OCTOBEE 12, 1900.] 



SCIENCE. 



539 



might have without violating the laws of 

 valency, the substance was placed in a 

 specimen tube, labeled with its formula 

 and laid away. It was true that two Nor- 

 wegians, Guldberg and Waage, had claimed 

 to have discovered what they called the 

 law of mass action, Wilhelmy and Men- 

 schutkin had studied the time required in 

 certain reactions, a physicist named Hittorf 

 had spent much time in studying the elec- 

 trical conductivity of solutions, while van't 

 Hofi", a chemist in a Dutch veterinary school, 

 had suggested a theory intended to account 

 for the diiferences between dextro- and 

 Isevo-tartaric acids and similar bodies, 

 which was alluded to as a chemical curi- 

 osity, but none of these things were thought 

 worthy of serious consideration by the or- 

 ganic chemist, who was blinded by the 

 really beautiful system of carbon chemistry, 

 and wrapped in dreams of structure. The 

 physiological chemist likewise, failed to 

 realize the fact that he must get bej'ond the 

 question of constitution before he could ac- 

 complish any real progress in his science. 

 I was urged by a well-known chemist with 

 physiological proclivities to take up the 

 study of the proteids. " What we want," 

 said he, " is a sort of map or chart showing 

 the constitution of each of these bodies. " 

 The synthesis of uric acid was hailed as 

 a valuable contribution to physiological 

 chemistry, although it did not establish its 

 structure; was effected under conditions 

 impossible in the organism and gave no 

 clue whatsoever to its mode of formation in 

 the body. The term ' formula artificer ' 

 (Formelkiinstler) applied in a somewhat 

 derogatory sense, fairly expressed, as it 

 still does, the state of mind of those en- 

 gaged in this kind of work. I have often 

 wondered why chemists persist in speaking 

 of discovering, rather than of devising a new 

 compound. Organic chemistry might well 

 have been defined as the art of devising 

 new combinations of carbon atoms, for al- 



though using scientific methods, the com- 

 pound maker, as far as his appreciation of 

 his own work was concerned, was rather to 

 be compared with a designer or architect 

 than with his fellows in other branches of 

 science. 



Of course, it is far from my intention to 

 belittle the preparation of new compounds 

 or the study of structure. These are valu- 

 able pioneer work and necessary precedents 

 to the solution of many problems of chem- 

 istry, but they should not be made the final 

 aim of research, as the organic student has 

 so often made them. The ease with which 

 new carbon compounds are made is illus- 

 trated by the fact that while the first edi- 

 tion of Eichter's Tables, which appeared in 

 1883, embraced 16,000 different organic sub- 

 stances, the new edition, just published, 

 enumerates 75,000, and this number might 

 easily be tripled or quadrupled without the 

 application or discovery of a single new 

 principle of chemistry. It is clear, then, 

 that the honor of adding another to these 

 75,000 cannot be very great, unless the new 

 body be one calculated to throw light on 

 unsolved problems. The nature and limi- 

 tations of the structural formula, too, are 

 so well known, that mere variations on the 

 theme cannot be of any great value. 



The rapid development of formula wor- 

 ship, and by this term I mean, not the 

 study of structure in itself, which is per- 

 fectly legitimate, but the making it the sole 

 aim of research, was due partly to the ease 

 with which the brilliant methods and con- 

 ceptions of Frankland, of Kekule and of 

 Couper could be applied to nearly all classes 

 of organic compounds and partly to the 

 comparatively narrow training of chemists 

 during this period. Science does not of 

 necessity develop in a rational way ; it 

 grows along the lines of least resistance, 

 whether or not these be those which a ma- 

 ture and broadly trained intellect would 

 indicate as the best. The line of least resist- 



