro-de- 
rivative.    Leger  has  identified  ^-barbaloin  in   Cape  aloes  and  in 
