Afe™ptJember,hiam'}    International  Pharmaceutical  Congress.  455 
interior  of  the  tube  holds,  a  special  pair  of  pincers  is  used  to  cut  off 
the  capsules  at  any  desired  distance.  The  pincers  can  be  adjusted 
very  accurately  for  this  work.  The  resulting  capsules  are  cushion- 
shaped,  but  can  be  rounded  by  trimming  off  the  corners.  M.  Lepi- 
nois  gave  a  demonstration  of  his  method,  and  assured  us  that 
patients  found  no  difficulty  in  swallowing  the  square  capsules.  The 
process  was  fairly  quick,  but  did  not  seem  to  present  many  advan- 
tages over  the  hollow-capsule  method  used. 
EMODINES. 
Tschirch  presented  a  paper  on  the  emodines. 
He  has  divided  emodines  into  two  classes,  the  first  one  containing 
rheum-emodin,  frangula-emodin  and  cathartic-emodin,  which  give  a 
deep-red  color  when  treated  with  sulphuric  acid  and  followed  by 
ammonia ;  whilst  the  second  class,  containing  aloes-emodin  and 
senna-emodin,  give  a  brighter  red  color  with  the  same  reagents. 
Professor  Tschirch  also  distinguishes  them  by  their  melting  points 
— the  first  group  melting  at  2500  C,  the  second  at  from  223 0  to 
2240  C. 
METHOD  OF  RAPIDLY  WEIGHING  EXTRACTS. 
Brociner  described  a  method  for  rapidly  weighing  extracts,  in 
which  a  sliding  weight  is  used  on  the  beam  to  give  the  weight  of  a 
capsule,  into  which  a  quantity  of  any  extract  could  then  be  weighed. 
TARTAR  EMETICS. 
Baudan  gave  a  rather  scientific  paper  on  the  constitutional  formulae 
of  these  compounds. 
CULTIVATION  OF  MEDICINAL  PLANTS. 
Bavay  read  a  paper  on  the  influence  of  cultivation  on  the 
activity  of  medicinal  plants.  He  argued  that  in  those  plants 
which  contain  alkaloids  the  alkaloidal  determination  may  be  made 
the  measure  of  success  in  cultivation,  and  instanced  opium,  cinchona, 
tobacco,  coca  and  kola  as  proof  thereof ;  but  other  drugs,  such  as 
henbane,  digitalis,  strophantus,  colchicum  and  aconite,  also  came 
into  the  reckoning.  M.  Bavay  hazarded  the  suggestion  that  the 
failure  of  Jamaica  cinchona  to  come  up  to  the  normal  alkaloidal 
standard  of  the  species  grown  is  proof  that  proximity  to  the  sea  in- 
