202         Pharmaceutical  Colleges  and  Associations.  { AmxJr°i?,ri8P78arm' 
Ambler ;  Vice  Presidents,  B.  F.  Mclntyre,  J.  L.  A.  Creuse,  B.  F.  Hays ;  Treasurer, 
Theobald  Frohwein  5  Secretary,  H.  L.  Coit  ;  Registrar,  L.  M.  Royce  ;  Delegates  to 
"the  Twenty-sixth  Annual  Meeting  of  the  American  Pharmaceutical  Association, 
P.  W.  Bedford,  Theo.  Frohwein,  Starr  H.  Ambler,  B.  F.  Hays,  E.  Montanus. 
At  10  o'clock,  the  members  and  invited  guests  proceeded  to  the  Sinclair  House, 
and  gave  a  collation  in  honor  of  the  graduating  class  of  1878,  at  which,  with  toasts 
and  speeches,  a  few  hours  were  pleasantly  spent,  B.  F.  Mclntyre,  the  retiring 
President,  presiding. 
Alumni  Association  of  the  St.  Louis  College  of  Pharmacy  The  third  annuai 
meeting  was  held  at  the  lecture-room  of  the  College  on  the  evening  of  February  19, 
President  Lindeman  in  the  chair.  Present  twenty-four  members.  The  minutes  of 
the  last  annual  meeting  and  of  the  Executive  Board  were  read  and  approved.  The 
annual  reports  of  the  president,  officers  and  committees  were  read  and  acted  upon, 
the  Treasurer  reporting  a  balance  on  hand  amounting  to  $115.25.  The  election  of 
officers  for  the  ensuing  year  resulted  as  follows  :  Francis  Hemm,  President  ;  Henry 
Strassinger  and  O.  E.  Trentler,  Vice  Presidents  ;  W.  C.  Bolm,  Recording  Secretary  j 
R.  H.  B.  Hunstock,  Corresponding  Secretary ;  Ad.  Pfeiffer,  Treasurer  ;  C.  A.  Ben- 
del,  Registrar;  H.  E.  Lindeman,  Chas.  Geitner  and  F.  F.  Reichenbach,  members  of 
the  Executive  Board.  The  newly-elected  president  appointed  a  committee  of  five 
to  suggest  amendments  to  the  Pharmacy  Act  of  St.  Louis,  which,  as  it  stands  at 
present,  was  pronounced  in  the  retiring  president's  address  as  being  very  impotent  and 
almost  useless. 
Pharmaceutical  Society  of  Great  Britain. — At  the  pharmaceutical  meeting, 
held  Feb.  6,  President  John  Williams  in  the  chair,  Prof.  Bentley  exhibited  some 
Chinese  opium  and  the  poppy  capsule  from  which  it  had  been  prepared.  It  appears 
that  in  China  the  capsules  are  not  incised  but  punctured,  and  after  a  day,  or  a  day 
and  a  half,  the  opium  is  scraped  off  and  put  into  jars;  it  seems  to  be  generally 
quite  moist  and  often  of  a  musty  odor.  Some  specimens  of  Chinese  opium  had  been 
found  to  contain  as  much  as  15  to  17  per  cent,  of  morphia;  the  specimen,  examined 
by  Mr.  Thirlby,  had  yielded  775  per  cent  of  morphia  and  675  per  cent  of  narco- 
tina.    Prof.  Bentley  considers  Chinese  opium  altogether  inferior  to  Smyrna  opium. 
Prof.  Bentley  also  showed  matura  flowers,  which,  on  a  superficial  examination, 
resemble  fruits,  but  are  really  the  corollas  of  Bassia  latifolia,  a  tree  common  in 
India,  in  some  parts  of  which  they  are  used  for  food.  They  have  a  saccharine  smell 
and  contain  a  large  quantity  of  sugar.  A  spirit  may  be  obtained  from  them,  which, 
when  new,  is  regarded  as  injurious,  and  there  appears  to  be  a  difficulty  in  freeing  it 
from  its  disagreeable  qualities;  but  when  it  is  old  it  is  said  to  get  better.  Several 
tons  of  the  flowers  are  now  coming  into  the  English  market  to  be  used  in  distillation. 
Prof.  C.  H.  Wood,  of  Calcutta,  read  a  paper  on  the  progress  of  cinchona  cultiva- 
tion and  alkaloid  production  in  Bengal.  The  cultivation  was  commenced  in  1861, 
by  Dr.  Anderson  at  the  botanical  gardens  at  Calcutta,  and  in  the  following  year 
preparations  were  commenced  for  establishing  a  permanent  plantation  in  Sikkim,  oa 
