552 
Obituary. 
( Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
\     October,  1897. 
Resolved,  That  the  members  of  the  Minnesota  State  Pharmaceutical  Asso- 
ciation, in  convention  assembled  at  Lake  Park,  August  23d,  do  earnestly  urge 
the  Committee  on  National  Legislation  of  the  A.  Ph.  A.  to  see  that  a  bill  is 
drafted  and  presented  to  Congress  prohibiting  the  future  granting  of  such  copy- 
right or  trade-mark  for  goods  manufactured  in  foreign  countries,  and  not  thus 
protected  in  the  countries  where  made,  and  thereby  remove  the  excessive  cost 
on  such  goods  in  this  country,  whereas  as  the  law  now  stands  an  alien  can  intro- 
duce articles  into  this  country  for  four  or  five  times  the  price  in  his  own  coun- 
try, while  our  Government  hardly  receives  a  cent  of  revenue. 
A  committee  of  three  was  appointed  to  formulate  a  price-mark  to  be  used  in 
marking  copies  of  prescriptions,  so  that  there  will  be  more  uniformity  of  prices 
throughout  the  State  on  prescriptions,  the  Secretary  to  be  the  custodian  of  the 
mark,  and  to  be  given  only  to  those  who  will  agree  to  use  it. 
Meeting  adjourned  to  meet  at  Lake  Minnetonka,  June  14,  1898. 
OBITUARY. 
Professor  Dr.  Victor  Meyer,  whose  brilliant  discoveries  in  the  field  of  chemi- 
cal research  won  for  him  the  esteem  and  admiration  of  his  fellow-laborers  in 
this  branch  of  science,  died  unexpectedly  at  his  home  in  Heidelberg,  Germany, 
August  7  th. 
He  had  been  suffering  from  nervous  troubles,  accompanied  by  insomnia, 
brought  on,  no  doubt,  by  excessive  work,  and  it  is  sad  to  reflect  that  a  man  of 
such  energy  and  ability  as  Professor  Meyer  should,  perhaps,  during  a  tempor- 
ary aberration  of  mind,  end  his  own  career,  as  was  evidenced  by  the  circum- 
stances connected  with  his  death. 
Professor  Meyer  was  born  at  Berlin,  September  8,  1848.  He  entered  the 
university  there  in  his  sixteenth  year,  but  remained  only  a  short  time,  when 
he  went  to  Heidelberg,  where  he  devoted  himself  to  the  study  of  chemistry 
under  Bunsen.  After  graduation  at  the  latter  institution  he  continued  his 
study  of  chemistry  under  Baeyer,  at  Berlin.  In  1867  he  became  assistant  to  Bun- 
sen,  and  in  187 1  was  made  professor  of  chemistry  at  the  Polytechnic  School  at 
Stuttgart,  and  in  1872  at  the  Polytechnic  School  at  Zurich.  In  185.5  he  removed 
to  Gottingen,  and  in  1889  was  appointed  successor  to  Bunsen  at  Heidelberg, 
the  latter  recommending  him  for  the  position.  As  an  instructor  he  was  singu- 
larly gifted,  and  the  study  of  chemistry  at  Heidelberg  received  a  great  impetus 
through  his  teachings. 
His  scientific  papers  were  numerous  and  covered  a  wide  range  of  subjects  in 
the  domain  of  chemistry,  and  it  is  only  necessary  to  refer  to  a  few  of  the 
results  accomplished  by  him  to  show  the  importance  of  his  work.  Of  particu- 
lar significance  was  his  study  on  the  subject  of  vapor  density;  for  not  only  did 
he  devise  a  method  for  determining  vapor  density,  which  has  largely  supplanted 
other  methods,  but  the  principles  of  pyro-chemistry  were  more  thoroughly  and 
clearly  established  by  the  results  obtained  by  him  at  high  temperatures.  By 
his  discovery  of  thiophene  in  benzine,  and  the  subsequent  study  of  its  properties 
and  derivatives,  he  added  to  organic  chemistry  an  entirely  new  series  of  com- 
pounds. 
In  1893  Professor  Meyer  was  elected  an  honorary  member  of  the  Philadel- 
phia College  of  Pharmacy. 
