NATURE 



161 



I HURSDAY, OC fOBER »<i. roi8. 



! HISTOR] Of CHEMISTRY. 

 . v oj Chemistry. By Prof. F. J. Moore. 

 P \i\ 292. (New Vork: McGraw-Hill Hook 

 ( 1 In, , ; London : Hill Publishing Co., 



I 1 . mi.s.i Pri. e 12s. 6rf. net. 



$ 



I l difficull to find excuses for a new " Hisi 

 1 Chemistry " which starts from anc^t 



linn-- md brings the stor) down to the pn 

 day. Ml thai can be usefully said about the 

 alchemists and the early chemists before Lavoisier 

 has been repeated many times in the various his- 

 tories by Thomas Thomson, Kopp, Ernst von 

 Meyer, VVurtz, Thorpe, and others, besides the 

 innumerable special essays such as those of Thorpe 

 and the Memorial Lectures of the Chemical 

 Societv. Teachers agree that the study of history 

 in ever} department of thought is valuable to the 

 Student and indispensable to everyone who wishes 

 to understand the present position and how it has 

 been arrived at in each division of physical and 

 natur; It appears to the present writer 



that the pro. ess of tracing the evolution of ideas 

 in science is most likely to be accomplished best 

 by one who is contemporary with the discoveries 

 which have led to advance and has taken part in 

 discussions arising therefrom. One or two his- 

 torians in every generation or about every thirty or 

 lort\ years would be able to record correctly the 

 .ss w biili has been made in bis own time. The 

 history of science is nol exactly comparable with 

 the Flistorj of human affairs, which demands the 

 lapse oi a certain amount of time before a true 

 valuation of events and movements becomes 

 possible. 



Every writer of a new book, however, doubtless 

 assumes that his work has merits of its own, and 

 it mav be al once admitted that this is true of 

 Moon's "History." Hut the preface which 

 he has provided makes no reference to previous 

 writers, and is worded as if he thought the task- 

 be had undertaken was entirely new. "The aim," 

 he says, "has been to emphasise only those facts 

 and influences which have contributed to make 

 the science what it is to-day." The same claim 

 in similar words has been put forward by many 

 another writer on the same subject. Undoubtedly 

 the book has some features of its own, and the 

 last two chapters, which respectively trace the 

 rise of physical ehemistry and set forth, though 

 briefly, the present state of knowledge of radio- 

 active substances and the influence of such new- 

 knowledge on conceptions of the Atomic Theory, 

 the story down to the present day. 

 The matter is rather severehj compressed, for 

 "bide within the space of 2J1 octavo pages 

 ■ count of chemical ideas from the times of 

 the (beck philosophers down to the latest con- 

 1 tusions concerning the elements from X-ray 

 ectra and atomic numbers implies a power of 

 discrimination and concise expression, qualities 

 which are not lacking in the author. The book is 

 2557, VOL. I02] 



written in a befcsk and livelj style, and the per- 

 sonal biographical touchi interpolated here and 

 there aughl to set v< to 1 1 the appetite for more 

 a id lead the student to make 1 ■< ursions into the 

 tare usefully set forth end of each 



I , . h lias' to be b01 ri< 11 mind that the 



lectures, oi which the book is tin outcome, wen 



,1 to the senior students at the Mass.i- 



busetts Institute oi Technology 1 1 ntra- 



nnn ol the text rendering it much I' tble for 



readers nol already familiar with thi fundi mental 

 1.1. is .md principles of the science. 



I be author shows a sound judgment in selling 

 forth the relative positions and merits of notable 



ire in the history of the 31 

 and about which difference of opinion has bei 

 expressed in the past. "Little attention has bi 

 paid to questions of priority. A great discover) 

 is usually preceded by a multitude of earlier 

 observations. . . . From the historical standpoint 

 the discoverer of a great truth is usually the one 

 through whose efforts it first becomes available 

 to the race." This remark in the preface is very 

 just. It has always been acknowledged, for ex- 

 ample, that oxygen was discovered by Priestley * 

 in 1774, and that the same element had been iso- 

 lated from several sources by Scheele before thai 

 time, but the credit of publication belongs to 

 Priestley. There was a tendency at one time in 

 France ' to ignore Priestley, and in England 

 to disparage the work of Lavoisier on the 

 ground, bv no means certain, that he did not 

 "discover" oxygen independently of Priestley. 

 Anyone who has read carefully the "Opuscules," 

 which contain his observations on the calcination 

 ,,l in. tals and the consequent absorption of 

 a portion of the air in contact, must per- 

 . eive 1 hat this long- course of experiment was under- 

 taken with a definite purpose in view, and that the 

 conclusions at which he arrived were independent 

 of anything he may have heard from Priestley 

 about his experiments on mercuric- oxide. 



The chapter on the periodic law again sets 



forth briefly all the earlier speculations concerning 



relations among atomic weights, and arrives at 



the 1 onclusion that the principle of periodicity was 



discovered by Lothar Meyer at nearly the same time 



as and independently of Mendeleeff. Chap, xx., 



entitled "The Rise of Physical Chemistry," points 



out that this aspect of chemical science is not 



exclusively of modem origin. It began as soon 



as quantitative methods were established in all 



directions, and the foundations were laid by 



isier and Berthollet, and consolidated by the 



work of Gay-Lussac, Qulong and Petit, Regnault, 



Hansen, Kopp, and others. The chapter gives 



evidence oi the influence of Ostwald on the views 



uthor, who was among his pupils. 



A word must be added about the illustrations 



with which the volume is abundantly supplied. 



I hex arc all well meant, and many are interesting, 



but the portraits given are of very unequal merit, 



ome of them are, to speak frankly, quite bad 



— those of Mendeleeff and Fi her, for example. 



It mav also be remarked thai here the series of 



