TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B. 685 



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 connection with the teaching 

 of chemistry is the fact that although the science has been advancing year by year 

 with such unexampled rapidity, the coarse 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 dry and wet way, and his second year to quantitative analysis, and, 

 although the methods employed in teaching the latter may possibly have under- 

 gone some slight modification, there is certainly no great clitference between the 

 routine of simple salt and mixture 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 con- 

 sidering this matter I was led in the first place to carefidly 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 quahtative analysis. Unfortunately, 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 teaching 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 diy 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 separation of gold and silver, and subsequently 

 Glauber (1604-1668) called attention to the fact that many commoner metals cciuld 

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



Btit 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 

 blowpip'e analysis. The methods employed by Gahn were further develcfped by 

 his friedid Berzelius (1779-1848), who gave much attention to the matter, and wlio 

 with great skill and patience gradually worked out a complete scheme of blowpipe 

 aualy&iK, and ptiblishe'd it in a p'ampblet, entitled ' Ueher die Anwiendung des 



