THE CHEMISTS OF SYDNEY STREET

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 51, 23 November 1929, Page 9

THE CHEMISTS OF SYDNEY STREET

PUTTING BEER THROUGH ITS PACES WEIGHING A NAME

9

E.A.A.)

There is little to attract the attention of passers-by in the building itself except that it is made of brick. All that the outside world knows of the work that goes on inside is a modest notice that apologetically remarks “Dominion Laboratory.” If it said instead “The Home of the Wizards . and the Witches,” the entrance to it would be crowded. Day by day. nevertheless, amid the sizzling, bubbling solitudes of many test tubes a band of unostentatious Scientists for ever weave a web of science as a barrier to all the nasty things of life—the faker, the poisoner, the swindler, and just the downright accidental combination of things that add to the dangers of an already dangerous life—like arsenic and beer. From numerous rooms and down several corridors the combined smells of chemistry meet for the first time in the entrance halls. ■ These intermingled odours may perhaps give to some a faint far-off reminder of the school laboratory.

Gas to Whale Oil. “Yes,” said the chemist in charge, sampling the winds of the corridors with the nose of an expert, “we do a little bit of everything in here from testing the city gas supply to sampling whale oil.” “Do you analyse poison cases?” I asked, feeling a little bit ghoulish. "Well,” he said, almost casually, “as a matter of fact that's what I’m on now.” He unlocked a door. We entered a miniature laboratory. He held up a translucent amber coloured liquid in a test tube. “This.” he explained, “contains all the metallic contents, including any metallic poisons such as arsenic, of certain organs I have been examining for the police!” He went into all sorts of details concerning the innumerable tests that are made in these cases. “It may take a week—to us it’s just like any other" chemical experiment—with this difference: on what we find or don’t find depends, sometimes, the life of another human being. For that reason two of us work together. Most elaborate precautions are taken —if we do discover poison every single reagent and chemical we have used are tested individually in case they may have been impure.” Nothing, it seems, is left to chance. The web of science spins slowly—but Inexorably.

Helping the Customs. In the large room a man neatly dressed in white was tenderly watching a white liquid in a beaker make efforts to boil over. He was testing a brand of white paint some Government Department was thinking of pur chasing in bulk. Another was busy examining samples of air from a coal mine. Here and there others were testing odds and ends for the Customs Department—tile cements, solvents, thinners—to see that they were as per label and not dodging duties. There didn't seem to be anything that , wasn’t being tested—bacon, milk, jam, cheese, cocoa, coffee essences, city water supplies, petrol, oil. coal, soap, the city's gas—even the roads—here, there and everywhere little groups or single individuals were busy testing, probing, boiling. Samples of this and that were being put through their paces. Some were boiling away merrily, some had turned pink, others green, blue, violet, red or purple. Sulphuric acid, nitric acid and goodness knows what else was being poured out of little bottles on to bits of cheese, or jam. Heavens! it was a playground run riot, a school “lab.” gone mad. What would happen if they poured the wrong thing or the bottles got muddled? Silently, almost reverently, they continued . with their witcheries. Bubble—bubble—bubble, the smell of burnt gases, bad eggs, ether, chloroform, boiling acids, cooling caustics—help! A smell? Why, was there one? Well, now you mention it, prehaps just a faint whiff now and again—but nothing, nothing at all. So they tried to soothe me. The human body and the nose in particular can assuredly get used to almost anything. Perhaps it is just as well.

“The Season for Ambergris.” “Every week,” I was informed, "we receive bits’of tallow and lumps of decomposed fats, sent by optimists who want to know if it is ambergris—the season has just started.” Although private individuals are not catered for, tests for ambergris are so simple these optimists are put out of their misery from sheer human kindness. A little piece of ambergris was produced from one. of the rows of never-ending little bottles. A small thick wire was made red hot and the ambergris was touched with it. A brown weal with molten edges marked the line of the hot wire and the room in the vicinity was filled with a sweet sickly mustiness of old, old books. “Anybody could do that,” the chemist said; “it is an almost infallible test—burnt tallow smells quite different—any fleshy or horny substance smells of burnt flesh, like a blacksmith's shop.” Am-

bergris hunters please note. Aristocrats of the Weighing World. In a room all to themselves stood the weighing machines. Not the crude household affairs by which we make our cakes and other failures—but aristocrats of the weighing world each in its little glass case. .So delicate were these weighing machines surely a fly would wreck them if it blundered inside the glass case and on to the tiny scales. My guide tore off a piece of paper the size of a stamp. He balanced it against tiny weights of platinum on the other scale. “Now,” he said with the air of a man about to perform a miracle, handing me the bit of paper, “write your name on it.” With a IB pencil and with a bold flowing hand recompiled. He replaced the paper now with my name on it upon the weighing machine that bad been already balanced against the paper. The weight of the pencil outlines that had gone to form my name turned the scales. “Your name." he said with a twinkle, “weighs l/30Qth of a grain.” Put into more homely measure this matter-of-fact chemist had the audacity to tell me that the weight of my name was roughly 1/150.000111 part of an ounce. Chemists seem to glory in measuring the impossible. Close by the weighingin room a white smocked genius was busy looking for iodine amongst the soils of New Zealand. Provided he fossicked out a mere one hundred parts of iodine from ten million parts of soil he was perfectly happy. This work is being done in connection with goitre investigations to see if the iodine contents of soil have any bearing on the incidence of the disease. Incidentally, some Wellington soils are low in iodine, whilst parts of Taranaki and Waihi are abnormally high. Whisky Dishonesty. Not-far off beer and whisky were being put through their drill. Beer must not contain more than one hundredth pert of arsenic, whilst whisky must really belong to the bottle in which it is bought. “Yes.” said this spirit chaser, “we catch them out sometimes—draught wins-

ky in somebody else’s bottles—there’s a case coming off shortly.” He turned away, lit a bunsen burner, and, like a sportsman stalking his game, he was off once more after his erring spirits. Nothing seems to damp the ardour of this little band of witches. One individual in a hut all to himself was contentedly breaking up lumps of bitumen, digesting it; separating it in a complicated sort of cream separator, sieving it, weighing it, pricking it with needles; so that we may know just how our roads are bearing up under the patter of a thousand wheels. Any little secrets, any little romances that this poor bitumen might think it had to itself are wrested from it by the soulless machines of this individual. Worse, far worse, than having a fortune told. Day after day this probing ana boiling and mixing and unmixing continues. If this band ot chemists can stop us having arsenic in our beer or cocoa, or paint that isn’t paint, or disinfectants that don't disinfect, or boracic in the wrong place, or even inferior whale oil —well, we would have to be very stubborn to thwart them.