the investigation, but his comment on what he had stated is noteworthy. “These researches,” he said, “will no doubt lead to the discovery one day of an anti-periodic febrifuge, which once known may be extracted from various vegetables.” Berthollet followed on Fourcroy’s lines, but came to the conclusion that the precipitate which lime water gave with decoctions of cinchona was magnesia, which he believed was a constituent of the bark in combination with hydrochloric acid. In 1811 Gomez, of Lisbon, described a crystalline substance which Dr. Duncan, of Edinburgh, had obtained from certain species of cinchona, and gave to this product the name of cinchonine. Lambert later prepared it in a state of considerable purity. But neither of these chemists suspected its alkaline nature. In 1820 Pelletier and Caventou studied the whole chemistry of cinchona and succeeded in showing that the cinchonine of Gomez was a mixture of two alkaloids, to the second of which they gave the name of quinine. Quinidine was isolated by Henry and Delondre in 1833, and cinchonidine by Winckler in 1844, but the name of the latter was given by Pasteur in 1853. Pasteur also produced the alkaloidal derivatives cinchonicine and quinicine. Robiquet had the idea that as the coffee plant belongs to the same family of plants as the cinchonas it might be possible to find quinine in coffee. In searching for it he isolated caffeine. This was in 1821. In 1827 Oudry found an alkaloid in tea and called it theine. Jobst and Mulder in 1838 proved that these alkaloids are identical. It is now recognised that the alkaloids of cocoa, of guarana, and of Paraguay tea are all the same substance, or closely related. Pelletier and Caventou isolated strychnine from the St. Ignatius beans in 1818, and brucine from false angostura bark (_Brucæa anti-dysenterica_) in 1819; in the same years they obtained veratrine from cevadilla seeds and white hellebore root; but it would appear that in their investigation of cevadilla seeds, which was the first to yield the alkaloid, they were preceded by a very short time by Meissner. Pelletier and Magendie produced emetine from ipecacuanha in 1817, and Pelletier alone is credited with narceine in 1832. Codeine was discovered by Robiquet in 1821 when he was examining a new process for obtaining morphine which had been suggested by Dr. William Gregory, of Edinburgh. Belladonna had been studied by Vauquelin and many chemists after him, but it was not until 1833 that atropine in a state of purity was isolated from it. This was accomplished simultaneously by Geiger and Hess, two German chemists, and by Mein, a German pharmacist. ANÆSTHETICS.