The Chemist as Creator 753 



Sugar-making 



For many ages men knew of sweetness only from fruits and 

 honey, but in the course of time they learned to press the sugar- 

 cane. How this sweet reed was carried from the Far East to 

 the West Indies is an interesting story, but it does not concern 

 us here, nor how Napoleon was instrumental in rivalling the 

 sugar-cane with the beet-root, which is rich in precisely the same 

 sucrose (Ci2 Hza Oi-). Of course all green plants make 

 sugar, but only the cane and the beet we need hardly count the 

 maple do so in sufficient abundance to be worth tapping, except 

 through bees or as concerns their fruit. What the chemist has 

 done in regard to sugar is to distinguish its different natural 

 kinds ; to make some new ones on his own, and to make it possible 

 to get this valuable nutrient very pure. As Dr. Slosson says: 

 "Common sugar is almost an ideal food. Cheap, clean, white, 

 portable, imperishable, unadulterated, pleasant-tasting, germ- 

 free, highly nutritious, completely soluble, altogether digestible, 

 easily assimilable, requires no cooking and leaves no residue. Its 

 only fault is its perfection. It is so pure that a man cannot live 

 on it." In fact, to make it more than a fraction of the diet is 

 dangerous; and some people with a slight twist in their chemical 

 routine (metabolism) should not take it at all. And here is a 

 point where the creative chemist came in. For an American 

 investigator, Ira Remsen, afterwards President of Johns Hop- 

 kins University, accidentally discovered a coal-tar derivative, 

 which he called saccharin, several hundred times sweeter than 

 sugar, yet not a sugar at all. It has no nutrient value, but it 

 flavours tea and coffee, and it is not injurious to those who can- 

 not take sugar. 



2 

 Chemical Conjuring 



We never tire of watching a conjurer who turns a crumpled 

 handkerchief into a white rabbit, and that into a pigeon ; but there 

 is much more real conjuring in the chemical laboratory. The 



