392 
Vanillin  Tests. 
{  Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
X     August,  1905. 
most  valued  in  American  plant  life  is  to  be  credited  to  Eclecticism. 
But  we  value  above  all  the  interstructural  effect  that  comes  from  life- 
bound  structures  endowed  with  their  full  vital  qualities,  preserved  in 
assimilable  form.  This  vegetable  Eclectic  Materia  Medica  has  been 
evolved  by  seventy-five  years'  study  of  organized  plant  structures. 
To  attempt  to  parallel  these  remedies  by  crudities  we  have  left  be- 
hind generations  ago,  or  by  fragments  broken  out  of  them,  is  as 
illogical  as  to  attempt  to  use  the  decomposition  products  of  albumen 
as  a  food  where  experience  has  proven  the  value  of  albumen  as  a 
whole.  On  the  use  of  these  valuable  structures  has  the  therapy  of 
our  school  been  established,  both  as  to  its  indications  and  dosage. 
It  is  a  therapy  and  a  materia  medica  that  now  is  increasingly  sought, 
and  is  greatly  needed  by  the  physicians  of  other  schools,  whose  eyes 
I  believe  are  at  last  longingly  directed  toward  the  fruit  borne  by  the 
tree  of  Eclecticism,  in  this,  its  last  quarter  of  nearly  a  century  of 
patient  life. 
VANILLIN  IN  ITS  BEHAVIOR  TO  THE  FORMALDE- 
HYDE TESTS.1 
By  Charges  H.  LaWali,. 
The  accuracy  and  reliability  of  any  test  or  analytical  method  is 
directly  proportionate  to  the  knowledge  which  has  been  acquired 
concerning  the  means  of  distinguishing  other  substances  which  are 
liable  to  be  confused  with  it  on  account  of  the  similarity  of  the 
reaction. 
The  possibility  of  error  is  much  smaller  in  the  field  of  inorganic 
work,  where  schemes  have  been  worked  out  for  the  separation  of 
all  known  substances  of  this  class;  but  in  the  department  of  organic 
chemistry,  where  the  large  number  and  complex  constitution  of  most 
of  the  bodies  render  the  application  of  any  definite  scheme  of  sep- 
aration and  identification  almost  impossible  except  tor  a  very  few 
substances,  the  chemist  is  compelled  to  rely  upon  certain  reactions 
known  as  color  reactions  in  identifying  most  organic  bodies  when 
they  are  present  only  in  small  amounts  or  mere  traces. 
The  fact  that  in  many  instances  color  reactions  of  a  similar  nature 
are  produced  by  different  bodies,  often  due  to  remote  chemical  rela- 
1  Read  at  the  meeting  of  the  Pennsylvania  Pharmaceutical  Association,  June, 
1905,  and  contributed  by  the  author. 
