INTRODUCTION 3 



Chemistry has for centuries been associated, perhaps naturally, 

 with medicine, and, confining attention to modern times, it is 

 easy to recall the names of many men who became eminent as 

 chemists having begun by the study of medicine in some form 

 or other. Black, Davy, Berzelius, Wollaston, Wohler, Wurtz, 

 Andrews, and W. A. Miller began by the study of medicine, 

 while Scheele, Rose, Liebig, Dumas, and Frankland received 

 their earliest notions of chemistry in the druggist's shop. 



Chemistry has been gradually emancipated from these asso- 

 ciations with enormous advantages to the progress of know- 

 ledge. The systematic study of chemistry an-4 provision for 

 teaching it in schools and universities belong to comparatively 

 recent times. 



In the middle of last century there were no laboratories for 

 practical work in any of the British universities and chemistry 

 was not a subject which led up to a degree. The Professor of 

 Chemistry at Oxford was also Professor of Botany, while at 

 Cambridge the Professor of Chemistry was a country clergyman 

 who came up once a year to give a course of lectures, and it 

 was even thought very creditable on his part to do so much. 

 In those days no school had a resident science master who gave 

 the whole of his time to teaching elementary physics or chemistry, 

 though a few received a visit about once in a fortnight from a 

 peripatetic teacher who brought with him a box containing 

 portable apparatus. 



Happily times are changed in all these respects and, notwith- 

 standing the substantial grounds for hoping that still greater 

 progress will be made, the position of the science master in all 

 the most important schools is now fully assured. But the 

 conflict between literature and science for the possession of 

 endowments, time of teachers and pupils, energy of both, and 

 prominence in the educational field is even now not at an end, 

 and never will cease until both sides are duly influenced by 

 respect for the work and aspirations of the other. 



From the circumstances connected with the great war in 

 Europe the importance of a knowledge of chemistry has become 

 particularly prominent. The appropriation of the larger part 

 of the manufacture of dyes and drugs by Germany has attracted 

 particular attention, especially in those countries in which such 

 industries have been less developed, and it has become at last 

 obvious to the public that the imperfect recognition of the value 



