News
Edition Published by the American Chemical Society
Vol. 1, No. 20
OCTOBER 20, 1923
and allowed to run per deliquium. This mixture must be exposed to the sun for six weeks and a t the end of this time there will swim a t the top of it the primum of this plant in a liquid form, transChemistry and Medicine Closely Associated since Earliest Times ens parent and either green or red or perhaps But Modern Chemistry Hair Substituted t h e Laboratory some other color. This is to be dissolved in good wine and the tincture taken every for Nature in Seeking Active Therapeutic Agents morning. First of all the nails of the fingers, then those of t h e toes, afterwards the hair and teeth fall off; and lastly the By E D W A R D H A R T skin is dried and exchanged for a new one. Professor of Chemical Engineering, Lafayette College An old hen had her food moistened with some drops of it. After the sixth day The relationship of Chemistry to Medi- writers did know or mean. Many of she began to moult and became stark cine is a very old one. When I can first their writings m a y be interpreted either naked. remember, a chemist in popular language a s containing concealed meanings or as B O Y L E ' S CONTRIBUTIONS N O T VERY was a man who prepared medicines. It verbal emptiness. CHOICE Boyle was possessed of the critical is only very recently t h a t the idea of a chemist as distinguished from a phar- faculty to a much greater degree than In a collection of Choice and Safe macist has taken shape. In my early liis contemporaries but when it came Remedies, Boyle prescribes a solution days t h e terms were almost synonymous. t o prescribing remedies this seems to of castile soap for jaundice. The ashes M a n y of the early chemists were con- have taken a vacation. In his Discourse of pig's dung is to be given for dysentery, nected in some way either with medicine on the Usefulness of Natural Philosophy dried and powdered earth worms for lie doubts whether potable gold has all convulsions, and the dried and powdered or pharmacy or both. The earliest form of medicine in the the wonderful properties so often ascribed liver of a hare for convulsive fits. Some history of t h e race grew from t h e idea t o i t though he does not absolutely reject of his remedies are too revolting for det h a t disease is caused by an evil spirit the use of leaf gold, rubies, sapphires scription. I t appears to have been the which must be frightened away by the and other gems taken internally. He popular belief t h a t the nastier a remedy medicine man, disguised in hideous masks commends the occasional use of such the more potent it was likely to be. a n d producing hideous sounds. Grad- remedies as t h e extract of horse dung. I n 1757 Carl Wilhelm Scheele, the. ually a knowledge of simple remedies— He recommends powdered wood lice as greatest chemist of his time, and one of a remedy for the stone. The primum heat-vapor baths, mineral waters and the greatest chemists of all time, entered herbs—grew up and took form, sometimes ens of celandine is prepared by beating the pharmacy of Martin Anders Bauch the herb in a marble mortar. This is very odd form, and the infant medicine a t Gôthenberg. A list of t h e drugs on was ready for partnership with the infant then to be sealed hermetically in a bolt- the shelves of this pharmacy has come chemistry, which extracted from drugs head for forty days. The liquor from down t o us. I t comprised: snake's fat, this is t o be mixed with an equal amount bears' and wolves' grease, men's heads t h e active principle, discovered medicinal of the liquor of good sea salt well purified prepared without fire, mummies, jaw of properties in mineral substances, and in these later times prepared those thouthe pike, oil of tape worm, powder of sand and one synthetic remedies which vipers, powder of t h e true wild ox horn, powder of the fossil wild ox and hoofs of have completely transformed the materia the elk. medica. Washington Meeting ResIn Pliny's "HistoriaNaturalis" innumerervations Should Be T H E AUTHOR M A K E S A CONFESSION able remedies for disease are mentioned, most of which could have done no possible Made Early I think t h a t even in the present enharm except t h a t some of them were lightened age some nonsense has survived. Although t h e Milwaukee meetexceedingly nasty, and stimulated the When my oldest boy was quite small the ing passed into history only about imagination like a bread pill. family physician was called upon to prea month ago, plans are already scribe for him upon several occasions. T H E SEARCH FOR A PANACEA under way for t h e next semiAt t h a t time I lived well back upon annual meeting of the American College Hill and the distance to the In t h a t later time when the alchemists Chemical Society which will be doctor's office had to be traveled afoot, were industriously looking for the Phiheld a t Washington the week there being then no trolley line. After losopher's Stone which should t r a n s m u t e after Kaster. The New Willard one of these jaunts in the evening taken the baser metals into gold and silver, Hotel will be headquarters and the after a hard day's work, coupled with an the idea gradually took shape of a mediconvention will open with the hour's wait in the doctor's office, my cine which should prove a panacea o r meeting of the Council on Monday, inventiveness came into action. Most remedy for all ills and a t the same t i m e April 21st. The local committees of t h e trips were after powdered oyster be a renewer of youth. Sometimes t h i s and lists of hotels will be announced shell, which the physician assured me was was to be a separate substance b u t usually in an early number of the News much more useful as an anti-acid than it was identical with the Philosopher's Edition. Reservations should be anything else he had ever used. He took Stone. In many cases it is nearly i m made far in advance as Washington care to give out very small quantities possible to tell just what the alchemical is usually crowded with convenwhich occasioned many trips. One morntions of various kinds a t t h a t ing I was admonished to get some more season of the year. * Read before the Section of History of Chemoyster shell. We had some beautiful istry, at the Milwaukee Meeting of the American calcite in the laboratory, and I powdered Chemical Society, September, 1923.
Some C u r i o u s Medicines*
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INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
some of :c very carefully in a Wedgewood mortar, did it up in neatly folded papers and handed out one of them on my r e t u r n home. I t was received unsuspiciously and appeared to work perfectly. I con tinued this course of criminal deception for over a year without detection. Only the fear of a hereafter a n d the necessity of eleventh-hour repentance induces me to confess now. Two of the most curious remedies I have found in the literature are described by Nicolas Lemery in the fourth edition of his "Cours de Chimie," of which a trans lation into Hnglish was made by Walter Harris, Doctor of Physik. H e tells us t h a t "mercury is given in the disease called miserere unto two or three pounds, a n d is voided again by siege to the same weight; it is better to take a great deal of it than a little, because a small quantity might be a p t to stop in t h e circumvolu tions of the guts, and if some acid humours should happen to join with it, a sub limate corrosive would there be m a d e ; b u t when a large quantity is taken there's no need of fearing this accident, because it passes quickly through by its own weight." The other remedy is a perpetual pill: "if you melt antimony over again a n d form it into bullets of the bigness of a pill, you h a v e a perpetual pill, t h a t is to say, such as being taken and voided fifty times will purge every time a n d yet there's hardly any sensible diminution."
Papain Unsatisfactory for Mak ing Tough Cuts Tender Suggestions have frequently been made t o nutrition workers in the United States Department of Agriculture t o the effect t h a t papaya leaves and also dried powder made from the fruit of the papaw could be used to make meats ten der. Both the leaf and the fruit con tain an enzyme which digests protein. A series of experiments conducted by the Bureau of Home Economics shows, however, t h a t papain in either of these forms cannot be considered desirable for rendering tough meat tender. A solution of the powder was applied t o cuts of meat from t h e shoulder and round, which were then separately cooked b y boiling, frying, and broiling. T h e enzymes acted rapidly on the connec tive tissues, especially when the meat was boiled, but the muscle fibers were made powdery and pasty a t the surface. T h e meat was dry, lacked natural meat flavor, and had a bitter taste. When t h e papaya leaves were crushed t o extract the juice and wrapped around the meat for periods ranging from 6 to 26 hours a t both room a n d refrigerator temperatures, the wrapped meat was slightly more tender than the untreated sample, b u t tasted decidedly cf the green a n d bitter juice of the leaves. Additional leaves were obtained from Miami, Fla., through the Office of For eign Seed and Plant Introduction. Re sults with these leaves were no more satisfactory than when papaya leaves grown in the Botanical Gardens a t Washington, D. C , were used. I n all cases the characteristic meat flavor tended to disappear and was replaced more or less by other flavors, particu larly by a bitter flavor in some cases.
Chemical E q u i p m e n t Associa t i o n Plans Exposition T h e Chemical Equipment Association's annual meeting was held a t the Chemists' Club, N e w York, September 20 a t 2:30 P.M., with President Schenck in the chair. T h e work of the Association in the ten months since i t began active operations with a central executive office and a secre t a r y was reviewed b y President Schenck. Recommendations were made for t h e broadening of this work along lines of general service, advertising to equipment using fields and interchange of information among members. T h e Association by unanimous vote of the members present instructed the new president to appoint a committee to formu late plans for a n exposition of chemical equipment. This action followed a gen eral discussion of the relation of expositions in general to t h e chemical industries in their present stage of development. I t was very plainly t h e sense of t h e Association t h a t , no m a t t e r how valuable m a y be t h e presentation t o the general public, or to selected sections of it, of t h e development of chemistry, t h e interests of producers of equipment a n d supplies for t h e chemical industries a n d present conditions inherent in those industries, point to the advisability of a selling ex position also. Officers and directors for t h e ensuing year were elected as follows: President, T. C. Oliver, Chemical Construction C o m p a n y ; Vice Presidents, Β . Β . Finch, K a r l Kiefer Machine Company, J . George. Lehman, Bethlehem F o u n d r y & Machine Company, and Peirce D. Schenck, T h e Duriron Company; Treasurer, P. S. Barnes, T h e Pfaudler Company; Directors, Harlowe Hardinge, Hardinge Company, P. B . Sadtler, Swenson E v a p o r a t o r Com pany, H . N . Spicer, T h e D o r r Company, R. Gordon Walker, Oliver Continuous Filter Company, and G. O. Carter, Union Carbide Company. _ For t h e sixth place on t h e Board of Directors, Messrs. R o b e r t M c K a y , I n ternational Nickel Company, a n d L. S. Thurston, General Blectric Company, received a n equal number of votes. One of these two will be elected t o t h e Board b y the balance of the directors. President Oliver has announced t h e appointment of a committee to formulate plans for an exposition as follows: Edwin C. Alford, T. Shriver & Company, Chair man; Peirce D . Schenck, T h e Duriron Company, and Β. Β . Finch, T h e Karl Kiefer Machine Company. The committee has been in session a n d has made considerable progress, it has been announced, in establishing general princi ples upon which definite plans will be based. The new board of directors of .the Asso ciation h a s been in session also and it is announced t h a t every confidence exists t h a t the activities of the Association will both widen a n d become more intensive within t h e next year. Dr. C. P . Steinmetz, Chief Consulting Engineer, General Blectric Co., spoke a t a meeting of the Technical Societies of I,os Angeles, September 18, on " T h e Electric Power I n d u s t r y . " T h e Los Angeles Section of t h e American Chemical Society belongs to t h e group of organiza tions which constitute the Technical So cieties of Eos Angeles.
News Edition
Friends Honor N e w Chief Chemist More t h a n seventy friends of Dr. C. A. Browne, recently appointed Chief Chemist of the D e p a r t m e n t of Agriculture, gave a dinner in his honor a t the Chemists' Club, New York, on the evening of Sep tember 25th. Dr. M . T. Bogert was t h e toastmaster a n d t h e following were called upon: D r . Harvey W. Wiley, Dr. W. D . Bigelow, D r . F. J. Pond, Dr. E- H. Baekeland, Dr, David Wesson, and Secretary Stewart of t h e N e w York Sugar T r a d e Laboratory. T h e last named presented Dr. Browne with a gold watch and chain on behalf of the Directors of the Laboratory with which Dr. Browne had been connected for the past sixteen years. All of the speakers paid a tribute to D r . Browne's ability as a chemist and executive and tc h i s charming qualities a s a man. I n his response Dr. Browne thanked his friends for their tribute and briefly sketched his chemical career. He referred t o t h e m a n y friendships he had m a d e in his old surroundings and how he could n o t help but miss thern in trans ferring his activities to another city. Eighteen telegrams of greeting from or ganizations a n d individuals were re ceived during t h e evening.
Scientific Food Selection 100-Calorie Portions
by
A chart just issued by t h e United States D e p a r t m e n t of Agriculture shows in a series of 20 pictures j u s t how a por tion of food containing 100 calories looks o n a plate when compared with other familiar foods commonly appearing on t h e American table. T h e chart, which was prepared by t h e Bureau of Home Economics, is intended t o furnish aid in t h e economical a n d correct selection of food for the family. A 100-calorie portion is shown in each case for potatoes, apples, flaked or puffed cereal, milk, prunes, carrots, cheese, bread, butter, peas, roast beef, canned salmon, candy, eggs, cream, loaf sugar, tomatoes, granulated sugar, cooked bacon. School children c a n use t h e chart t o make up imaginary meals which the teacher can criticize, a n d the housewife can consult it when planning her menus. As the edition is limited, the charts will be sold by the Government Printing Office for a few cents each when the number of free copies is exhausted.
Dietitians Hold Meeting Bxperts in diet a n d nutrition from all over the United States attended t h e sixth annual meeting of t h e American Dietetic Association which took place in Indian apolis, October 15, 16 a n d 17. Papers were read covering m a n y phases of the work of t h e dietitian in t h e hospital, the home, and in commercial work. The Interstate Commerce Commission held a hearing o n October 1, before Examiner Carter, of the Commission, in Washington, in connection with t h e rates of naval stores from southern producing points to various destinations.
