YELLOW  WAX  COMPARED  WITH  WHITE,  ETC. 
339 
paraffine,  or  other  sophistication,  is  deprived  of  all  its  honey,  and 
nearly,  if  not  quite  all  its  balsamic  principles,  and  is  so  deteri- 
orated by  the  bleaching  process,  that  a  slightly  rancid  odor  is 
nearly  always  observable,  and,  in  my  judgment,  it  produces  a 
strong  tendency  to  rancidity  in  all  its  compounds.  It  has  no 
particular  advantage  over  the  yellow,  except  in  point  of  color, 
which  is  a  very  doubtful  advantage,  considering  the  sacrifice  of 
useful  features  peculiar  to  the  latter. 
What  does  the  suffering  patient  care  for  the  color  of  an  oint- 
ment, if  it  is  adapted  to  his  case  and  heals  his  wound  ?  And  I 
would  ask  what  good  and  sufficient  reason  is  there  for  throwing 
aside  the  peculiar  virtues  of  yellow  wax,  and  making  a  really 
inferior  cerate,  liable  to  constant  deterioration,  in  order  to  have 
it  white  ? 
Mr.  Maisch  said  that  he  had  no  practical  experience  with  the 
substitution,  in  ointments  and  cerates,  of  yellow  for  white  wax. 
Mr.  Bringhurst  had  referred  to  the  rancidity  of  all  the  simple 
cerate  made  by  private  parties,  and  at  the  U.  S.  A.  Laboratory, 
which  he  saw  on  the  battle  field.  The  speaker  said,  however, 
that  he  had  examined  many  samples  of  so-called  simple  cerate 
used  by  the  army,  and  had  found  quite  a  number  furnished  by 
houses  considered  respectable,  which  did  not  contain  a  trace  of 
wax,  which  was  substituted  by  Japan  wax  and  paraffine.  This 
fraudulent  preparation  is  easily  recognized  by  its  semi-trans- 
parent appearance,  while  true  simple  cerate  is  opaque.  Japan 
wax  is  a  fat,  usually  more  or  less  rancid  the  way  it  appears  in 
commerce,  and  must,  therefore,  necessarily  hasten  the  decompo- 
sition of  lard.  Paraffine  renders  lard  rancid  still  more  rapidly. 
These  facts  account  in  part  for  the  experience  of  Mr.  Bringhurst. 
Some  private  houses  had  furnished  to  the  army  true  simple 
cerate,  and  all  made  at  the  U.  S.  Army  Laboratory  in  this  city 
was  prepared  strictly  according  to  the  Pharmacopoeia.  In  1863, 
shortly  after  the  Laboratory  went  into  operation,  the  speaker 
had  met  with  some  difficulty  in  obtaining  pure  lard,  the  com- 
mercial being  found  to  contain  a  fraudulent  admixture  of  from 
12  to  16  per  cent,  of  water.  Subsequently,  however,  pure  lard 
was  prepared  by  the  manufacturers  for  this  institution.  Al- 
though the  material  was  used  strictly  in  the  proportion  of  the 
