PERSONAL. Albert Benjamin Prescott, President-elect of the American Pharmaceutical Association, is best known as an author and investigator in chemistry and an educator in pharmacy. He was born in Hastings, N. Y., December 12, 1832. He studied both medicine and chemistry in the University of Michigan, and in 1864 entered the medical service of the army, commissioned as assistant surgeon in the general corps, known as the United States Volunteers. He was assigned to duty on the Board of Examination for contract surgeons, and was surgeon-in-charge of Foundry General Hospital, Louisville, Ky. In 1865 he entered upon college teaching, in which he has been engaged up to the present. From the organization of the School of Pharmacy of the University of Michigan, in 1868, he was an active promoter of laboratory methods in phar maceutical education. While director of the chemical laboratory and professor of organic chemistry for all departments of the University, he has served as the dean of the department of pharmacy. Since 1880 his work as a teacher has been devoted almost exclusively to his chosen subject, organic chemistry. His students represent nearly every department of the University. He speaks slowly and concisely, voicing the knowledge he has to impart in unmistakable terms. His success as a teacher may be best stated by quoting the words of one of his pupils, who said that he had listened to "many teachers, both in this country and in Europe, but had found none who excel him in clearness of expression, so that ideas can be readily grasped by the student." Dr. Prescott is a very busy man, accomplishing a great amount of work without apparent haste, and yet he is never too busy to patiently and carefully explain the minutest point to a student seeking after knowledge. In research his subjects have mostly been taken from organic and analytical chemistry. In the pharmacopoeial revision of 1880, Dr. Prescott was chairman of the sub-committee on descriptive chemistry, and prepared the directions for volumetric estimation upon their introduction into this work. This year he has written the chapter upon alkaloids for the forthcoming American Text-book of Toxicology. Professor Prescott is a member of many scientific societies. He is President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a councillor in the American Chemical Society. As to the American Pharmaceutical Association, Dr. Prescott expresses his conviction that it has a future of great good before it. It is a body of able and devoted workers, bent upon the support of scientific investigation, the maintenance of sound commercial principles and the union of all the interests of pharmacists in this country. OBITUARY. SIR EDWARD FRANKLAND, one of the most distinguished of English chemists, died on August 9th, in Norway, where he had gone for recreation. He was in the seventy-fourth year of his age, having been born at Churchtown, near Lancaster, in 1825. His preliminary education was obtained at the Lancaster Grammar School, and his studies in chemistry were pursued at the Museum of Practical Geology, in London, under Playfair, and in the laboratories of Liebig and Bunsen, at Giessen and Marburg. To Frankland has been ascribed the hypothesis of the atomicity of the elements, his views regarding this subject having been communicated to the Royal Society in 1852. These were based on deductions from his studies of the organo-metallic compounds, bodies formed by the union of a positive organic radicle with a metal. His discovery of these compounds was made in 1850, when he announced the preparation of compounds of zinc with ethyl and methyl, and predicted the existence of other similar bodies. In 1851 he was appointed professor of chemistry at Owens College, Manchester, and it was at this time that he began his work in applied chemistry, his most important contributions to this subject being those on the questions of water supply and sewage. In company with Tyndall, he spent a night on the very summit of Mont Blanc, in August, 1859, for the purpose of determining whether the rate of burning of bodies requiring a supporter of combustion is independent of the density of the atmosphere in which they are burnt. This question was answered in the affirmative. In addition to his other investigations, physiological chemistry likewise received a share of his attention. Frankland's scientific attainments won for him the highest honors in his own country, and many honorary distinctions from abroad as well. ANTON SCHÜRER V. WALDHEIM, the most prominent representative of Austrian pharmacy, died at Vienna, on August 13th, in the seventieth year of his age. Waldheim was born in Vienna, and his education was obtained in the schools of that city. In 1846 he finished a course at the Academic Gymnasium, after which he applied himself to the study of philosophy for two years. Meanwhile (in 1846) he also took up the study of pharmacy in his father's Apotheke, and from 1852 to 1854 attended the course in pharmacy at the University of Vienna, receiving the degree of master of pharmacy in the latter year. Later on he served in pharmacies in Dresden, Paris and London, and in 1856, on the death of his father, took charge of the latter's Apotheke in Vienna, which he held during the remainder of his life. Waldheim was officially connected with a large number of organizations for promoting the interests of pharmacy, and for more than thirty years devoted himself, at the sacrifice of much time and money, to this cause. He was the chief spirit in the movement for the adoption of an International Pharmacopoeia, and this undertaking failing in its accomplishment, he became an advocate for the adoption of an International Pharmacopoeia of Potent Remedies, and was a member of the committee for carrying out plans for the organization of an International Pharmacopoeia Commission. He was the representative of the Austrian Apotheker Verein at the International Pharmaceutical Congresses at Paris (1864), Vienna (1868), St. Petersburg (1875), London (1881), and at Brussels (1885). At the latter Congress he was also the representative of the Austrian Government, and submitted to the Congress the draft of an International Pharmacopoeia. At St. Petersburg he was the President, and for his services in this capacity was made a knight of the Russian Order of St. Ann. He was also a knight of the Franz Joseph Order of Austria. He was an honorary member of various Continental pharmaceutical societies; the Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, the British Pharmaceutical Conference, the American Pharmaceutical Association, and in 1889 was elected an honorary member of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. NEW ECONOMICAL PLANTS OF EAST AFRICA.-One of these is a tree of the N. O. Apocynaceæ, viz., Mascarenhasia elastica, K. Schum., which yields caoutchouc. Another is Canarium Liebertianum, Engl., the bark of which yields a resin that much resembles olibanum. Another is Erythrophloëum guiniense, Don., the wood of which is valuable and the bark contains erythrophloëin. The fruit of Cordyla africana, Lour., yields an edible leguminous fruit.-Notzbl. d. Berl. bot. Gart., 1899. UNGANDA ALOES.-W. A. H. Naylor and J. J. Bryant (Pharm. Jour., 1899, p. 296) find that Unganda aloes approximates in character and tests to Cape aloes. THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACY NOVEMBER, 1899. A NOTE ON POWDERED DRUGS. BY MELVIN WILLIAM BAMFORD, P.D. In a paper published in the Pharm. Zeit., 1898, p. 685, Dieterich has shown that the amount of ash yielded by the fine and coarse parts of the powder of certain drugs varies with the fineness of the powder. As to what these different powders consisted of, no mention whatever was made, so that we do not know whether they consisted solely or in part of parenchyma, epidermis, or any other tissues, or indeed foreign matter, as no microscopical examination of the different powders was made. Although Dieterich did, in drawing his conclusions, state that he presumed this difference in ash was caused by the separation of tissues, and, therefore, the separation of their constituents, as crystals, alkaloids, etc., into the separate powders, this statement was made without any attempt being made to prove such to be the case. His experiments, therefore, simply proved this difference in ash, without assigning any definite cause for it. Dieterich did not show that fine and coarse powders of the same drug did not yield the same percentage of ash, although this might have been assumed from the results shown. In order to be clear on these various points, and to determine, if possible, the causes underlying them, the author of the present paper, at the suggestion of Professor Henry Kraemer, carried out a number of experiments in the Microscopical Laboratory of the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. In the first of these experiments senna was the drug used. Senna leaves were cut up so as to all go through a No. 8 sieve, and another lot ground so as to all pass through a No. 80 sieve. Two ash determinations on each of these powders resulted as follows: No 8-(a) 10.19 per cent.; (b) 9.89 per cent. No. 80-(a) 10.50 per cent.; (b) 9.93 per cent. Allowing for discrepancies which must occur in such work, these results show that practically there is no difference in the percentage of ash. The next determinations were made on three powders, Nos. 8, 30 and 80, which were obtained by separating a coarsely ground powder of the same lot of senna into powders of the above degrees of fineness. Two ash determinations were made on each of these powders, with the following results: No. 8—(a) 10.17 per cent.; (b) 10.20 per cent. These results, although showing a slight increase with the fineness of the powder, do not show anything like the same increase shown in Dieterich's work. Since this difference was supposed to be due to the different tissues in the several powders, it was thought desirable to use some drug in which the tissues could be separated. This drug was found in ipecac. A lot of ipecac was procured and in a part of it the bark was separated from the wood. (Incidentally it was found that the bark constituted about 80 per cent. of the drug.) The percentage of ash found in these parts, two determinations being made. in each case, was as follows: Bark (a) 2:44 per cent.; (b) 2:45 per cent. Wood-(a) 1.69 per cent.; (b) 1·47 per cent. It will be noticed here that the bark yields about I per cent. more ash than the wood, which is partly due to the fact that all the crystals of calcium oxalate are contained in the bark, and partly to another fact which will be shown later. Next a quantity of the same drug, ground to a coarse powder, was divided into powders of different degrees of fineness, Ash determinations were then made on two of these powders, that which passed through a No. 80 sieve and that which did not pass through a No. 20 sieve. These resulted as follows: Coarser than No. 20—(a) 2·14 per cent.; (b) 1·90 per cent. No. 80-(a) 12.35 per cent.; (b) 12.54 per cent. |