their manifestations and course, would be taking a most important step toward acquiring a kind of knowledge which is essential to the professor of medicine; he would not, however, be thereby entitled to the name of physician, nor would any of his proceedings come within the scope of the medical art. He would be merely a student or a cultivator of the natural history of disease: a natural historian, a man of science-the very essence of the healing art is to relieve suffering; and it is this which has given it its ancient name of the most noble and god-like of all arts." * The book treats very largely upon the necessity of indoctrinating the popular mind with juster views of the natural course of diseases, and more sensible opinions in regard to the extent with which they may be controlled or modified by medicine. Upon both these subjects, even the most intelligent men are often utterly ignorant; nor is it any derogation from their perfect dignity and thorough respectability to tell them so. Three score years is altogether too short a period to justify an attempt upon the part even of the most ambitious, to look into all things. The builder who thoroughly masters his art and improves the architecture of his country, either in its beauty, or its durability, will find his hands and his brains sufficiently taxed; the merchant who manfully grapples the ugly facts which are thrust into his face by the statistics of trade, and wrings a fortune out of commerce, should be satisfied that he has accomplished his destiny. So of the lawyer, who in the pursuit of his whole profession is willing to go down into the depths of and search for the sources of right, and in the practice of it will earnestly and with toil trace and guard and do battle for that same great principle which underlies somewhere all the issues between man and his neighbor, he surely has a field inviting enough and large enough without being tempted at all to trespass on ours. Then that other high calling, which in its interests, its dignity, its thorough mental culture, its care for the present, and its solicitude for the future, of man; its utter and earnest devotion to all the interests of humanity, surely head and heart and hands of him whose feet are on this mountain, may all be pressed even to weariness in its legitimate service. If, Pages 180, 181. then, all these classes, which embrace certainly a large part of the educated thinkers of every community, are cut off from the possibility of knowing anything about a vocation which must be the single study of a life, what are we to say of the attainments in medicine of the uneducated and the thoughtless? Why this, that while they know absolutely nothing, they are the very persons who claim to know everything. Now while I repudiate utterly the idea of educating the people up to any minute acquaintance with diseases and their remedies, I hold that it is due to their best interests, and the higher respectability of medicine as an art, that they should be disabused of the mass of error which has been the growth of generations, and is traceable for origin back to the ages when mysticism and secrecy shrouded the cultivators of all occult sciences. Montaigne said three hundred years ago, that "the violent prejudice of custom imposed many things with absolute and undoubting opinion, that have no other support than the hoary beard and wrinkled visage of ancient use:" the thing is true to-day, and of us, boastful and arrogant that we live, stand, move and have our being in the very noon of the nineteenth century. Let us cease to claim that which never was ours, and by yielding to nature her unquestionable superiority over art, wipe out the reproach which taunts our noble profession with being a sham and a lie. "To be, is in all senses better than to seem, for to the true man fame is valuable precisely in so far as he can solemnly affix to it his own signature." J. J. SPEED, M. D. EXPERIMENTS ON STRYCHNINE AND OTHER VEGETABLE AND ANIMAL PROXIMATE PRINCIPLES. Read before the "Society for the Advancement of Natural Sciences," of Louisville, at its sitting of March 21, 1859. By THOS É. JENKINS. The writer having been employed in the month of September, 1855, to investigate, chemically, a case of suspected poisoning, a course of analysis was entered into, the result of which indicated the presence of strychnine in the contents of the stomach. One set of reactions which pointed to this poison, was the coloration produced by oxidizing agents; these rc-agents, although said by many chemists to be characteristic tests for strychnine, were not certainly known to be so by me, for the simple reason that I had not tried and seen their effects upon the various organic principles which were accessible to me. To satisfy myself upon this point, the following experiments were made. It was not deemed necessary to use more than one of the oxidizing agents, commonly employed for the purpose, because the results produced are substantially the same whether the oxidation be produced by one or the other of them. The manner of making these experiments was simply to mix on a white porcelain surface about the twentieth of a grain of the organic substance with one or two drops of white concentrated sulphuric acid, allowing them to remain in contact for a few moments, then testing with a small fragment of a crystal of bichromate of potassa drawn through the solution or mixture. With many of the principles the sulphuric acid reacted powerfully with the development of beautiful and in several instances intense colors. These I have noticed, as well as those produced by the subsequent action of the bichromate of potassa. In these experiments I have disregarded all changes except those resulting in the production of colors or their mutations. In point of time, quantity of substance tested, and mode of operating, the experiments were all as nearly alike as possible. The proximate principles which I employed were pure and nearly all in crystals. The changes in color are given in the order in which they occurred. Proximate Principles. Color Produced by Color Produced by Bichromate of Potassa. Brown, green. Brown, dirty green, blue. Sulphuric Acid. Canary yellow, Ononin, Light orange, Papaverin, Purplish red, Peucedanin, Phloridzin, Yellow, green, bluish. Yellow, green. Rhein, Intense red, Muddy, green. Piperin, Bromish red, Dirty, green. Lem'ny'w (evanesc't) Dirty yellow, Nearly all left a green coloration on the spot after the lapse of twenty-four or forty-eight hours, owing to the reduction of chromic acid to sesquioxide of chrome. *The result of one experiment. These and other observations I have made in regard to vegetable proximate principles, convince me of their general and powerful deoxidizing properties, as well as the establishment of the fact that the "color test," or "oxidizing test," is not only delicate but characteristic, and consequently reliable. In reference to the delicacy of the "color test," I found that when one grain of pure strychnine was dissolved in four hundred thousand drops of distilled water, and one drop of that solution was allowed to evaporate to dryness on a glass plate, not only were the crystals of strychnine revealed by the microscope, but on the addition of a small drop of very white concentrated sulphuric acid, and the subsequent application of the point of a spicula of bichromate of potassa, the characteristic colors were brought out. EDITORS MEDICAL NEWS: Gentlemen-I have read with interest your editorial of March 1st, in which you speak of the action of the Medical Association, at its next meeting, upon the important and much agitated subject of medical education. The leading positions which you have advanced have struck me as highly important, and as deserving serious consideration. The uniform action of the association at its earlier meetings, if I remember rightly, consisted in recommending to the schools the adoption of a system, which should comprise two courses of lectures, each extending through a period of six months. Your suggestion is, that students should be required to attend three courses of four months each, both plans thus requiring the same amount of time to be devoted to collegiate instruction. It seems to me that a little reflection will convince all interested in this important subject, that your plan is the preferable one. As a medical teacher, after having for many years observed the working of our present system, and witnessed several attempts at an increase in the length of college sessions, I am satisfied that the general - adoption of the plan of three sessions of four months each, would not only be a great step in advance of the existing mode, but would also be the most useful movement which could at this time be adopted. It seems to me clear, that three sessions of four months would be decidedly preferable to two |