530  Memoir  of  Prof.  Wm.  Procter,  Jr.  {^ov^is?!"* 
sion  and  a  carefulness  of  detail,  which  leave  no  room  to  doubt  the 
meaning  of  the  writer.  His  investigations  evidence  a  faithfulness  in 
research  and  a  completeness  which  has  made  his  name  an  authority. 
William  Procter,  Jr.,  became  a  member  of  the  Philadelphia  College 
of  Pharmacy  in  1840  ;  in  the  succeeding  year  he  was  elected  to  its 
Board  of  Trustees,  and  held  that  position  during  his  life.  In  1855 
he  was  made  Corresponding  Secretary  of  the  College,  and  continued 
to  serve  as  such  for  twelve  years.  In  1867  he  was  elected  first  Vice- 
President  of  the  College.  His  interest  in  the  affairs  of  the  College 
continued  unabated  during  the  thirty  years  of  his  connection  with  it; 
so  closely  was  he  identified  with  its  progress,  that  its  history  during 
that  period  is  almost  a  narrative  of  his  life. 
He  served  on  all  committees  appointed  for  the  decennial  revision 
of  the  Pharmacopoeia  for  the  past  thirty  years,  and  his  services  were 
engaged  in  assisting  Doctors  Wood  and  Bache,  in  several  of  the  later 
editions  of  the  United  States  Dispensatory. 
A  complete  review  of  the  published  essays  of  Prof.  Procter  would 
occupy  too  much  space  for  this  memoir,  and  we  can  only  allude  to  a 
few  of  them.  His  thesis  in  1837  on  Lobelia  inflata,  in  which  he 
demonstrates  the  presence  in  the  plant  of  an  alkaloid,  describes  the 
salts  formed  by  union  of  the  principal  acids  with  the  alkaloid,  and 
proposed  the  name  lobelina  for  the  active  principle. 
Three  years  previous,  S.  Colhoun,  M.  D.,  Professor  of  Materia 
Medica  in  Jefferson  Medical  College,  Philadelphia,  published  in  the 
American  Journal  of  Pharmacy,  vol.  V,  the  investigation  of  an 
acidified  extract  from  Lobelia,  which  foreshadowed  the  presence  of 
an  alkaloid,  but  he  did  not  succeed  in  isolating  the  principle.  Prof. 
Procter  was  aware  of  Doctor  Colhoun's  investigation,  and  refers  to 
it  in  his  supplementary  paper,  published  in  1841 — a  "  casual  omis- 
sion/' as  he  states,  in  not  having  done  so  in  his  thesis.  In  Novem- 
ber, 1850,  Mr.  William  Bastick  read  a  paper  before  the  Pharmaceu- 
tical Society  of  Great  Britain  on  Lobelia  inflata.  He  refers  to  Doc- 
tor Colhoun's  paper,  but  evidently  was  not  aware  of  Prof.  Procter's 
researches  in  1837  and  1841.  Mr.  Bastick  isolated  the  alkaloid, 
and  describes  it,  and  his  name  is  associated  in  the  books  with  its  dis- 
covery. In  January,  1851,  Prof.  Procter  writes  to  the  Editor  of  the 
Pharmaceutical  Journal,  London,  as  follows  :  "  For  some  reason, 
these  (my)  essays  appear  to  have  been  entirely  overlooked  by  the 
press  and  writers  on  your  side  of  the  Atlantic,  and  now  that  the  drug 
