276 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



THE FUTURE OF CHEMISTRY. 



BtF. W. CLARKE, 



PBOFESSOE OF PHTSICS AND CHEMISTRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI. 



EVERY science seems to have, as a science, its most rapid and 

 brilliant growth during the earlier portions of its history. By 

 this I do not intend to say that the mere bulk of its material increases 

 more swiftly than at a later period, when the number of its students 

 and investigators has become great. I mean simply that important 

 generalizations are more readily made and more frequent, and that 

 abstract conceptions are more speedily fertile in results. The reason 

 for this is very obvious. At first, when any new science has but just 

 assumed definite shape, every student has it before his mind as a unit. 

 All parts of the field are immediately under his eye ; no portion of it 

 can easily escape notice. Thus it is studied, not less in its details, but 

 more as a definite, consistent whole ; and its growth is consistent, well- 

 balanced, and harmonious. When, however, the field becomes larger, 

 there is a splitting up into specialties, and, in general, each specialty 

 is cultivated by some assiduous worker who cares but little for the 

 character which the science may take in its entirety. In other words, 

 the greater the mass of scientific material, the greater is the tendency 

 among investigators to study details at the expense of generalities. 

 Accordingly, the details multiply and become unmanageable ; com- 

 plexity increases, and symmetrical development comes comparatively 

 to a stand-still. 



This is emphatically true of chemistry at the present day. Only 

 a very few chemists now study their science as a grand unit. We 

 have technical chemists, agricultural chemists, analytical chemists, 

 physiological chemists, and so on. Each one devotes himself to his 

 specialty almost without reference to the others. What relation his 

 particular branch may bear to the complete science is hardly thought 

 of. Such questions are left to speculators and dreamers. Among 

 those who study the abstract science, without reference to its practical 

 applications, it is much the same. One man has all he can do to ex- 

 amine the derivatives of a single organic group. If he can obtain 

 fifty new compounds in which the interlinking of the atoms may be 

 represented in some unheard-of way, his ambition is satisfied. He 

 chlorinates this body, and deoxidizes that ; he makes numberless sub- 

 stitutions, all of which he knew beforehand to be possible ; but what, 

 in the end, does it amount to ? In Germany, where nine-tenths of the 

 chemists seem to be running wild over the so-called " aromatic group," 

 this multiplication of new bodies is going on with unparalleled rapid- 

 ity. And yet not one in five hundred of the substances discovered 

 gets thoroughly described. This naphthaline derivative is a solid, 



