September 13, 1900J 



NATURE 



477 



used in this connection in his admirable Presidential Address to 

 this Association in 1899. He said : " The learner may be led 

 to old truths, even the oldest, in more ways than one. He may 

 be brought abruptly to a truth in its finished form, coming 

 straight to it like a thief climbing over a wall ; and the hurry 

 and press of modern life tempt many to adopt this quicker way. 

 Or he may be more slowly guided along the path by which the 

 truth was reached by him who first laid hold of it. It is by this 

 latter way of learning the truth, and by this alone, that the 

 learner may hope to catch something at least of the spirit of the 

 scientific inquirer." 



I believe that in the determination of a suitable school course 

 in experimental science this principle of historical development 

 is a very valuable guide, although it is not laid down in the 1889 

 Report of the British Association. 



The application of this principle will lead to the study of the 

 solvent action of water, of crystallisation, and of the separation 

 of mixtures of solids before the investigation of the composition 

 of water, and also before the investigation of the phenomena of 

 combustion. It will lead to the investigation of hydrochloric 

 acid before chlorine, and especially to the postponement of 

 atomic and molecular theories, chemical equations, and the laws 

 of chemical combination, until the student has really sufficient 

 knowledge to understand how these theories came to be 

 necessary. 



There can be no doubt that this new system of teaching 

 chemistry in schools has been most successful. Teachers are 

 delighted with the results which have already been obtained, 

 and those whom I have had the opportunity of consulting, 

 directly and indirectly, cannot speak too highly of their satis- 

 faction at the disappearance of the old system of qualitative 

 analysis, and the institution of the new order of things. 

 Especially I may mention in this connection the excellent work 

 which is being carried on under the supervision of Dr. Bevan 

 Lean at the Friends' School in Ackworth, where the boys have 

 attained results which are far in advance of anything which 

 would have been thought possible a few years since. 



It is, of course, obvious that if a schoolboy is made to take 

 the attitude of a discoverer, his progress may appear to be slow. 

 But does this matter? Most boys will not become professional 

 chemists ; but if while at school a boy learns how to learn, and 

 how to " make knowledge"^ by working out for himself a few 

 problems, a habit of mind will be formed which will enable him 

 in future years to look in a scientific spirit at any new problems 

 which may face him. When school-days are past the details of 

 the preparation of hydrogen may have been forgotten ; but if it 

 was really understood at the time that it could not be decided 

 at once whether the gas was derived from the acid or from the 

 metal, or from the water, or in part from the one and in part 

 from the other, an attitude of scepticism and of suspended 

 judgment will have been formed, which will continue to guard 

 from error. 



In the new system of teaching chemistry in schools much 

 attention must necessarily be given to weights and measure- 

 ments ; indeed, the work must be largely of a quantitative kind, 

 and it is in this connection that an important note of warning 

 has been sounded by several teachers.^ They consider, very 

 rightly, that it is important to point out clearly to the scholar 

 that science does not consist of measurement, but that measure- 

 ment is only a tool in the hand of the inquirer, and that when 

 once sufficient skill has been developed in its use it should be 

 employed only with a distinct object. Measurements should, in 

 fact, be made only in reference to some actual problem which 

 appears to be really worth solving, not in the accumulation of 

 aimless details. 



And, of course, all research carried out must be genuine and 

 not sham, and all assumption of the "obvious" must be most 

 carefully guarded against. But the young scholar must, at the 

 same time, not forget that although the scientific method is 

 necessary to enable him to arrive at a result, in real life it is the 

 answer to the problem which is of the most importance.^ 



Although, then, there has been so much discussion, during 

 the last ten years, on the subject of teaching chemistry in 

 schools, and such steady progress has been made towards 

 devising a really satisfactory system of teaching the subject to 



1 Cf. Prof. ]. G. Macgregor in Nature, September 1899. 



2 Cf. H. Picton in Tke Scliool ^orld, November 1899 ; Bevan Lean, 

 ibid., F'ebruary 1900. 



3 Cf. Mrs. Bryant, " Special Reports on Educational Subjects," vol. 

 p. 113. 



NO. 161I, VOL. 62] 



young boys and girls, it is certainly very remarkable that prac- 

 tically nothing has been said or written bearing on the training 

 which a student who wishes to become a chemist is to undertake 

 at the close of his school-days at the college or university in 

 which his education is continued. 



One of the most remarkable points, to my mind, in connec- 

 tion with the teaching of chemistry, is the fact that although the 

 science has been advancing year by year with such unexampled 

 rapidity, the course of training which the student goes through 

 during his first two years at most colleges is still practically the 

 same as it was thirty or forty years ago. Then, as now, after 

 preparing a few of the principal gases, the student devotes the 

 bulk of his first year to qualitative analysis in the <3ry and wet 

 way, and his second year to quantitative analysis, and, although 

 the methods employed in teaching the latter may possibly have 

 undergone some slight modification, there is certainly no great 

 difference between the routine of simple salt and mixture fol- 

 lowed by quantitative analysis practised at the present day and that 

 which was in vogue in the days of our fathers and grandfathers. 



Since, then, the present system has held the field for so long, 

 not only in this country but also on the Continent, it is worth 

 while considering whether it affords the best training which a 

 student who wishes to become a chemist can undergo in the 

 short time during which he can attend at a college or university. 

 In considering this matter I was led in the first place to care- 

 fully examine old books and other records, with the object of 

 finding out how the present system originated, and I think that 

 valuable and interesting information bearing on the subject may 

 be obtained from a very brief sketch of the rise and development 

 of the present system of teaching chemistry, and especially in so 

 far as it bears on the inclusion of qualitative analysis. Un- 

 fortunately, it is not so easy to gain a good historical acquaintance 

 with the matter as I at first imagined would be the case, and 

 this is due in a large measure to the fact that so few of the 

 laboratories which took an active part in the development of 

 the present system of chemical training have left any record of 

 the methods which they employed. In this connection I may, 

 perhaps, be allowed to suggest that it would be a valuable help 

 to the future historian if all prominent teachers of chemistry 

 would leave behind them a brief record of the system of teach- 

 ing adopted in their laboratories, showing the changes which 

 they had instituted, the object of these changes, and the results 

 which followed their adoption. 



There is no doubt that the progress of practical chemistry 

 went largely hand in hand with the progress of theoretical 

 chemistry, for as the latter gradually developed, so the necessity 

 for the determination of the composition, first of the best known, 

 and then of the rarer minerals and other substances, became 

 more and more marked. 



The analytical examination of substances in the dry way was 

 employed in very early times in connection with metallurgical 

 operations, and especially in the determination of the presence 

 of valuable constituents in samples of minerals. Cupellation 

 was used by the Greeks in the separation of gold and silver 

 from their ores and in the purification of these metals. Geber 

 knew that the addition of nitre to the ore facilitated the separa- 

 tion of gold and silver, and subsequently Glauber (1604-1668) 

 called attention to the fact that many commoner metals could 

 easily be separated from their ores with the aid of nitre. 



But it was not till the eighteenth century that any marked 

 progress was made in analysis in the dry way, and the progress 

 which then became rapid was undoubtedly due to the discovery 

 of the blowpipe, and to the introduction of its use into analytical 

 operations. The blowpipe is mentioned for the first time in 

 1660, in the transactions of the Accademia del Cimento of 

 Florence, but the first to recommend its use in chemical 

 operations was Johann Andreas Cramer in 1739. The progress 

 of blowpipe analysis was largely due to Gahn (1745-1818), who 

 spent much time in perfecting its use in the examination of 

 minerals, and it was he who first used platinum wire and cobalt 

 solution in connection with blowpipe analysis. The methods 

 employed by Gahn were fuither developed by his friend 

 Berzelius {1779-1848), who gave much attention to the matter, 

 and who with great skill and patience gradually worked out a 

 complete scheme of blowpipe analysis, and published it in a 

 pamphlet, entitled " Ueber die Anwendung des Lothrohrs," 

 which appeared in 1820. After the publication of this work 

 blowpipe analysis rapidly came into general use in England 

 France and Germany, and the scheme devised by Berzelius is 

 essentially that employed at the present day. 



