Am.  Jour.  Phariii.  ) 
March,  1909.  j 
Progress  in  Pharmacy. 
141 
incident  to  the  distillation,  and  as  it  would  undoubtedly,  for  most 
operators,  consume  as  much  (if  not  more)  time  to  properly  fill  and 
weigh  a  pycnometer  as  it  would  to  take  the  specific  gravity  by 
means  of  the  Westphal  balance  and  make  the  necessary  calculations, 
Dr.  Lyons's  method,  as  a  time-saver,  is  of  problematic  value.  More- 
over, the  method  has  the  additional  drawback  of  requiring  specially 
constructed  pycnometers  for  use  in  various  altitudes,  on  account  of 
differences  in  barometric  pressure. 
Second,  by  means  of  the  refractive  index.  The  Zeiss  immersion 
refractometer  has  been  proposed  and  used  as  a  means  of  determining 
the  alcoholic  content  of  the  final  distillate.  Inasmuch,  however,  as 
many  of  the  same  substances  which  are  liable  to  contaminate  the  dis- 
tillate and  which  cause  a  vitiation  of  the  specific  gravity  will  also 
cause  a  vitiation  of  the  refractive  index,  the  method  does  not  offer 
any  special  advantages  in  the  general  laboratory.  The  immersion 
refractometer,  however,  may  be  employed  to  great  advantage  in 
determining  the  relative  proportions  of  ethyl  and  methyl  alcohols  in 
denatured  alcohol,  for  which  see  Herrick's  "  Denatured  or  Industrial 
Alcohol,"  pp.  145-157- 
Finally,  I  desire  to  express  my  thanks  to  Mr.  L.  Henry  Bernegau 
and  Mr.  Fritz  Heidlberg  for  valuable  suggestions  as  well  as  for  the 
carrying  out  of  the  determinations  and  experiments  described  in 
this  paper. 
Analytic  Laboratory  of  the 
H.  K.  Mulford  Company. 
PROGRESS  IN  PHARMACY. 
A  QUARTERLY  REVIEW  OF  SOME  OF  THE  MORE  INTERESTING  LITERA- 
TURE RELATING  TO  PHARMACY  AND  MATERIA  MEDICA. 
By  M.  I.  Wilbert,  Washington,  D.  C. 
From  a  pharmaceutical  point  of  view,  or,  rather,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  one  interested  in  the  progress  of  pharmacy  as  a  science, 
the  most  important  happening  during  the  past  three  months  was  the 
initial  session  of  the  section  on  pharmaceutical  chemistry  that  was 
held  in  connection  with  the  thirty-ninth  general  meeting  of  the 
American  Chemical  Society,  held  in  Baltimore,  during  Convocation 
Week. 
