Although it is well known that boric acid cannot be titrated satisfactorily by strong base, using phenolphthalein as an indicator, unless a suitable “activator” such as glycerol or mannitol is added (24), there is no generally accepted theory of the remarkable action of these compounds. The increase in effective acidity of the i&ak boric acid which is found to be produced by polyhydric alcohols in general is variously called “potentiation”(15, 16, 17) or ...