612 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXXIX. No. 1008 



SCIENTIFIC BOOKS 



Biochemie der Pflamen. Von Dr. Friedrich 

 CzAPEK, Professor der Anatomie und Physi- 

 ologie der Pflanzen an der K. K. Deutsehen 

 TJniversitaet in Prag. Zweite, umgearbeitete 

 Auflage. Erster Band, pp. xix., 828, mit 8 

 Abbildungen im Text. Verlag von Gustav 

 Fischer, Jena, 1913. M. 24.00, gab. M. 

 25.20. 



In reviewing a recent foreign treatise on 

 organic chemistry, one of our best chemists, 

 who is also very favorably known as an in- 

 vestigator, made the remark that it was so 

 much more difficult to teach organic chemis- 

 try to-day than it was a generation ago, ap- 

 parently for the reason that the field to be 

 covered is so much greater now than it was 

 then. Recently a graduate student, who was 

 attending a course of lectures on organic 

 chemistry by way of review, made the state- 

 ment that in the course of his college career 

 he had heard a number of organic chemists 

 lecture and that while their method of pre- 

 senting the subject differed in each ease, the 

 lecturer had invariably introduced his topic 

 by stating that he did not expect his students 

 to learn something about each of the hundred 

 thousand and some odd tens of thousands of 

 organic compounds catalogued in Beilstein 

 and its supplements. It would seera that 

 some of the horror which so many stu- 

 dents experience, or at least feign to experi- 

 ence, at the number of organic compounds 

 when they first approach the subject, is due 

 in part at least to their teachers. While we 

 profess that we are not frightened by the 

 numbers of carbon compounds and inform 

 our students at the outset that they need not 

 be horror-stricken by any such mass action, 

 yet we sfeem to feel, and even proclaim that, 

 because of the enormous strides made by or- 

 ganic chemistry, we need more time than 

 formerly to cover the ground though but in 

 an elementary fashion. If, e. g., we measure 

 the growth of organic chemistry by the ten 

 thousand or more carbon compounds that 

 have been added to our catalogue in a given 

 period, then indeed our point of view must 



make us pessimistic as to the ultimate out- 

 come of our success as teachers of the elemen- 

 tary part of our subject in any rational allot- 

 ment of time at our disposal during the col- 

 lege quadrennium. 



Any organic chemist who has reached 

 middle age may well appreciate the mental 

 state of chemists of the old school who found 

 themselves confronted by Kekule's structural 

 theory. But, if they were confounded it was 

 due, not so much to the rapid growth in the 

 number of compounds that resulted from the 

 application of Kekule's views, as from the 

 different mental attitude that the structural 

 theory demanded. The Grignard reaction, 

 though in short space it has produced thou- 

 sands of new compounds at a time when the 

 progress in organic chemistry was referred 

 to as having become sluggish, wrought no 

 visible disturbance whatever for the simple 

 reason that it brought no new fundamental 

 theories into play, hence made no demands 

 on our mental attitude toward the subject. 

 Any one who has studied the life of Liebig 

 carefully must have noticed that underneath 

 the surface there was something more than 

 dissatisfaction toward the university admin- 

 istration that caused him to leave Giessen. 

 The theory of substitution was revolutioniz- 

 ing organic chemistry in spite of Liebig's 

 attitude and in spite of the " S. 0. H. Wind- 

 ier " which Woehler hurled at the French 

 chemists. But whereas Woehler adapted him- 

 self as well as he could and stuck to his post 

 and his " Fach," Liebig found it more con- 

 venient not only to migrate, geographically 

 speaking, but to " umsteigen "- — if this apt 

 expression by Mark Twain may be permitted 

 in so serious a topic as this — or to " umsat- 

 teln " if a German phrase when applied to 

 the change of a German chemist from the 

 pure to the applied seem preferable. 



The structural development of organic 

 chemistry has made it possible to treat the 

 subject-matter deductively rather than in- 

 ductively. The claim of inductive treatment 

 in science has become a sort of fetish. We 

 have preached this doctrine to such an extent 

 to oui students that we dare not admit that 



