330         Pharmaceutical  Colleges  and  Associations.  {^"^'y^y^'J^^^^' 
College,  in  accordance  with  the  Pharmacy  Law  of  1873,  J'jdges  of  the  Court  of 
Common  Pleas  have  appointed  Messrs.  J.  F.  Judge,  F.  L,  Eaton  and  Chas.  Schmidt 
as  the  Pharmaceutical  Examining  Board  of  the  city  of  Cincinnati  for  two  years 
from  June  ist,  1875. 
Pharmaceutical  Society  of  Great  Britain. — The  last  pharmaceutical  meet- 
ing of  the  session  was  held  April  7th,  President  Thos.  H.  Hills  in  the  chair.  After 
the  reception  of  donations  to  the  library,  museum  and  herbarium,  Professor  A.,W. 
Hofmann,  of  Berlin,  exhibited  a  collection  of  chemicals,  over  one  hundred  in  num- 
ber, most  of  them  prepared  by  his  pupils  for  the  purpose  of  enabling  him  to  illustrate 
the  Faraday  lecture,  which  Professor  Hofmann  had  been  invited  to  deliver  before 
the  Chemical  Society  of  London,  and  for  the  subject  of  which  he  had  chosen  the 
life-work  of  Liebig  in  chemistry,  experimental  and  philosophical.  Substances  which 
Liebig  himself  discovered  were  designated  by  a  white  label,  and  those  discovered  by 
others,  but  which  he  examined  and  the  composition  and  formulas  of  which  he  de- 
termined, by  a  blue  label.  The  Society,  he  said,  would  feel  interested  in  looking  at 
the  collection  from  two  points  of  view.  One  was  that  they  had  the  glorious  result 
of  a  single  life  before  them  representing  what  he  might  call  an  encyclopgedic  display 
of  his  work  ;  and  the  second  point  was  that  it  showed  the  enthusiasm  with  which 
young  chemists  of  our  day  most  willingly  gave  up  a  considerable  part  of  their  time 
for  the  sole  purpose  of  exhibiting  the  labors  of  their  grand  countryman  in  the  most 
conspicuous  light  to  the  chemists  and  pharmaceutists  of  Great  Britain. 
Mr.  E.  M.  Holmes  read  a  paper  on  the  identity  of  Goa  powder  and  araroba. 
Under  the  latter  name,  a  drug  partly  consisting  of  lumps  of  a  yellowish  substance 
and  partly  of  yellowish  wood  has  been  imported  into  Great  Britain  form  Bahia,  and 
is  used  with  success  as  an  external  application  in  skin  diseases.  From  the  micro- 
scopic structure  of  the  v^'ood,  and  from  some  leaves  received  from  Dr.  J.  L.  Pater- 
son,  of  Edinburgh,  Mr.  Holmes  refers  the  origin  of  araroba  or  chrysarobin  to  a 
species  of  Casalpinia.  Professor  Attfield  has  recently  ("  Pharm.  Journ  and  Trans.," 
March  13,  1875)  demonstrated  that  r/zry.f/xroZ'iVi  contains  Soto  84  percent  of  chryso- 
phanic  acid,  besides  a  bitter  principle,  glucoside  and  resinous  matter,  and  suggested 
its  probable  identity  with  the  so-called  Goa  powder,  which  had  long  been  imported 
into  Bombay  through  Goa,  and  was  described  by  D.  S.  Kemp  in  the  *'  Pharm. 
Journ.,"  for  February,  1874.  The  latter  is  usually  of  a  dull  ocher,  pale  brown  or 
even  chocolate  color  5  but  the  tests  made  by  Mr.  Holmes  with  ammonia,  alcohol, 
ether,  benzol,  chloroform  and  strong  sulphuric  acid  leave  hardly  any  dcubt  of  the 
identity  of  the  two  substances. 
Mr.  Plowman  has  also  experimented  upon  the  two  articles  with  benzol,  and  ob- 
tained from  Goa  powder  eleven  years  old  70  per  cent,  of  soluble  matter  5  from  re- 
cently obtained  Goa  powder,  87,  and  from  chrysarobin,  84  per  cent.,  the  solutions 
yielding,  upon  evaporation,  tufted  crystals  of  chrysophanic  acid. 
Professor  Bentley  reminded  the  meeting  of  the  importance  which  this  article  has 
now  attained,  while  eleven  years  ago  the  Goa  powder  then  exhibited  received  but 
little  attention  5  he  gave  some  interesting  information  regarding  several  South  Amer- 
ican dye-woods,  and  of  the  plants  containing  chrysophanic  acid. 
*  According  to  Prof.  Bomfin,  of  Bahia,  the  name  araroba  or  arariba  is  applied  by  the  natives  to  a  num- 
ber of  drugs.    See  an  investigation  of  Arariba  rubra  in  the  "  Amer.  Journ.  Pharm.,"  1862,  p.  395. 
