AmMa°rch,S7ym'}        Identifying  Fats  and  Oils.  145 
Mr.  Frank  Browne  concluded  that  he  obtained  hyoscine, 
goldchloride,  m.p.,  1980.  This  will  have  to  be  verified  also,  but 
material  is  lacking  now.  The  reader  interested  herein  is  referred  to 
the  works  of  E.  Schmidt,  Max  Biechele,  Hager,  Fisher  and  Hart- 
wich,  and  especially  to  Blythe  on  "  Poisons,  their  Effects  and  Detec- 
tion," London,  1895,  P-  376. 
School  of  Pharmacy,  Northwestern  University. 
HEAT  OF  BROMINATION  AS  A  MEANS  OF  IDENTIFY- 
ING FATS  AND  OILS. 
By  Wm.  Bromweh,  Ph.D.,  and  Joseph  L.  Mayer,  Ph.G. 
A  contribution  from  the  Chemical  Laboratory  of  the  Brooklyn  College  of 
Pharmacy. 
Among  other  work  required  of  the  students  in  the  Brooklyn  Col- 
lege of  Pharmacy  in  the  course  in  analytical  and  applied  chem- 
istry, is  the  examination  of  fats  and  oils,  with  a  view  to  identifying 
them  and  their  adulterants. 
In  addition  to  the  regular  color  tests,  we  had  been  employing 
Maumene's  method  of  identifying  them  by  the  rise  in  temperature 
produced  on  the  addition  of  sulphuric  acid. 
This  method  is  a  good  one  in  the  hands  of  an  expert  analyst,  but 
our  experience  with  the  students  here  proved  it  was  not  the 
method  for  pharmacists ;  it  is  somewhat  unsatisfactory  and  the  re- 
sults not  always  regular  and  concordant,  so  much  so  that  Professor 
Bartley  suggested  that  Professor  Bromwell  and  myself  adopt 
Hehner  and  Mitchell's  method  of  recognizing  them  by  the  rise  in 
temperature  produced  on  the  addition  of  1  c.c.  bromine  to  1  gramme 
of  oil,  and  that  the  table  published  by  them  be  extended  so  as  to 
include  as  many  other  fats  and  oils  as  could  be  obtained. 
This  method,  which  is  quite  recent  (having  been  introduced  to 
the  chemical  world  through  the  Analyst,  July,  1895),  depends  for  its 
action  on  the  fact  that  the  oils  are  natural  glycerides  containing  un- 
saturated radicals  capable  of  combining  with  the  halogens. 
This  fact  had  been  taken  advantage  of  by  Hiibl,  whose  iodine  ab- 
sorption method  is  so  well  known  that  it  needs  but  to  be  mentioned. 
Fawsitt  (Journal  Society  Chemical  Industry,  1888)  tried  to  utilize 
the  heat  evolved  by  sulphur  chloride  (S2C12),  but  not  with  sufficient 
success  to  make  it  popular. 
