Am.  Jour.  Pharm.  \ 
March,  1902.  J 
A  True  Benefactor \ 
137 
the  nature  of  cinchonine  and  the  presence  of  certain  insoluble  par- 
ticles which  pass  through  the  filter  serving  to  obscure  the  more 
exact  results. 
N 
Upon  adding  the  exact  equivalent  of  —  NaOH  for  the  H2S04 
employed,  no  precipitation  occurred  even  upon  cooling  stronger 
solutions  to  20°  for  24  hours,  hence  the  slight  excess  of  alkali  was 
employed. 
A  TRUE  BENEFACTOR. 
By  Wiixiam  B.  Thompson. 
The  announcement  of  the  death  of  Prof.  Emil  SchefTer,  of  Louis- 
ville, Ky.,  at  the  honorable  and  unusual  age  of  90  years — almost 
patriarchal  in  duration — recalls  to  the  recollection  some  interesting 
facts  .  It  is  now  thirty  years  since  Professor  Scheffer  generously  gave 
to  scientific  knowledge  the  result  of  his  studies,  and  the  exact  deter- 
mination of  the  nature  and  physical  character  of  that  chief  factor 
of  peptic-ferment,  pepsin.  Previous  to  Professor  Scheffer's  success- 
ful and  valuable  labor  no  distinctive  isolation  of  pepsin,  as  a  sub- 
stance, had  been  made.  French  scientists  had  recognized  the  fact 
that  there  existed  a  normal  agent  in  the  gastric  and  digestive  fluid 
of  the  stomach,  and  had  even  traced  its  origin  to  a  secretion  from 
the  mucous  folds  of  that  organ  and  of  the  intestinal  tract.  There 
was  a  theory  that  it  was  only  in  the  living  organism  that  this  pecu- 
liar and  potent  agent  exercised  its  action,  and  that  with  the  cessa- 
tion of  vitality  it  at  once  became  inert.  Thus  it  was  that  the  separ- 
ation, or  elimination,  if  attempted  at  all,  was  merely  a  mechanical 
process,  accomplished  by  scraping  the  separable  mucus  from  the 
walls  of  the  stomach  of  mammals.  Therefore,  the  pepsins  of  the 
then  almost  wholly  foreign  commerce  consisted  of  mucus  artifi- 
cially and  imperfectly  dried  with,  possibly,  some  semi-converted 
food,  as  peptone,  and  an  absorbent  medium,  such  as  starch,  with  the 
addition  of  a  proportion  of  lactic  acid  to  complete  the  imaginary 
character.  From  this  it  will  readily  be  observed  that  there  was 
nothing  whatever  of  definite  existence  or  proportion ;  and  whilst 
such  substance  found  its  way  into  medical  adoption,  and  useful 
results  were  thought  to  be  traceable  to  it,  it  could  not  be  considered 
other  than  a  crude  and  unsatisfactory  product.    The  older  pharma- 
