TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B. 625 



Considering, however, how efficiently I am supported by the gentlemen with 

 whom I have the honour to be associated, and to whom I am sure in any case of dif- 

 ficulty I may appeal for assistance, I trust to be able to perform the duties of my 

 office without discredit. I will not, however, trouble you with merely personal 

 questions, which are always more or less tedious, but proceed with the few remarks 

 which I wish to make, and which, if not new or instructive, may perhaps serve 

 to entertain you during the time usually devoted to addresses of this kind. 



I think you will hardly expect me, even were I fully competent to do so, to 

 review the progress of chemistry during the last half-century, for the time at my 

 disposal would be too short and the result at my hands, I fear, unsatisfactory. 

 I shall prefer to call attention in a few words to the chemistry of other days as I 

 knew it and the chemistry of the present time as known to us all, and to point out 

 what I consider to be the chief characteristics of each. I shall then, with your 

 permission, point out a few of the directions in which, in my opinion, the chemistry 

 of the future will probably be developed, and in this undertaking I shall perhaiis 

 be more successful than in the other ; for to discuss the history of science requires 

 €xact knowledge; but in speculating on its future the imagination comes into play, 

 and to imagine is easier than to describe. 



When I first entered on my studies, exactly fifty years ago, chemistry could 

 hardly be called a science — it was rather a collection of isolated facts unconnected 

 by any consistent theory covering the whole field. Most of the important elements 

 were known, but of the exact proportions in which they combine together we were 

 ignorant. The law of definite proportion had been generally accepted, but so im- 

 perfect were the data then at our disposal that we may say the law was rather 

 taken for granted than proved. The atomic theory of l)alton as explaining this 

 law had also been adopted by chemists ; but it is not unlikely that this theory, then 

 in its infancy, might by the vigorous onslaught of a man of BerthoUet's acumen 

 have been upset, and we should then have been left entirely without a guide 

 through the bewildering labyrinth of facts. Of any connection between chemistry 

 and physics there was in those days no question ; of any but the most superficial 

 notions regarding the effects of heat, light, and electricity on chemical substances 

 we had no conception. The idea that chemistry could have any bearing on or con- 

 nection with physiology or pathology would have been ridiculed as absurd. I can 

 hardly think of the then state of organic chemistry without feeling amused. The 

 condition of this branch of chemistry could hardly perhaps be called chaotic or rudi- 

 mentary, for, after all, what had been done had been well done and neatly done, but 

 the assemblage of facts of which it consisted was devoid of systematic arrangement ; 

 it resembled a cabinet of curiosities, the components of which stand in no recoo'nisable 

 relation to one another, or a miscellaneous collection of books placed in an ordei'ly 

 manner on shelves, but without any attempt at classification. As to the genesis of 

 organic compounds, what would now be called absurd notions prevailed. I dis- 

 tinctly remember eminent chemists maintaining that no strictly speaking organic 

 body, even of the simplest constitution, could possibly be formed without the inter- 

 vention of the so-called vital force. The fact, then recently discovered by Wcihler, 

 of the artificial formation of urea from inorganic substances, was considered as some- 

 thing almost miraculous — i.e., as a phenomenon the like of which would perhaps never 

 again recur. AVithout, however, entering into further details, I think I may, with- 

 out fear of contradiction, assert that the main distinction between the chemistry of 

 fifty years ago and the chemistry of the present day consists in this, that, whereas 

 formerly the science dealt chiefly with qualitative reactions, it now occupies itself 

 principally with quantitative determinations. To have established the fact that 

 every chemical phenomenon may be represented in figures, denoting either number, 

 measure, or weight, such figures, when once accurately determined, remaining 

 constant and unchanged through all time — this seems to me the crowning glory of 

 modem chemistry. It is the firm establishment of this principle that has trans- 

 formed the face of chemistry and has made it an exact instead of a merelv descrip- 

 tive science. 



_ In justice to our predecessors it should, however, be remembered that this 

 principle, though more fully developed in our own day, was not for the first time 

 1887. 



