CHEMISTRY 15 



so that I can hardly put my eye to the polariscope 

 again ; let's go to the Luxembourg, I'll tell you all 

 about it." 



By this discovery, he was led to the theory that 

 molecular disymmetry is the result of a certain 

 grouping of the atoms of the molecule : and this 

 theory has made its mark on the later work of 

 organic chemistry, and on the synthetic production 

 of drugs. Indeed, Professor Frankland writes of 

 him as the founder of stereo- chemistry, " one of the 

 most wonderful departments of modern chemistry." 

 Thus, it would be possible, with a sufficient know- 

 ledge of the subject, to trace the line of descent, 

 unbroken, from this discovery down to Ehrlich's 

 discovery of salvarsan. ^That is the way, with 

 Pasteur : his discoveries live in the work of the 

 men who come after him. 



For the next five years, from 1848 to 1853, he 

 gave himself to the study of molecular disymmetry, 

 with special reference to tartaric acid and its salts. 

 In the course of this work, there was a time when 

 the idea of disymmetry wellnigh obsessed him. It 

 presented itself to him everywhere : all Nature 

 moved in a disymmetrical way, her wonders to per- 

 form : life was disymmetric, the universe was disym- 

 metric : he was experimenting with magnets to 

 produce disymmetric crystals, and with revolving 

 clockwork and heliostatic mirrors to produce disym- 



