Section B.— CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 

 President of the Section. — Professor Maxwell Simpson, m.d., f.r.s., f.c.s. 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 1878. 

 Professor Maxwell Simpson gave the following Address : — 



My position here is a highly honourable, but by no means a comfortable one. 

 Naturally, you expect to hear from me something new about the science which 

 occupies the attention of this section, and I have the miserable feeling that I must 

 disappoint you. How can I possibly find a fact in chemistry with which you are 

 not already acquainted ? If, in order to cater for you, I go to France, Germany, 

 Russia or America, I find the abstractors of the Chemical Society have been there 

 before me, and have swept everything of value into their Journal. Chemists are 

 now jiepj perfectly acquainted with the progress of science in every part of the world, 

 and therefore the raison d'etre of this address, so far as announcing the discoveries 

 of the year is concerned, has passed away. I therefore propose, instead of giving you 

 a concentrated essence of the last twelve numbers of the ' Journal of the Chemical 

 Society,' to bring before you the claims of this science to a place in general education, 

 and the claims of original research to a place in the curriculum for higher degrees in 

 our Universities. . 



I have been devoted to chemistry all my life. It has been my business and my 

 pleasure. The longer I live the more deeply am I impressed with the advantages 

 to be derived from its study, and I am anxious that these advantages should be 

 shared by the rising generation. 



Whether we take into accoimt the value of the knowledge acquired, the dis- 

 cipline of the intellectual faculties in acquiring that knowledge, or the effect on the 

 character, surely we have a right to give the study of this science a prominent 

 place in our schools and colleges. It woidd be difficult to over-estimate the value 

 and extent of the knowledge we derive from chemistry. Without it we can know 

 nothing about the air we breathe, the water we drink, or the food we eat ; we can- 

 not understand the processes of combustion, respiration, fermentation, putrefaction, 

 or the endless chemical changes which are continually in operation around us, and 

 which affect our lives for good or for evil. In a word, the whole of the phenomena 

 of nature must for ever remain to us, more or less, an inscrutable mystery. 



Again, is it not desirable that we should have some acquaintance with the 

 chemical arts, from which we derive so many of our comforts and luxuries? 

 Should we not know something of the arts of photography, dyeing, metallurgy — 

 something of the manufacture of glass and china, and of the thousand beautiful 

 things that are constantly in our hands ? Not only is the knowledge we obtain 

 from chemistry very considerable in itself, but it furnishes us with a key, which 

 enables us to unlock vast stores of knowledge, contained in several other sciences — 

 these are, Physics, Geology, Mineralogy, Physiology, and I may now add, Astro- 

 nomy. Physics and chemistry are so intimately connected that it is difficult to say 



