Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/202

Rh 184 Q U I-Q U I fessorahip, and during the siege wrote vehemently against the Germans. He was elected deputy by the department of the Seine in 1871, and was one of the most obstinate opponents of the terms of peace between France and Germany. He continued to write till his death, which occurred at Versailles on the 27th March 1875. Le Siege de Paris et la Defense Nationale appeared in 1871, La Republique in 1872, Le Livre de VExile in the year of its author's death and after it. This has been followed by three volumes of letters and some other work. Quinet had already in 1858 published a semi-biographic book called Histoire de mes Idees. The whole of his very numerous works, the chief of which have been already named, have appeared in a uniform edition of which some thirty volumes are now published. His second wife, in 1870, published certain Memoires dExil. There is in English an elaborate Early Life and Writings of Edgar Quinet, by R. Heath (London, 1881), but it does not go beyond the year 1842. Quinet's character was extremely amiable, and his letters to liis mother, his accounts of liis early life, and so forth are likely always to make him interesting. He was also a man of great moral con- scientiousness, and as far as intention went perfectly disinterested, though it may perhaps be questioned whether the disappointment which he met with for years after the revolution of February had not an insensible influence in determining his republicanism. But he never temporized, and, as has been said above, hesitated not to criticize his own party as severely as his opponents. He had, how- ever, as a writer, a thinker, and a politician, drawbacks which pre- vented him from taking the first rank, and which will probably make his works, except those which are purely personal, less and less read in the future. As a writer his chief fault is want of concentration, as a thinker and politician vagueness and want of practical deter- mination. His work is very extensive and abounds in passages of great beauty. But no single book of his can be called a master- piece, and none is of such a kind that the reader feels the subject to have been thoroughly treated in accordance with a definite and consistent principle or series of principles. Of verse he had but little command, and his abundance in a certain kind of effusive prose wants chastisement and criticism. The singular rhapsodies, of which in the three books Ahasverus, Merlin, and La Creation he has left great store, are too diffuse, too inorganic, and too devoid of coherent and positive intention to rank very high. They are more like recorded dreams than anything else. His historical and philo- sophical works on the other hand, though showing much reading, fertile thought, abundant facility of expression, and occasionally, where prejudice does not come in, acute judgment, are rather (as not a few of them were in fact) reported lectures than formal treatises. His rhetorical power was altogether superior to his logical power, and the natural consequence is that his work is full of contradictious. These contradictions were, moreover, due not merely to an incapacity or an unwillingness to argue strictly, but also to the presence in his mind of a large number of inconsistent tastes and prejudices which he either could not or would not co- ordinate into an intelligible creed. Thus he has the strongest attraction for the picturesque side of medievalism and catholicity, the strongest repulsion for the restrictions which mediaeval and Catholic institutions imposed on individual liberty. He refused to submit himself to any form of positive orthodoxy, yet when a man like Strauss pushed unorthouoxy to its extreme limits Quinet revolted. As a politician he acted with the extreme Radicals, yet universal suffrage, the cardinal doctrine of Radicalism, disgusted h"im as unreasonable in its principle and dangerous in its results. His pervading characteristic, therefore, is that of an eloquent vagueness, very stimulating and touching at times, but as deficient in coercive force of matter as it is in lasting precision and elegance of form. Heia less inaccurate in fact than Michelet, but he is also much less one-ideaed, and the result is that he seldom attains to the vivid representation of which Michelet was a master. (G. SA.) QUININE, the most important of the active principles contained in cinchona bark (see CINCHONA, vol. v. p. 780). Although the value of this bark in the treatment of intermittent fevers became widely known in 1638 through the cure of the countess of Chinchon, it was not until 1810 that any attempt was made to determine definitely the active principles to which its properties were due. In that year Gomez of Lisbon obtained a mixture of alkaloids by treating an alcoholic extract of the bark with water and then adding a solution of caustic potash. To this he gave the name of cinchonino. In 1820 two French chemists, Pelletier and Caventou, proved that the cin- chonino of Gomez contained two alkaloids which they named quinine and cinchonine. Some years afterwards quinidine and cinchouidine were discovered, and subse- quently several other alkaloids, but in smaller quantity, in different varieties of the bark. Chemistry. The alkaloids appear to exist in cinchona bark chiefly in combination with cinchotannic and quinic acids, since solvents of the alkaloids in the free state do not dissolve out any from the powdered bark. The cinchotannic acid apparently becomes altered by atmo- spheric oxidation into a red-colouring matter, known as cinchono-fulvijc acid or cinchona red, which is very abundant in "some species, as in C. succirubra. For this reason those barks which, like C. Calisaya, C. offici>i< ///'.<, and C. Ledgeriana, contain but little colouring matter are preferred by manufacturers, the quinine being more easily extracted from them in a colourless form. The value of cinchona bark for the manufacture of quinine depends on the amount of quinine sulphate that can be prepared from it in the crystalline form. The exact mode of extraction adopted by manufacturers is kept a profound secret. That hitherto adopted by the Indian Government for the preparation of the cinchona febrifuge (see below) has the merit of simplicity, but the whole of the alkaloid present in the bark is not obtained by it. This method is to exhaust the powdered bark as far as possible by means of water acidulated with hydrochloric acid and then to pre- cipitate the mixed alkaloids by caustic soda. Another method which is said to give better results consists in mixing the powdered bark with milk of lime, drying the mass slowly with frequent stirring, exhausting the powder with boiling alcohol, removing the excess of alcohol by distillation, adding sufficient dilute sulphuric acid to dis- solve the alkaloid and throw down colouring matter and traces of lime, &c., filtering, and allowing the neutralized liquid to deposit crystals. The sulphates of the alkaloids thus obtained are not equally soluble in water, and the sulphate of quinine can consequently be separated by fractional crystallization, since, being less soluble in water than the other sulphates, it crystallizes out first. The quinine of commerce is the neutral sulphate, containing 7 molecules of water of crystallization, and having the formula (C 20 H 24 N 2 O 2 ) 2. H 2 SO 4 + y H 2 O. When crystallized from alcohol, or when dried over sulphuric acid, it contains only 2 molecules. Cownley has shown that the salt containing 2 molecules of water is the most per- manent one, for when the commercial sulphate containing 7 molecules is dried at 100 C. it becomes anhydrous, and when subsequently exposed freely to the air it rapidly absorbs 2 molecules of water ; and that the commercial salt, if exposed to the air, effloresces until only 2 mole- cules of water are retained. 1 Two other sulphates are known. The one contains a single equivalent of acid, and in commerce bears the name of acid sulphate or soluble sulphate of quinine ; it is soluble in 11 parts of water, but with considerable diffi- culty in absolute alcohol. The other sulphate contains 2 equivalents of sulphuric acid, is very soluble in cold water, but quite insoluble in ether; it is not an article of commerce. Both these sulphates crystallize with 7 molecules of water. The neutral sulphate of quinine occurs in commerce in the form of slender white acicular crystals, which are very light and bulky. It is soluble in about 740 parts of cold water, but in 30 of boiling water, GO of rectified spirits of wine (sp. gr. 0'85), and 40 of glycerin. Its solubility in water is lessened by the presence of sodium or magnesium sulphate, but is increased by nitrate of potassium, 1 Pharm. Jour., [3], vol. vii. p. 189.