AmMa°rU!'Xh7arm'}  Minutes  of  the  Pharmaceutical  Meeting.  135 
difficulty,  and  applied  without  danger,  not  only  to  the  skin,  but  to  the  external 
auditory  meatus  and  to  the  mucous  membrane.  It  is  eliminated  completely  or 
almost  completely  by  the  respiratory  passages  in  whatever  way  it  may  have  been 
introduced  into  the  system. — Med.  and  Surg.  Rep.,  Feb.  24. 
Phosphorus  pills  are  prepared  by  Thos.  Haftenden,  by  fusing  the  phosphorus- 
under  a  little  mucilage  in  a  dish  placed  in  a  water-bath,  then  stirring  to  form  a  kind 
of  emulsion,  after  which  the  powder  to  form  the  pills  is  rapidly  but  carefully  stirred 
in  with  a  small  spatula,  care  being  taken  to  keep  the  mass  together,  otherwise,  if 
spread  on  the  warm  sides  of  the  cup,  the  phosphorus  is  apt  to  catch.  When  well 
mixed  together,  they  may  be  put  in  a  mortar  and  worked  up  in  the  usual  way. — 
Fhar.  Jour,  and  Trans.,  1876,  Sept.  23. 
E.  J.  Appleby  has  experimented  with  cacao  butter,  tolu  balsam  and  resin  as 
excipients  for  phosphorus,  and  finds  that  with  the  first  named,  the  mass  requires 
some  time  and  patience  to  prepare,  and  must  be  divided  into  pills  and  coated  at 
once.  The  phosphorized  tolu  balsam  is  difficult  to  incorporate  with  other  ingre- 
dients, and  pills  made  from  it  soon  lose  their  shape,  and  are  with  difficulty  soluble 
in  water.  Phosphorized  resin  on  the  contrary  is  easily  prepared,  and  may  be  kept 
under  water  for  any  length  of  time.  It  can  be  quickly  reduced  to  a  fine  powder, 
and  easily  made  into  a  pill  mass. — Ibid.,  Oct.  7. 
February  20th,  1S-- 
The  meeting  was  organized  by  electing  Robert  England  tothe  chair  5  A  W. 
Miller  officiated  as  Registrar,  pro  temp. 
James  T.  Shinn  rose  to  explain  that  his  remarks,  as  recorded  in  the  minutes  of 
the  last  meeting,  were  not  intended  to  cast  reflection  on  physicians  themselves,  but 
related  only  to  the  very  great  variation  in  the  size  of  the  conventional  domestic, 
measures  for  administering  medicines,  which  must  of  necessity  produce  marked 
discrepancies  in  the  division  of  the  doses  of  liquids. 
Prof.  Maisch  presented  a  pamphlet  received  from  Dr.  E.  R.  Squibb,  entitled 
"The  American  Medical  Association  and  the  Pharmacopoeia  of  the  United  States 
of  America. " 
Prof.  Maisch  stated  that  he  had  recently  been  informed  that  in  the  Prussian  army, 
even  when  in  actual  service  in  the  field,  the  compounding  of  prescriptions  is  done 
only  by  weighing,  the  use  of  measures  of  capacity  being  almost  entirely  prohibited. 
A.  W.  Miller  presented  a  specimen  of  oil  of  cubebs,  prepared  by  percolating'the 
ground  drug  with  light  petroleum  benzin,  permitting  this  to  evaporate  spontane- 
ously, and  then  subjecting  the  residue  to  distillation.  The  product  was  entirely 
free  from  all  odor  of  petroleum.  About  3  lbs.  of  essential  oil  were  obtained  from 
25  lbs.  of  the  drug,  and  about  20  ounces  of  resin,  fatty  oil,  etc.,  were  left  in  the 
still. 
