620 REPORT— 1888. 



Section B.— CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 

 President of the Section — Professor W. A. Tilden, D.Sc, F.R.S., F.C.S. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 6. 

 The President delivered the following Address: — 



^o 



A PART of the duty which devolves upon the President of a Section of the British 

 Association consists in delivering an address, and the knowledge that a pretty full 

 liberty of choice is permitted in regard to the selection of a subject is the only 

 source of comfort which serves to alleviate the onerous nature of the task. 



It seemed to me that the time is gone by when an attempt to review progress 

 over the whole field of chemical science is likely to he useful or even possible, and 

 an account of what is being done within the narrow limits of those parts of the 

 science to which I have been able to give special attention would be ill-adapted to 

 the character of a speech addressed to the members of the Section collectively. 

 The fact tliat at the last meeting of the Association a Committee was appointed 

 to inquire into the methods at present adopted for teaching chemistry suggested 

 that, as I had not been able to accept an invitation to join this Committee, I 

 might make use of this opportunity for contributing to the discussion. The first 

 report of the Committee will be received with much interest by the Section. As 

 might be expected, it embodies the expression of many varieties of opinion. 



The existence of chemistry as a department of science not merely requiring 

 the observation of facts that are to be made useful, but seeking in the accumulated 

 •stores of observation to discover law, is a thing of comparatively recent growth. 

 How chemistry arose out of alchemy I need not remind you, but the connection 

 between the study of chemistry and that of medicine, and the maintenance of this 

 connection down to even the present generation, is illustrated by the fact that 

 a large number of men who have become eminent as chemists began their career 

 in the surgery or the pharmacy. Black, Davy, Berzelius, WoUaston, Wohler, 

 Wurtz, Andrews, and W. A. Miller began by the study of medicine, whilst 

 Scheele, H. Rose, and the great names of Liebig and Dumas are to be found in 

 the long roll of those who received their earliest notions of chemistry in the 

 pharmaceutical laboratory. Chemistry has been gradually emancipated from 

 these associations with enormous advantage to both sides. So long as technical 

 purposes alone were held in view a scientific chemistry could not exist, but no 

 ■sooner did the study take an independent form and direction than multitudes of 

 useful applications of the facts discovered became apparent. 



It is only within a comparatively few years, however, that universities, in this 

 country at least, have ceased to deal with chemistry as a kind of poor relation or 

 humble follower of medicine, and have permitted her to emerge from the cellars of 

 & museum or school of anatomy and have given her a commodious dwelling in the 

 fair light of day. 



In the old time such instruction in chemistry as was given in the universities 

 and mining or technical schools seems to have taken the form of lectures read by 

 the professor, and access to a laboratory for practical manipulation seems to have 

 been a high privilege accorded only under exceptional circumstances to the few. 

 We are told, for example, that when Liebig went to Paris in 1823 he applied to 



