52 



NA TURE 



[July S, 1909 



whilst theoretical- science- verifies logical deductions. 

 Science forces nature to divulge its secrets ; empiricism is 

 quite content to pick up the treasures it may come across 

 in its ramblings through unexplored regions. Nature is 

 still full of unknown treasures. Why should we cease to 

 search for them? Why should -we expect success only 

 from logical deduction? 



It is true that the scientific method of invention is a 

 quicker road to success. Rapidity is everything in our 

 times. Whirling along in a motor carriage to a well- 

 known destination is distinctly more agreeable than tramp- 

 ing on foot in the glaring sun of a summer's day ; but 

 you cannot pick the flowers blooming by the roadside or 

 stumble over hidden treasures at the rate of sixty miles 

 an hour. The two methods of progress have both their 

 own peculiar advantages, and should both be followed. 

 Now and then they will meet, and make success doubly 

 certain. 



One of the best combinations of empiricism and theory 

 is the examination of old empirical industrial processes by 

 the methods and in the light of modern chemical science. 

 A great deal of valuable information has been obtained in 

 this way ; much more remains to be discovered. It is 

 this conviction which led me to propose to the last congress 

 at Rome that a special section should be established in 

 these congresses for the history of applied chemistry. The 

 history of chemical science, as it exists now, is almost 

 entirely devoted to theoretical systems and to the life of 

 those who created them. The history of industrial methods 

 is not so complete as one might wish it to be. 



So far as the history of our nineteenth-century chemical 

 industry goes, the materials for studying it are not want- 

 ing. The patent literature of the various countries is in 

 itself an inexhaustible source of information, which can 

 be largely supplemented from text-books and endless files 

 of periodicals; but it is not so if we begin to inquire into 

 the applied chemistry of previous centuries. The 

 mysterious communications of the mediaeval alchemists 

 have been frequently examined ; but Plinv remains our 

 almost exclusive source of information about the chemical 

 arts of the antique world. Yet these arts were many and 

 highly developed, and Pliny's information was distinctly 

 superficial. 



How much more might be gathered about the chemistry 

 of past times has been shown by the researches of such 

 men as Berthelot and Edmund von Lippmann, who com- 

 bined the accomplishments of distinguished chemists with 

 those of the Orientalist in the study of Arabic and Hebrew 

 authors. Who knows what a host of information may yet 

 be lying dormant in unread Egyptian papyri and 

 palympsests? 



But the sovereign means of discovering these lost secrets 

 is in the careful study and analysis of the products which 

 ancient times have fortunately left us as proofs of their 

 skill and knowledge. How much has been done in that 

 respect by that one great master, Marcellin Berthelot, who 

 found in such work the recreation of the later years of 

 his life? How much more remains still to be done? 



Thus we may hope to know at some future time more 

 of the accomplishments of past generations than we do 

 at present ; and we may also hope that some of the 

 methods thus re-discovered will awake to fresh life like 

 mummy wheat, which is said to take root and grow if 

 you plant it in fresh soil. Have we not greeted with 

 delight the terra sigillata of the Romans, when the process 

 for its manufacture was re-discovered by Fischer, a 

 Bavarian potter, and has not a considerable industry 

 sprung from the resurrected use of lanolin, or wool- 

 fat, which was a panacea of the Greeks two thousand 

 years ago? 



Yet such discoveries will remain inheritances from the 

 dead, and the cases of their resurrection to life will not 

 be numerous ; but we have living empiricism at our doors, 

 which we allow to die and to sink into oblivion, without 

 attempting to study it and to learn the lesson it has to 

 teach — a treasure of information of incalculable magni- 

 tude hoarded up in the course of centuries by the skill 

 and patience of countless millions of men who were, and 

 are, as keen in the study of nature as they are reluctant 

 to draw general conclusions from their observations. 



This great treasure is the industrial experience of the 

 NO. 2071, VOL. 81] 



Eastern nations. It is an undoubted fact, and if it were 

 not, a single visit to the South Kensington Museuin would 

 prove it, that the people of Persia, India, China, Japan, 

 the inhabitants of Burma, Siam, Cambodja, and the in- 

 numerable islands of the Pacific, are possessed of methods 

 for the treatment and utilisation of the products of nature 

 which are in many cases equal, if not superior, to our 

 own. These methods must be to a large extent based 

 upon chemical principles. Is it not strange that we know 

 so little about them, and that little generally only indirectly 

 through the accounts of travellers who were not chemists? 

 If all these peculiar methods were fully known and 

 described by persons who have seen them applied and 

 watched their application with the eyes of a chemist, it 

 would certainly be, not only of interest, but also of the 

 greatest utility to our own industry ; for it is the elucida- 

 tion of empirical methods which, in the new light that 

 science sheds upon them, leads to new departures and to 

 progress. Who can deny the advantage which the indus- 

 try of cotton dyeing and calico printing derived from the 

 study of the Turkey-red process, which a century ago was 

 bought as an Eastern trade secret by the French Govern- 

 ment and generously placed at the disposal of European 

 dyers? Would the making of porcelain have been invented 

 in Europe if the impulse for it had not come from the 

 East? Is there no connection between the introduction of 

 Chinese porcelain and the invention of Delft, the curious 

 observations of Reaumur on devitrification, and even the 

 work of that great and original genius, Josiah Wedgwood? 

 And would that supreme triumph of the application of 

 pure chemical science to industry, the synthesis of indigo, 

 ever have been accomplished if indigo, as a natural dye- 

 stuff, and its extraordinary method of application by vat- 

 dyeing, had not come to us from the East? What a stir 

 has been created, even in these very latest days, by the 

 extension of this ancient Eastern method of dyeing to 

 other shades than those of indigo ! 



We live in a period when the intellectual nations of 

 the East wake up from their political sleep of centuries, 

 when thev issue from their seclusion and demand their 

 share of Atlantic civilisation ; but their awakening means 

 going to sleep for their industrial methods. These 

 methods, ingenious as they undoubtedly are, cannot com- 

 pete with ours in being applicable on a manufacturing 

 scale. So our processes are transferred to the coasts of 

 the Pacific, and their own methods are abandoned and 

 forgotten. The Eastern industries cannot keep pace with 

 ours, not because they are inferior in their results, but 

 because they toil on foot whilst ours are motoring. In 

 this struggle for existence the fittest means the quickest 

 and the cheapest. 



Yet I am certain that many a new and good result 

 might be obtained from the combination of Eastern and 

 Atlar'ic achievements. Examples of such happy blending 

 are not missing. See what that great and original 

 English inventor. Lord Mashani, the very type of an 

 .Atlantic genius, has made of the wild silks of India ! 



It seems to me that these international congresses ought 

 to make it one of their important duties to watch over 

 the intellectual wealth of the past and to collect it before 

 it disappears for ever. Let the chemists of all countries 

 who flock together in these gatherings entrust to their 

 keeping the old indigenous industrial methods of their 

 nations ; let the reports of these congresses, which are 

 distributed over all the world, become a treasure-trove of 

 ancient motives for new development ! 



If we consider how our present chemical industry has 

 been evolved from empirical processes such as our 

 ancestors practised them, and as they still exist in the 

 countries of the East, and even in some parts of Europe, 

 we can easily observe a gradual transformation similar 

 in many respects to the one that living nature had to go 

 through in evolving the present types of plant and animal 

 life. It is here that the parallels between biology and 

 chemistry offer themselves. They are interesting, and not 

 useless to consider. It would be strange indeed if we 

 could not gather some acceptable hints from surveying 

 the broad expanse of the human toil and thought of 

 centuries. 



One of the most characteristic changes that have taken 

 place is the transformation of handicraft into manufacture. 



