26o 
American  Chemical  Society. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
June,  1907. 
about  170  in  the  Philadelphia  Section,  but  two,  to  the  knowledge  of 
our  local  secretary,  dropped  out  during  the  last  year. 
The  Chemical  Society  differs  from  the  Pharmaceutical  Association 
in  having  two  general  sessions  yearly  instead  of  but  one — one  in 
mid-summer  and  one  in  mid-winter,  usually  during  the  Christmas 
holidays.  The  mid-winter  meeting  is  always  held  simultaneously 
with  the  anual  meeting  of  the  American  Association  for  the  Ad- 
vancement of  Science,  thus  giving  its  members  who  attend  an 
opportunity  to  listen  to  and  participate  in  the  deliberations  of.many 
other  scientific  organizations  in  which  they  may  be  interested. 
As  it  would  be  tiresome  to  listen  to  further  details  as  to  the  or- 
ganization of  the  society,  I  will  pass  on,  with  the  remark  that  I  have 
here  a  copy  of  the  constitution  and  by-laws  if  anyone  is  further 
interested  along  this  line. 
We  are  more  interested  to-night  with  the  local  section  work,  and 
without  any  doubt  the  life  of  the  American  Chemical  Society's  or- 
ganization lies  with  its  local  sections.  Comparatively  few  members 
can  afford  to  take  the  time  to  attend  the  semi-annual  meetings. 
Hence  the  inducements  to  a  chemist  to  join  the  American  Chemi- 
cal Society  are  two -fold, — first,  the  receipt  of  the  Journal  of  the 
American  Chemical  Society,  which,  since  its  origin  in  1879,  has 
grown  into  a  publication  of  great  merit,  and  of  the  bi-monthly  Ab- 
stract Journal,  which,  by  the  way,  devotes  a  chapter  in  each  number 
to  Pharmaceutical  Chemistry,  under  the  editorship  of  Prof.  A.  B. 
Stevens,  of  Michigan;  and  secondly,  the  pleasure  and  profit  arising 
from  the  intercourse  with  his  fellow-chemists  at  the  monthly  local 
section  meetings.  To  illustrate  how  greatly  these  local  meetings 
are  appreciated, — in  some  of  the  Western  States  where  chemists 
are  fewer  and  farther  between,  alternate  meetings  are  held  in  differ- 
ent places.  Thus,  in  the  Indiana  section,  while  sessions  are  gener- 
ally held  in  Indianapolis,  they  are  occasionally  held  at  Purdue 
University  in  Lafayette,  sixty-four  miles  away,  and  are  well  at- 
tended. I  refer  to  this,  not  because  I  advocate  a  skipping  about. 
As  a  general  rule,  meeting  in  one  spot,  and  that  a  well-known  and 
centrally-located  one,  at  a  regularly  set  time  each  month,  is  better, 
but  that  members  should  go  sixty  or  seventy  miles  to  its  meetings 
is  significant  of  the  fact  that  the  local  section  is  the  life  of  the 
organization. 
An  account  of  our  Philadelphia  section  meetings,  with  which,  as 
