is beset with difficulties that can be overcome only by means of considerable practical experimentation and by the use of special apparatus and facilities. For those reasons, therefore, we do not consider its manufacture by the average druggist advisable. A much better article can be obtained at a cheaper price if the manufacture of it is left to concerns equipped to carry out the work.

Such a soap as you require one that will work in salt water-is ordinarily made from palm oil instead of from the fats employed in the manufacture of the usual soft-water soaps. Salts of palmitic acid are not precipitated by salt water.

Place the arsenic trioxide and potassium carbonate with four fluidounces of water in a flask, and boil until solution is complete. Weigh out the gold leaf and place in a wide-mouthed bottle, add 12 fluid ounces of distilled water, run in the bromine, and then shake until the latter is dissolved, and add the solution previously made and shake for a few seconds. Transfer to a flask or retort, and boil until bromine fumes cease to be given off. Allow to cool, dilute with distilled water to one pint; filter.

Solution of bromide of gold and arsenic, N. F. III, is a somewhat similar preparation.

A More Careful Reading Required.

L. E. G. writes: "In the formula for spirit of peppermint which appears on page 409 of the U. S. P. IX the use of 500 mils (Cc.) of water is directed. If that amount of water is added to the 800 mils of alcohol and 100 mils of oil of peppermint (contained in the formula) we get a volume of 1400 mils instead of the required 1000 mils. How should the directions read?"

If you will reread carefully-the directions you will see that the 500 mils of water are not to be added to the alcohol and oil of peppermint. The directions are "Macerate the peppermint leaves, freed as much as possible from stems, during one hour in five hundred mils of water and then strongly express them. Mix eight hundred mils of alcohol with the oil, add the macerated leaves and enough alcohol to make one thousand mils, etc."

The peppermint leaves are to be macerated only in the water and then expressed; the expressed liquid is, of course, to be rejected.

Recently Honored.

At the annual meeting in September Rufus A. Lyman was elected president of the American Conference of Pharmaceutical Faculties. Professor Lyman is dean of the College of Pharmacy, University of Nebraska.

creams," so-called, are made from bases of starch, casein, stearic acid or various fatty substances, and unless we know the one you employ we cannot supply a satisfactory answer. If you will submit a copy of your formula, we will endeavor to point out a process.

We might say, however, that fatty massage creams made without the use of borax or other saponifying agents will not hold so much water as will those in which an alkali is used. Before the present U. S. P. formula for rose water ointment (containing borax) was adopted the official ointment of rose water (without borax) had considerably less water in its make-up.

The Status of Whisky and Brandy.

F. R. R. asks: "With whisky and brandy deleted from the new Pharmacopoeia, will a druggist have the right to sell either or both of the products for medicinal use?"

The deletion of whisky and brandy is in nowise a prohibitory measure. Whether or not standards for whisky and brandy are included in the United States Pharmacopoeia has no bearing on the druggist's right to sell either of the products for medicinal use. If it is permissible under the State laws to sell whisky and brandy when the U. S. P. IX goes into effect, you can still continue to do so. The only significance of the deletion of the two products is that distillers are now relieved of the necessity of supplying medicinal whisky and brandy complying with certain definite standards.

grains). Therefore in 100 Cc. of the mixture there would be 154.32 doses, each containing one grain of mercury salicylate. One hundred divided by 154.32 is equivalent to .648 Cc.-the amount of the mixture to be administered at each dose. Expressed in apothecaries' measure, .648 Cc. is equivalent to 10.52 minims (.001 Cc. 01623 minims).

Ginger Brandy.

W. & B. ask: "Can you suggest a formula for a so-called 'ginger brandy'?"

The following is a German formula: Sugar, 200 parts; tincture of orange peel, 20 parts; spirit of nitrous ether, 20 parts. Mix, and add 4500 parts of good whisky or dilute alcohol. Stir in 5500 parts of boiling rain or soft water, adding at the same time 200 parts of ginger, in powder, and 20 parts of powdered galangal root. If desired, add enough burnt sugar to color. Cover the vessel, and let stand a day or two; then filter. By adding the ginger after the water it is possible to avoid dissolving the resinous part of the former, which would otherwise make the preparation turbid.

The galangal may be omitted, if desired, and about a drop of oil of bitter almond added in its place, for every 21⁄2 gallons of liquor. The oil of bitter almond should be dissolved in the alcohol.

J. N. K. (Egypt) writes: "Owing to the war it is difficult to obtain drugs and chemicals in a pure state and we are obliged to examine all supplies before daring to use them. Will you please recommend a reliable and practical book stating tests that can be easily applied?"

A pharmacopoeia of the country from which you obtain most of your supplies will probably answer your requirements. If you buy from England, get a British Pharmacopoeia; if from France, a copy of the French Codex; if from America, a copy of the United States Pharmacopoeia.

Vol. XXX.

No. 12.

THE

raise in the price of cigars was inevitable; we

BULLETIN.

And now that the boost in price has actually been put into effect on a number of popular brands, what is to be done about it?

There would seem to be but three courses open. One is to keep right on in the old rut; another is to subordinate high-priced brands as much as possible; and another is to persuade the manufacturers to reduce the size of the cigar and maintain the old price.

THE HIGH COST OF CIGARS.

A great many times this question arises in the mind of the druggist: Shall I put my selling power behind well-known, advertised goods that do not net me the profit they ought to, or shall I run counter to demand and push with all my might special goods, or special brands, on which I make a legitimate return?

Taken as a whole the cigar business is seldom satisfactory in the retail drug store. There isn't money enough in well-known brands. Cigars that cost $35 a thousand, or even $32.50, if bought in lots, cannot profitably be sold at six for a quarter; yet six for a quarter is the prevailing price for 5-cent goods, and it is extremely hard to get away from it.

The manufacturers have their troubles, also. Everything is higher, even tobacco leaf, American-grown though it is. For a long time before it happened. it was predicted that a

WHAT THE C. R.D.A. HAS DONE.

The local association at Chicago is an extremely wideawake organization, and we are, therefore, not at all surprised to learn that it took this matter up some time ago and went, straight as the crow flies, to what it hoped might be a solution. Resolutions were passed requesting certain makers to reduce the size and not advance the price. Copies were sent to the Cigar Manufacturers' Association of Tampa, Florida; the Cigar Manufacturers' Association of New York; the Tobacco Merchants' Association of the United States; and to manufacturers of cigars in general.

A meeting of the Tobacco Merchants' Association was held at the association's offices in New York, eleven prominent manufacturers attending, and it was unanimously decided not to grant the request of the Chicago druggists. Such action was not taken through a spirit of obstinacy, but for the reason, doubtless, that the makers feared that the "ultimate consumer" might not take kindly to the curtailment of his customary ration.

Nothing in the way of relief, therefore, came out of the resolutions passed by the C. R. D. A., nor is it likely that the situation can be cleared up in any such manner; but the request served the purpose of drawing from a number of manufacturers a statement which may be taken as final. Speaking generally, we are not to have smaller cigars at the old price.

An editorial in Tobacco, a journal devoted to the trade, strongly advocates the odd-cent