TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION B. 813 



Section B.— CHEMISTRY. 

 President of the Section. — rrofessor F. R. Japp, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S. 



THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8. 

 The President delivered the foUowiug Address : — 



Stereochemistry and Vitalism. 



Of the numerous weighty discoveries which science owes to the genius of Pasteur, 

 none appeals more strongly to chemists than that with which he opened his career 

 as an investigator — the establishing of the connection between optical activity and 

 molecular asymmetry in organic compounds. The extraordinary subtlety of the 

 modes of isomerism then for the first time disclosed ; the novelty and refinement 

 of the means employed in the separation of the isomerides ; the felicitous geometrical 

 hypothesis adopted to account for the facts — an hypothesis which subsequent 

 investigation has served but to confirm ; the perfect balance of inductive and 

 deductive method ; and lastly, the circumstance that in these researches Pastear laid 

 the foundation of the science of stereochemistry : these are characteristics any one of 

 which would have sufficed to render the work eminently noteworthy, but which, 

 taken together, stamp it as the capital achievement of organic chemistry. 



Physiologists, on the other hand, are naturally more attracted by Pasteur's 

 subsequent work, in which the biological element predominates ; in fact, I doubt 

 whether many of them have given much attention to the earlier work. And yet 

 it ought to be of interest to physiologists, not merely because it is the root from 

 which the later work springs, but because it furnishes, I am convinced, a reply 

 to the most fundamental question that physiology can propose to itself — namely, 

 whether the phenomena of life are wholly explicable in terms of chemistry and 

 physics ; in other words, whether they are reducible to problems of the kinetics of 

 atoms, or whether, on the contrary, there are certain residual phenomena, inex- 

 plicable by such means, pointing to the existence of a directive force which enters 

 upon the scene with life itself, and which, whilst in no way violating the laws of 

 the kinetics of atoms — whilst, indeed, acting through these laws — determines the 

 course of their operation within the living organism. 



The latter view is known as Vitalism. At one time universally held, although 

 in a cruder form than that just stated, it fell, later on, into disrepute ; ' \-ital force,' 

 the hypothetical and undefined cause of the special phenomena of life, was 

 relegated to the category of occult qualities ; and the problems of physiology were 

 declared to be solely problems of chemistry and physics. Various causes con- 

 tributed to this result. In the first place, the mere name ' vital force ' explains 

 nothing; although, of course, one may make this admission without thereby 

 conceding that chemistry and physics explain everything. Secondly, the older 

 vitalists confounded force with energy ; their ' vital force ' was a source of energy ; 



