Am.  Jour.  Pharm.) 
September,  1906.  / 
Progress  in  Pharmacy. 
433 
far  the  greater  number  of  the  eleven  sections  into  which  the  Con- 
gress was  divided  had  papers  of  unusual  interest  presented  to  them. 
Section  VIII,  devoted  to  Hygiene,  Medical  and  Pharmaceutical 
Chemistry,  was  unfortunately  one  of  the  less  important  ones.  Even 
in  this  section,  however,  pharmacists,  particularly  German  pharma- 
cists, were  well  represented  and  took  an  active  part  in  the  pro- 
ceedings. 
Among  the  papers  that  are  of  interest  to  pharmacists  we  may 
mention  "  The  Quantitative  Estimation  of  Fatty  Acids,"  by  Dr. 
Braun  ;  "  Testing  Commercial  Carbonic  Acid  Gas,"  by  W.  Lohman  ; 
"  The  Use  of  Ferments  in  Analytical  Work,"  by  Professor  Bour- 
quelot ;  and  "  The  Influence  of  Halogen  Salts  on  the  Fluorescence 
of  Quinine,"  by  M.  Deniges. 
The  concluding  general  session  of  the  Congress  adopted  at  least 
one  resolution  that  is  deserving  of  careful  consideration  on  the  part 
of  American  pharmacists.  In  this  resolution  the  International 
Congress  for  Applied  Chemistry  expresses  the  wish  that  in  coun- 
tries where  the  more  detailed  instruction  in  the  chemistry  of  food 
products  has  not  been  otherwise  provided  for  it  be  taken  up  and 
elaborated  in  connection  with  pharmaceutical  instruction ;  the 
members  of  the  Congress  believing  that  the  demands  that  are  now 
being  made  on  pharmacists  by  the  ever-increasing  advances  in 
hygiene  and  therapeutics  would  serve  to  particularly  fit  members  of 
the  pharmaceutical  profession  to  take  up  the  study  and  investiga- 
tion of  food  products. 
ThePerkin  Jubilee. — The  semi-centennial  of  the  introduction  of  coal- 
tar  colors,  which  has  but  recently  been  celebrated  in  England,  is  of 
interest  to  pharmacists  in  that  the  discovery  of  "  mauve,"  the  first 
of  these  dyes,  by  William  Henry  Perkin,  grew  out  of  his  experi- 
ments to  produce  quinine  artificially.  Out  of  the  subsequently  very 
rapid  development  of  the  coal-tar  color  industry  there  grew,  some 
twenty-five  years  later,  the  present-day  gigantic  business  of  coal-tar 
remedies,  which,  while  they  may  prove  to  be  an  unmixed  blessing 
to  therapeutists,  have  certainly  not  had  an  altogether  creditable 
effect  on  the  evolution  of  pharmacy  in  America. 
The  British  Pharmaceutical  Conference. — The  forty-third  annual 
meeting  of  the  British  Pharmaceutical  Conference  was  held  in 
Birmingham  during  the  week  following  July  23d.  This  city  has  the 
distinction  of  being  the  first  meeting  place  to  eniertain  the  Confer- 
