HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Seaforth News, 1950-01-12, Page 3"Green Flies, Powdered Rhubarb,
• Ground Cuttlefish Bone"
Studeut4 at the Outario College
of Pharmacy live in a world of
glossy green flies, powdered rhu-
barb, ground i:uttleiih bone, and
stoma 8,000 other items which are
the tools of their pro1easlou,
The flies, laboriously collected
int Spain, ace for blistering plas-
ters. The rhubarb is fon' tonics, the
suttletielt bone for canaries.
The undergraduate must heroine
familiar with the Chinese beetle
and many another insect; tree bark
such as cascara wood and cinchona
(which yields quinone); and a wa-
ter of liquids, oils and chemical
salts frons which pills, emulsions,
tinctures and infusions are made.
So complex has pharmacy become
that tate course now demands four
years al intensive effort instead at
the three months considered long
enough in 1882.
The College of Pharmacy is at -
filiated with the University of Tor-
onto. Curricula, admission statul-
ards, and examiners are under the
jurisdiction of the University Sen-
ate, l,fany lectures are given by
Varsity professors.
Located near the junction of
Gerrard and Church, the three-
storey College is in a one-time
'fashionable' area which has be-
come part of busy downtown Tor-
onto, Students have a tight sched-
ule of about 28 hours a week of
labs and lectures. In addition to
studies during the academic year,
students trust work 18 months in
a store or a plant as "intents"
(usually during the summer
monbhs). After they graduate
many will spend seven or eight
years in retail stores before bhey
ran afford to etart in busiuee$ for
themselves.
Women who graduated from the
College in 1906 are still among
Canada's 4,000 practising phartua-
eists and 50 women are enrolled
this year. In 1948 the first and
second prize winners wore women,
something male graduates of that
year would rather not discuss.
The College is proud of its high
standards, At most of the 69 ae-
credited colleges of pharmacy in
the United States, the entrance re-
quirement ie junior matriculation.
In Ontario it is third class honours
in senior ni atricelation.
Students in pharmacy spend half
8 their time in University buildings
taking suoh subjects as botany,
pharmacology, chemistry, physics,
zoology and English. At the Col-
lege itself they take various courses
ht pharmacy, pharmaseutieal chan-
isuy and materia medico. The last
in a grouping of courses in physiol-
ogy, lirst aid, the study of animal
and plant sources that yield etude
drugs. and the study of biolog'ieel
products.
Also taught, of course, is the ab-
breviated Latin that makes up she
language of the prescription. The
scrawled note a Canadian doctor
hands his patient stakes easy read-
ing for a druggist because there
are only about 200 abbreviations to
memorize.
Orders front overseas aren't so
simple. A good many people in
Central Europe are sending pre-
seriptione for relatives to have filled
here and Ontario druggists are
having quite a time with then,. And
in some Ontario communities mid -
Europeans buy as many as 100
leeches a month at $1.50 a leech
front one store alone. The leeches
(bloodsucicers) are used to reduce
the swelling in black eyes.
Pharmacists fill prescriptions bhat
may range in price from less than
a rent .to $4 for a single pill.
Ingredients come from all over the
world and students are taught to
pick them utt at sight. "No two
humans look exactly alike and
neither do any two of the sub-
stances we use,' pharmacists say,
though to the laytuau nanny of tate
Mottles eareittlly staoked side by
side seem to contain Ile saute mats
octal, After fleet beeonting familiar
with their materials, pharmacy stn.
dente work in a lab where the
bottles are numbered. If a sutdettt
isn't sure, he can cross to the other
side of the room where a list iden-
tities kite sebetances. However', tate
number system trains !tie power of
observation and after a while he
knows at a gime what a bottle
contains.
The College museum has a fee-
cinatiug• display of old utensils,
prescription books and preparations.
For instance, there's a packaged
commercial product of the early
part of the nineteenth century
known as "Electric Beans". The
legend on the package says beans
Create Rich Red Blood, Pills were
potent in the old days; one patent
medicine was labelled "Anti -fill
Cure." Then there's a poison regis-
ter kept by a 'Toronto druggist in
1877. At the top of one page, in
a long straight hand, is the sig.
nature of Sir John A. Macdonald,
The first Tattier of Confedera-
tion bought an eyewash solution,
one ingredient of which was a
poison,
._Front Varsity (graduate
Trees That Weep
Priceless Tears
Perhaps the greatest dollar -earn.
ing asset in the Empire is rubber,
most of it from troubled Malaya. a
British possession, There the rubber
trees weep to bring in 60 million
pounds worth of dollars a year.
This most versatile and widely -
applied of all the earth's natural
products is indispensable to twee•
tient century civilization, and in a
world plagued with shortages it 40
almost the only essential commodity
of which there is am ab tndaut sup-
ply. Otte can hardly 0011111 its present
uses, or set bounds to its possible
future use, so fast are we finding
new ways of employing it.
During the war alone, several hun-
dred new uses were discovered,
ranging from "plioflm," which pro-
tected aircraft engines sent to dis-
tant battlefields, to conveyer belts
now used by the mile in up-to-date
mines,
The United States uses well over
a half of the whole world's produc-
tion, for natural rubber is one of the
few commodities she has found it
impossible to produce herself,
The, rubber plant is not a native of
British Malaya, It came originally
from the New World—one of the
first products of America to be
noted by explorers and one of the
Iasi to be exploited.
Columbus himself„during his sec-
ond
ecand visit there, was astonished to
see native Indians amusing them-
selves by playing with heavy black
balls made from vegetable gum, In
1740 a French scientist, Charles
Marie de is Condamine, sent back
specimens of this amazing "bouncing
guns.” He called it "eaoutcbouc," a
variation of the Indian name for
"weeping• tree," and eaoutchouc it
still remains in the French diction-
ary,
Then in 1770 Joseph Priestley, an
F,glish chemist invited attention to
a Material which he found to be
"excellently adapted to the purpose
of wiping, from paper the marks of
a black -lead pencil."
Englishmen tried•11 and promptly
gave it the name "rubber.' Its or-
igin they indicated by the prefix
"India" (meaning from the 'West
Indies), and tints the label "Indian
rubber" came into being. Samuel
Peal patented a process for making
waterproof fabric by using rubber
dissolved in turpentine then in the
1820'4 Thomas Hancock and Charles
"Let's See You Do This" Fritz, the dachshund of the ]toy
Miller family tries doggedly to snake friends with tint holt.
china bulldog. hank' belonging to cote of the A4iller children.
The hard-headed bulldog jtittt itdv,
When the roadway is a sltidtrvay„ beware of rapid acceleration,
quielt slops and sudden swerves. Also deadly are excessive sweet.
eSperlally ort turns, and uneven brakinet:-
it illll:
.i �rlli!i
'. ESi;i 1Ek1iilil
7'o slow dew 1, pump the brake gently; don't !told it down steady
Under skid conditions, never try to stop suddenly, but check your
speed a little at a tithe.
Itlacintosh established rubber fac-
tories in London and Glasgow.
Everyone to -day associates the
Scot's name with waterproof gar-
ments.
"l'he tree that weeps" became the
most precious timber int the world,
and Brazil, where it had been first
discovered, still held the monopoly
of supply. But in that country the
natural rubber forests had been
ruthlessly exploited, Many millions
of trees had been "bled" to death,
and the price of rubber rose steadily
as it became necessary to penetrate
deeper and deeper into the Amazon
forests to tap new supplies.
The Brazilians hung on grintty
and refused to allow the precious
seeds to be taken from the country
so that plantations could be laid
down elsewhere.
Several unsuccessful attempts;
ware ,rade to smuggle seeds out.
Finally it was left to the resource of
an Englishman, Henry Wickham
(who was afterwards knighted), to
Igo through with it in the good old
Elizabethan way.
He undertook to procure by hook
or by crook a sufficient number of
SEMIS 10 ensure the future of rubber.
Chartering a steamer, he succeeded
in smuggling 70,000 seeds out of the
country packed between leaves of
the banana tree. He reached Liver-
pool, where a special train was wait-
ing to rush the seeds to Kew• There
some of them germinated and the
plants were sent out to India, Cey-
lon, and Malaya,
Total cost of \Virkman's expedi•
Hon was 11,500. Out of it have
grown 700 million trees, producing
800,00(1 tons of rubber annnally,
Even to•dac the are far from, ex-
hausting
x-hausting the possibilities of latex or
rubber "milk," Apart from its well-
known uses, patents are out for its
use as a perservative for eggs, fruit,
and plants. It is also extensively
employed for upholstery, flooring,
road surfacing, wallpapering.
The Wiping of the rubber trees
for this precious latex still remains
a simple process carried out hl' tnan
-
oallahtam'. it is useful to reflect how
Many of our great indttetries, whirl,
in later slagt•s depend almost en-
tirely 011 giant, complicated mach-
ines, rely in the (fret place on the
work of one man the unskilled
Malay labourer, for whom there can
be no mechanical substitute,
iT)' tyrnk coati=ls of cutting the
bark•and setting a cup to catch the
white latex which runs between
bark and wood. At the end of the
day he collects these cups and pours
their contents into a large tank—s
primitive forst of labour which can
in no way be mechanized or hurried.
Calcium Spurs -
Milk Production
A 46 per cent, increase in milk
production as a result of supplying
sufficient calcium in the ration of
dairy cows is reported in a 16 -year
study of R, B. Becker, dairy hus-
bandman of the Florida Experi-
mental Station, Cows given rations
containing too little calcium pro-
duced an average of only 4,886
pounds of milk itt 218 laetations,
whereas cows getting sufficient eat-
cium yielded an average of 7,092
pounds of milk in 73 laetations,
Florida and other states where
pastures and outer feed crops ace
grown on acid, sandy soils may be
inadequate in lime, which supplies
calcium.
To overcome the shortage, Berk-
er and his co-worker, P. '1'. Dix
Arnold, added two per rent, of
finely ground steamed bonetneal to
the dairy concentrates. In addition,
the heavy milk producers received
a limited amount of alfalfa hay.
These supplements afforded gttough
cal itnn for Jersey cows in contulel•-.
tial herds. More recently, however,
one per cent. each of bonemeal and
kalsite (marble dust) replaced the
Iwo per cent. of boneuteal.
Deficiency of calciuut may be
,'orrected by spreading lime on im-
proved pastures. 'then, too, lately,
ulattufacturers of mixed dairy
feeds in the Southeast are making
up for the lack of calcium by in-
cluding bonetneal and finely ground
limestone its their seed-t,,ds,
5•otlmt'y Gentlemen.
Mrs. Brown: "For Months 1
vouldn't discover where ply- husband
spent his evenings."
Mrs, Smith; "How dict you find
alit?"
"'Yell, one 'vetting I went loose
and there he was."
Where "Holy (Cow"
Isn't Slang
"Jluly row) exclaimed my Amer -
leen friend casually, nok realising
that in India thio expression w001.4
not sound funny, for to 0081 J'tt-
dos the cow is a sacred animal,
Yet it is surprising how quickly
a young Ilindu, when away froth
home, starts eating beef and thinks
nothing of it. Miles away from the
influence of his orthodox elders,
he views the cow as a very useful
animal, but fails to sun the halo
about its head, writes Chaturi Vas•-
waui itt The Christian Science Mon-
1
tor.
It .\nn•ri,':,, the row is pastured
utt fane8 and dairies. Io India, it
has as much right to walk on the
crowded sheets of a city as any
person. It is not uncommon t0 see
a row holding up traffic white It
nottehalanily crosses the street or.
forces pedestrians to detour oil the
sidcwall: a Idle .1 gazes at the store
displays - tyiudow shopping as it
%tete• The ran even sander: into
the crowds at the food nttnl:,•t and
help itself to the food.
Now', wit) _ dues the n011 et le-
dia have tritileees that even a
human being cannot claim in any
wintry? Jay ealkiug, food steeling,
and becoming a hindrance cm the
nkat street are illegal acts, iIowever,
these man utarle laws do not affect
the crow in India, But there, the cow
is "sacred" and the ratan is not,
Economically, the cow and the
bull are the two most valuable ani-
mals in India. The cow furnishes
milk and all its by-products. Farm-
ers harness the bull to plow the
land. India, therefore, depends en-
tirely on the cow for its food supply
and so treats the cow with a rever-
ence due to the mother who pro-
vided food for her children, lu fact,
the cow is often called' 'mother
cow."
However, the idea of reverence
itas in some cases been carried too
far. ,Temples have been built for the
worship of the cow. Many religioua
ceremonies include the feeding of
the cow as one of the important
items of the ritual. Hindu women
often start their day by feeding the
sow. Any stray; cow is welcome in
their bark yards.
The real motive behind this rever-
ence has been forgotten. Being a
useful animal. the cow has to be
pereerved for its practical value.
Reverence is one way of protecting
the animal from physical harm by
sten who knight kill it for meat.
That is why beef is taboo among the
Hindus, most of whom do not eat
any kind of meat anyway.
But to believe that It is sacri-
legious for a Hindu to use anything
of the cow, including the skulk, is
a ntieronception. Milk is widely used
when available, the cow's skin it
used for leather, and Its horns are
carved into beautiful figures for
living -room decoration.
* * *
The only real offense against the
cow 10 killing it for food or for
anything. In some parts of India
the penalty for killing a cow, even
by accident, is a few years in jail,
People have established homes for
the aged cows -where they are well
taken care of. That is more than
they done for human beings.
I3ttt bho tisttee hove 015auged and
the old uttetotna cannot continue for
long. The population of the rows,
as of people, has increased immen-
sely in India. Not enoughfodder is
grown, IViorsover, the modern ana-
tprlalistig 1tttIlipp Wgrlcs hitt au4itud
to the itotte attd tries fo get as ttttrefx
out of it. as possible.
One critirisnt levied against the
Hindus is: Wlty can't then let souta
of theist miserable-lonldies ereaturee
he slaughtered and fed to miltiotte
of starving people?
The answer to this eriticieut is
that it is hard to chanter traditions.
For a people brought up in the
tradition of reSI,ectiug the cow, it
will be year, before any eletttge of
attitude is brought
However, 8010' daring ytnnmg, mt+,t
115ve broken- away. They hat t• seen;
belie,' cattle and better t 8mi g me-
thods ie. other cotuttrice and ei:.b -
India would adopt similar ptactieee
i, lodger c,alsidet. the eu J,
a sacred •suimal. 'Their preimlit,•
again", heti rating h0- 4 .1-i '1J.
tot,, sur 1)18) eat beet ;.- is ill. 0g)y
Ai tun.\ r,tltei nit -at when av, a\ fl,np
lane, Tor 06, 111') 11,44• 1,. -
0011111 10 their elder, on r.•turning
10 1ndia. Ilut thcc q,•t a ;ay ba
say:uc, "1\e were e•Iti"., .\nit.; ictr,
ttn. 'Theo :aren't ed.' an..
they'
Expert Advisee
visiting' the tarns for the fir,
time in her city -bred ilio• little
eight-year-old Reberca. the d'nt;lt•
ter of a tilling station operator, sac
thrilled by the mane things- Iter
grandfather showed her. The b14
turkey gobbler, soon to be killed
for Christmas dinner, frigitteuef
her: attd she was astonished to dis-
cover that the ice on the pond was
thick enough to heat' her weight.
i,lost of all, however, she was
fascinated by the cow. -Several
afternoons site went with her
grandfather to the barn and stared
wide-eyed as he milked. Ou a nippy
December day when she was
anxious to return to the warmth or
the farm house, she ventured to tap
him on the shoulder and suggested,
"Grandpa, if you'd put alcohol in
her radiator, you wouldn't have to
drain her faucets every night!"
"Wool" from Rocks
British geologists engaged in m-
searcit work in the Hawaiian Islands
found a fluffy fiber made of the
sante substance as tete rocks on thea
slopes of the volcano. Since this
fiber was probably produced froth
lava during a volcanic eruption. tate
British scientists concluded that
"wool" could be made frotu outer
rorks too. After two years of ex- -
perinteuts at the Matlock, England,
works of a British limestone firm,
a method has been evolved whereby
limestone and other alliciona rocks
are transformed into a fine wooly
substance which is a first-class hese
and sound insulator and is fire-
proof and vermin -proof. The woof
will be used primarily in heat in-
sulation, but it is probable that 1+15
will also be used an a heat conserves
in all Indicting. construction.
Au infallible way of itttpressiug
people favourably ie to let them nee
!low much they impress you.
]3oy Electrifies Farm—After running the gatuut of 16 -year-old
Johnny' Williams' dusting and counting machine, gladiolus bn1l�s
are cat't'iest up bybelt conveyor and dumped otito the sore'
in foreground. ohnny, was one of 33 winters in site "Setter
Met hods" electric rctlt teat,
JITTER
avell st(Ncd Yau'u9:seas '5
floc 8110W 84555 QAaeeP
855551.5. 14010 en' ON 7)414'
St1oot, Trll t
ea'ne ro5,
You.
B;. Arthur Pointer
a