CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 



THE RECENT PROGRESS OF ORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 



The following is an abstract of an address made to the chemical 

 section of the British Association, 1863, by Professor Williamson, on 

 assuming the Chair : 



One of the features of our science is the rate at which materials 

 have been accumulating by the labors of chemists, in the so-called or- 

 ganic department of the science. The study of the transformation of 

 organic bodies leads to the discovery of new acids, new bases, new al- 

 cohols, new ethers, and at a constantly increasing rate. Some of these 

 new substances are found to possess properties which can at once be 

 applied to practical manufacturing processes, such as dyeing, but the 

 greater number of them remain in our laboratories and museums, and 

 text-books. New discoveries are constantly coming in to fill up the gaps 

 which still disfigure our growing system. In mineral, or in organic 

 chemistry, there is not the same scope for discovery at present, inas- 

 much as the elements which belong to it do not combine in those numer- 

 ous proportions which occur among the chief elements of organic bodies. 

 But yet, mineral chemistry has not been standing still, for even the 

 heavy metals, most remote in their properties from those volatile and un- 

 stable substances of organic chemistry, have been made in many instances 

 to combine together, and the organic metallic bodies thus formed have 

 not only proved most valuable and powerful agents of decomposition, 

 but they have served as a connecting link between the two branches of 

 chemical science. A system of classification of elements is now coming 

 into use, in which the heavy metals arrange themselves harmoniously 

 with the elements of organic bodies, and in accordance with the prin- 

 ciples which were discovered by a study of organic compounds. It is 

 now many years since the attention of chemists was directed by a 

 French professor to some inconsistencies which had crept into -our sys- 

 tem of atomic weights. Gerhardt showed that the principles which 

 were adopted in fixing the atomic weight of elementary bodies gener- 

 ally required us, to adopt for oxygen, carbon, and sulphur, numbers 

 twice as great as those generally in use for those elements. The logic 

 of his arguments was unanswerable, and yet Gerhardt's conclusions 

 gained but few adherents. It is to be observed, that for some years 

 Gerhardt represented chemical reactions by so-called synoptic formulas, 

 which took no account of the existence of organic radicles. These 

 synoptic formulae represent in the simplest terms the result of a chi'ini- 

 cal reaction ; but they give no physical image of the progress by which 

 the reaction is brought about. The introduction, in this country, of the 



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