52 Remarks on the Theory of Compound Salt Radicals. 



Art. V. — Remarks on the Theory of Compound Salt Radicals ; 

 by Wolcott Gibbs. 



1. In a memoir appended to the last edition of his Compendium 

 of Chemistry, and republished in this Journal, Vol. xlv, pp. 52, 

 247, Dr. Hare has brought forward a number of powerful argu- 

 ments against the doctrine of compound salt-radicals, which has 

 recently made great progress among European chemists, and at 

 present threatens to subvert all established theories and nomen- 

 clature, and to erect the superstructure of chemical science upon 

 a foundation apparently far too unsubstantial to support its gigan- 

 tic proportions and rapidly increasing weight. This theory sets 

 out from a principle very different from any which chemists have 

 been hitherto accustomed to admit, and which would seem to be 

 involved in a philosophical idea of the province and objects of 

 chemistry, since it aims at explaining a few superficial resem- 

 blances in purely physical properties, by making a total change 

 in the chemical constitution of those substances between which 

 such resemblances exist, as well as of innumerable others which 

 display in their physical relations far more striking discordances. 

 Thus the physical similarity between the chlorides, iodides, &c. 

 of the alkaline and earthy metals, and the sulphates, nitrates and 

 other oxysalts of the same metallic radicals, is made the basis of 

 a total change in our views of the chemical constitution of all 

 salts whatever, while the much more remarkable and more widely 

 extended differences between other members of the same classes 

 of compounds, so forcibly urged and so clearly illustrated by Dr. 

 Hare, are left entirely unnoticed or swallowed up in the sweep- 

 ing assertion that the salts of the simple haloid type, and the salts 

 composed of amphacids and amphibases, form "a series of basic 

 and acid compounds for the most part completely parallel." 



2. The principal arguments which have been brought forward 

 in favor of the salt-radical theory, which is in part based upon 

 this assumed parallelism, have been ably discussed by Dr. Hare 

 in the memoir above alluded to. In the present paper I propose 

 to offer a few remarks upon some points to which the attention 

 of chemists does not appear to have been particularly directed. 

 For the sake of brevity I shall employ the terms amphide and 

 halide to designate respectively the compounds of the amphigen 

 and halogen bodies of Berzelius with electro-positive radicals, 



