Sertürner’s discovery excited much interest and emulation, and its importance was fully endorsed when, in 1831, the French Institute awarded to him a prize of 2,000 francs “for having opened the way to important medical discoveries by his isolation of morphine and his exposition of its character.” Before Sertürner had definitely established the nature of alkaloids, Vauquelin had separated from tobacco a substance which he regarded as its active principle, and which was undoubtedly an impure nicotine. This was in 1809. The alkaloidal character of this extract was not, however, recognised until 1828, when Posselt and Reimann produced it in a pure form. Vauquelin had in 1812 extracted daphnine from mezereon root, and in describing his experiments had alluded to its alkaline character. For this reason the credit of having been the first to have discovered an organic alkali has been attributed to him; and when in 1818 Pelletier and Caventou discovered an alkaloid in St. Ignatius’s beans, to which they gave the name of strychnine, they stated that it had been their original intention to designate the substance Vauqueline in honour of the celebrated chemist who had first established the existence of an organic alkali. It had, however, been pointed out to them by distinguished members of the Academy that it would have been a doubtful compliment to associate such an honoured name as that of Vauquelin with such an evil (_malfaisant_) substance as this new product. A number of chemists narrowly missed the discovery of quinine. As early as 1746 Count Claude de la Garaye obtained from cinchona bark a crystalline salt which he termed sel essentiel de quinquina. Two other French chemists, Buquet and Cornette, subsequently introduced another sel essentiel de quinquina. Both these products were simply kinate of lime. A Swedish physician named Westerling announced in 1782 that he had discovered the active principle of cinchona, and he gave it the designation of vis coriaria. His product was in fact cinchotannic acid. Seguin perhaps made the worst mistake of all the investigators in coming to the conclusion that what was precipitated by tannin was the essence of cinchona from a medicinal point of view, and he actually recommended that gelatin should be substituted for cinchona in cases when price was an object. Fourcroy made several attempts to ascertain the true chemical constitution of the bark. In 1790 he separated a resinous principle, mixed with some colouring matter, since called cinchonic red. This he at first supposed was the essential medical constituent of the bark. Vauquelin later adopted this erroneous theory, and so missed his way. In 1792 Fourcroy got nearer to the truth when he observed incidentally that the water in which the bark had been macerated turned litmus paper green; and he also remarked that lime water caused a greenish precipitate in the infusion. He did not pursue