AmNJo°vU%87h9arm'}  Study  of  Organic  Chemistry  by  Pharmacists.  533 
theoretical  researches  in  organic  chemistry,  and  these  researches  may, 
in  the  future,  bear  practical  fruit  even  more  valuable. 
So  much  may  be  said  on  the  general  question  of  the  importance  of 
organic  chemistry  and  in  defence  of  its  present  form  and  methods. 
Let  us  now  turn  to  the  second  question  and  ask,  Has  it  any  special  prac- 
tical value  for  pharmacists  ?  We  have  already  called  attention  to  the 
fact  that  its  very  subject  matter  gives  it  such  an  importance,  dealing  as 
it  does,  with  the  very  substances  which  the  pharmacist  more  especially 
has  to  handle.  We  will,  therefore,  turn  to  the  history  of  organic 
chemistry,  and  see  what  it  has  accomplished  that  has  proved  of  service 
to  pharmacy,  and  finally  ask  whether  it  promises  anything  to  our 
science  for  the  future. 
First  of  all,  the  methods  of  proximate  analysis  characteristic  of 
organic  chemistry,  and  so  carefully  elaborated  by  her  students,  have 
given  to  pharmacy  a  large  number  of  her  most  valuable  remedies.  From 
the  opium  known  since  before  the  Christian  era,  Sertiirner,  in  18 16, 
after  an  investigation  extending  over  eleven  years,  isolated  morphia, 
gave  to  the  world  one  of  its  most  valuable  medicines,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  proclaimed  the  existence  of  vegetable  bases  or  alkaloids.  From 
the  Peruvian  bark,  officinal  since  1677,  Pelletier  and  Caventou,  in 
1823,  isolated  quinia  and  cinchonia.  Instead  of  a  tincture  of  gall-nuts 
modern  pharmacy  uses  the  chemically  pure  tannin.  So  soon  as  organic 
chemistry  isolates  the  active  substance  of  a  medicinally  valuable  plant, 
be  it  essential  oil,  glucoside  or  alkaloid,  she  has  enabled  pharmacy  to 
replace  the  use  of  a  crude  drug  by  that  of  a  pure  substance  possessing 
the  same  powers  in  a  much  more  concentrated  form.  The  application 
of  the  same  methods  of  analysis  are  of  the  greatest  value  to  pharmacy 
in  enabling  one  to  detect  adulterations  of  valuable  drugs,  and  as  a  means 
of  estimating  their  commercial  value.  An  excellent  illustration  of  this 
occurs  to  me.  While  the  vanilla  extract  has  been  used  in  pharmacy 
for  many  years,  no  reliable  method  of  estimating  the  percentage  of 
vanillin,  its  only  valuable  constituent,  existed.  Tiemann,  in  1874, 
made  artificial  vanillin,  and  wishing  to  know  the  value  of  a  definite 
weight  of  it,  as  compared  with  a  corresponding  weight  of  the  vanilla 
beans,  sought  for  a  method  of  estimating  the  strength  of  the  beans  in 
vanillin.  Nothing  better  was  known  than  a  comparison  of  the  flavor- 
ing power  of  extracts  from  different  samples  of  beans,  and  as  few  per- 
sons agree  exactly  in  taste  this  was  unreliable  to  the  last  degree.  After 
