the other, the color formed in the reducing flame. Other beads of each kind may also be made, if desired, showing the effects of different quantities of metal present upon the color of the borax bead. The set of borax beads, so prepared, should be mounted with suitable labels upon a card, or better yet, in a small glass-covered wooden case. In the latter case the tubes are conveniently held in place with cotton wadding. The use of laboratoxy standards, can, in this manner, be readily extended to other topics by the resourceful chemistry teacher. The use of standards is not only a time-saving device for the teacher, but is also desirable from the pedagogical standpoint. It is all too easy for the pupil to get into the habit of continually asking questions about the colors and other qualitative aspects of substances he has prepared or obtained in tests. And it is also easy for the teacher to get into the habit of affirming the pupil's results in this regard. In this way the pupil gets to rely upon the authority of the teacher instead of the authority of Nature; and it is the authority of the latter that the pupil must be made to rely upon if we are ever to hope to inculcate something of the scientific attitude and spirit, as one of the results of our secondary school courses in chemistry and other sciences.
Chemist Approaches Synthesis of Leprosy-curing Substance. A simple derivative of chaulmoogric acid, one of the components of an oil used for centuries in the treatment of leprosy, has been made synthetically b y Prof. Roger Adams of the University of Illinois. Dr. Frederick B. Power of the U. S. Bureau of Chemistry, who first investigated the healing power of chaulmoogra oil more than twenty years ago, and who prepared the same substance from the natural oil that the Illinois professor has now prepared synlheticslly, said that futurr experiments would prove or disprove irc value. " S o infurmation iq yet uvailsble regnrding rhc physinloglcal action of the synth:tic compounds," Dr. Power said, "and their medicinal value in the treatment of leprosy can therefore not be determined until they have been submitted t o appropriate tests." The chaulmoogra oil, from which these acids that Dr. Rogers is attempting to make artificially are produced, is squeezed from the seeds of an East Indian tree known t o botanists as "Taraktogenos kurzii." The oil has a very disagreeable taste and is not easily tolerated by the patients because of the stomach disturbances it produces. By using modifications of the acids which Dr. Power first isolated, this difficulty was largely overcome, because these substances could be injected into the muscles. Leprosy is an ancient disease which has not yet been conquered, for it is still widely distributed over all tropical and temperate regions. No nation is wholly free from it. The exact number of cases in the world today is not !mown, hut conservative estimates place it a t from one to two millions. I n 1909 there were believed by different medical authorities to be between five hundred and two thousand cases in the United States. It is a slowly infecting disease, which, with better sanitary regulations and therapeutic methods, should be w i l y stamped out. In this connection the work of Dr. Adams will he watched with interest. -S&encc Sem'ce ~
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