Page:EB1911 - Volume 02.djvu/146

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134
ANTIPYRINE—ANTI-SEMITISM
  

one must be as many degrees to the north of the equator as the other is to the south, in other words, the latitudes are numerically equal, but one is north and the other south. Noon at the one place is midnight at the other, the longest day corresponds to the shortest, and mid-winter is contemporaneous with midsummer. In the calculation of days and nights, midnight on the one side may be regarded as corresponding to the noon either of the previous or of the following day. If a voyager sail eastward, and thus anticipate the sun, his dating will be twelve hours in advance, while the reckoning of another who has been sailing westward will be as much in arrear. There will thus be a difference of twenty-four hours between the two when they meet. To avoid the confusion of dates which would thus arise, it is necessary to determine a meridian at which dates should be brought into agreement, i.e. a line the crossing of which would involve the changing of the name of the day either forwards, when proceeding westwards, or backwards, when proceeding eastwards. Mariners have generally adopted the meridian 180° from Greenwich, situated in the Pacific Ocean, as a convenient line for co-ordinating dates. The so-called “International Date Line,” which is, however, practically only due to American initiative, is designed to remove certain objections to the meridian of 180° W., the most important of which is that groups of islands lying about this meridian differ in date by a day although only a few miles apart. Several forms have been suggested; these generally agree in retaining the meridian of 180° in the mid Pacific, with a bend in the north in order to make the Aleutian Islands and Alaska of the same time as America, and also in the south so as to bring certain of the South Sea islands into line with Australia and New Zealand.

ANTIPYRINE (phenyldimethyl pyrazolone) (C11H12N2O), is prepared by the condensation of phenylhydrazine with aceto-acetic ester, the resulting phenyl methyl pyrazolone being heated with methyl iodide and methyl alcohol to 100–110° C.:—

On the large scale phenylhydrazine is dissolved in dilute sulphuric acid, the solution warmed to about 40° C. and the aceto-acetic ester added. When the reaction is complete the acid is neutralized with soda, and the phenyl methyl pyrazolone extracted with ether and distilled in vacuo. The portion distilling at about 200° C. is then methylated by means of methyl alcohol and methyl iodide at 100–110° C., the excess of methyl alcohol removed and the product obtained decolorized by sulphuric acid. The residue is treated with a warm concentrated solution of soda, and the oil which separates is removed by shaking with benzene. The benzene layer on evaporation deposits the anti-pyrine as a colourless crystalline solid which melts at 113° C. and is soluble in water. It is basic in character, and gives a red coloration on the addition of ferric chloride. In medicine anti-pyrine (“phenazonum”) has been used as an analgesic and antipyretic. The dose is 5-20 grs., but on account of its depressant action on the heart, and the toxic effects to which it occasionally gives rise, it is now but little used. It is more safely replaced by phenacetine.

ANTIQUARY, a person who devotes himself to the study of ancient learning and “antiques,” i.e. ancient objects of art or science. The London Society of Antiquaries was formed in the 18th century to promote the study of antiquities. As early as 1572 a society had been founded by Bishop Matthew Parker, Sir Robert Cotton, William Camden and others for the preservation of national antiquities. This body existed till 1604, when it fell under suspicion of being political in its aims, and was abolished by James I. Papers read at their meetings are preserved in the Cottonian library and were printed by Thomas Hearne in 1720 under the title A Collection of Curious Discourses, a second edition appearing in 1771. In 1707 a number of English antiquaries began to hold regular meetings for the discussion of their hobby and in 1717 the Society of Antiquaries was formally reconstituted, finally receiving a charter from George II. in 1751. In 1780 George III. granted the society apartments in Somerset House, Strand. The society is governed by a council of twenty and a president who is ex officio a trustee of the British Museum. The present headquarters of the society are at Burlington House, Piccadilly.

The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland was founded in 1780, and has the management of a large national antiquarian museum in Edinburgh. In Ireland a society was founded in 1849 called the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, holding its meetings at Kilkenny. In 1869 its name was changed to the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, and in 1890 to the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, its office being transferred to Dublin. In France La Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France was formed in 1814 by the reconstruction of the Académie Celtique, which had existed since 1805. The American Antiquarian Society was founded in 1812, with its headquarters at Worcester, Mass. It has a library of upwards of 100,000 volumes and its transactions have been published bi-annually since 1849. In Germany the Gesamtverein der Deutschen Geschichts-und Altertumsvereine was founded in 1852. La Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord at Copenhagen is among the best known of European antiquarian societies.

ANTIQUE (Lat. antiquus, old), a term conventionally restricted to the remains of ancient art, such as sculptures, gems, medals, seals, &c. In a limited sense it applies only to Greek and Roman art, and includes neither the artistic remains of other ancient nations nor any product of classical art of a later date than the fall of the western empire.

ANTI-SEMITISM. In the political struggles of the concluding quarter of the 19th century an important part was played by a religious, political and social agitation against the Jews, known as “Anti-Semitism.” The origins of this remarkable movement already threaten to become obscured by legend. The Jews contend that anti-Semitism is a mere atavistic revival of the Jew-hatred of the middle ages. The extreme section of the anti-Semites, who have given the movement its quasi-scientific name, declare that it is a racial struggle—an incident of the eternal conflict between Europe and Asia—and that the anti-Semites are engaged in an effort to prevent what is called the Aryan race from being subjugated by a Semitic immigration, and to save Aryan ideals from being modified by an alien and demoralizing oriental Anschauung. There is no essential foundation for either of these contentions. Religious prejudices reaching back to the dawn of history have been reawakened by the anti-Semitic agitation, but they did not originate it, and they have not entirely controlled it. The alleged racial divergence is, too, only a linguistic hypothesis on the physical evidence of which anthropologists are not agreed (Topinard, Anthropologie, p. 444; Taylor, Origins of Aryans, cap. i.), and, even if it were proved, it has existed in Europe for so many centuries, and so many ethnic modifications have occurred on both sides, that it cannot be accepted as a practical issue. It is true that the ethnographical histories of the Jews and the nations of Europe have proceeded on widely diverging lines, but these lines have more than once crossed each other and become interlaced. Thus Aryan elements are at the beginning of both; European morals have been ineradicably semitized by Christianity, and the Jews have been Europeans for over a thousand years, during which their character has been modified and in some respects transformed by the ecclesiastical and civil polities of the nations among whom they have made their permanent home. Anti-Semitism is then exclusively a question of European politics, and its origin is to be found, not in the long struggle between Europe and Asia, or between the Church and the Synagogue, which filled so much of ancient and medieval history, but in the social conditions resulting from the emancipation of the Jews in the middle of the 19th century.

If the emancipated Jews were Europeans in virtue of the antiquity of their western settlements, and of the character impressed upon them by the circumstances of their European history, they none the less presented the appearance of a strange people to their Gentile fellow-countrymen. They had been