At Swampscott

The American Chemical Society met. last week, at Swampscott, Mass., for their 76th convention. Members discussed:

Chemistry's Value. Samuel Wilson Parr, 71, preceptor of the group of brilliant chemists and physicists at the University of Illinois, and president of the chemistry society, opened the meeting with the survey usual at such affairs: "Output of chemical products in this country have advanced in 50 years from an insignificant sum to more than $2,000,000,000 annually at present. . . . This is a chemical age, and we live, move and have our physical being as a result of chemical processes. Whether we travel on foot in chrome-tanned shoes and rayon stockings or roll to work on rubber wheels and concrete roads, we travel in comfort by chemical grace and goodwill. If we land in the hospital, the chemist has anticipated our coming. He is there before us with antiseptics, anesthetics and remedial agents for the relief of suffering and the restoration of health."

Pea Pods. Asses, even the mock-ass Bottom of .4 Midsummer Night's Dream. enjoy eating peas, pods and all. Other live stock also find them delectable. Humans like the green seeds, but not the pods. Yet the pods contain valuable sugar and proteins. How to make them humanly palatable is a job which the U. S. Department of Agriculture's bureau of chemistry has set for itself.

Pituitary Hormones. Pituitrin, extract of the hazelnut-like gland at the underside of the brain, does three things to a body: 1) it causes powerful contractions of the pregnant uterus at term (its oxytocic effect); 2) it makes blood pressure (its pressor effect); 3) it increases urinary flow where urine is scanty and decreases it where the flow is inordinately great, as in diabetes insipidus (its diuretic-anti-diuretic effect). So there must be more than one hormone in the pituitary gland, decided Dr. Oliver Kamm, director of Parke. Davis & Co.'s research laboratories. By tedious fractional precipitation of pituitrin he has been able to separate two hormones -oxytocin useful in obstetrics. vasopressin useful in keeping up normal blood pressure during certain operations, useful too against diabetes insipidus. Dr. Kamm reasons that the danger from burns comes from the boiling of water out of the skin and flesh, and the failure of the body to replace that water effectively. His vasopressin he believes may stimulate the body to repair the water shortage of burns.

Tuberculosis. Some tentative research done on tuberculosis bacteria at Yale may have deep importance towards wiping out the disease. The chemists there have made a fatty acid from living tubercle bacilli. The acid is new to science. When it is injected into rabbits it produces in their bodies the nodules peculiar as symptoms of tuberculosis, but of no other disease. Said R. J. Anderson of Yale: "This discovery that a nonliving substance may be the cause ot tubercular growth, opens up an entirely new mode of approach in the search for an immunizing agent. In the past there has been no way of proving whether the growth of the tubercle in tubercular organisms was the result of direct action of the living bacillus."

Nitrogen. Every square mile of air over the earth's surface carries 20,000,000 tons of nitrogen. Each 20,000,000 tons, if reduced by man to nitrates, would supply the world for 12 years at the present rate of nitrogen consumption. Twenty years ago mankind took only 1% of its needed nitrogen from the air; the rest came chiefly from mineral nitrates. Last year 57% of the world's supply came from the air. This situation makes chemists aver that nitrogen has taken the most important place in the affairs of the world and is by far the most active in the world's markets.

Engine Pinking. No one yet knows what causes the pink-pink knock in gasoline motors. Increased compression improves efficiency and speed; it also causes a knock. So there is a deadlock in the design of light, high-speed engines for automobiles and airplanes. Antiknock gasoline adulterants, like tetraethyl lead, help reduce the pinking, but why no one knows. Scientists are trying to learn why through a study of flame action, a subject little attended to in the past.

Textiles. Significant was the recommendation made by Chairman Harrison Estell Howe of the National Research Council that "the New England textile manufacturers should get a committee of industrial chemists to study the fundamentals and tell them what science can do for the industry." The manufacturers have been wailing over the decline of their business, have applied themselves to remedying conditions chiefly through pools, merchandising and economic wakes.

U. S. Steel Corp., chemists were amazed to learn, has the vast number of 2,115 technical men working on steel problems and tests in 179 laboratories. At Lorain, Ohio, the corporation is turning a large steel mill into an experimental laboratory.

A Clam Bake with plenty of condiments, drink and talk, held at Gloucester, near Swampscott, was the jolly end of the meeting.