636 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XII. No. 304. 



chemistry is the fact that although the sci- 

 ence has been advancing year by year with 

 such unexampled rapidity, the course of 

 training which the student goes through 

 during his first two years at most colleges 

 is still practically the same as it was thirty 

 or forty years ago. Then, as now, after 

 preparing a few of the principal gases, the 

 student devotes the bulk of his first year to 

 qualitative analysis in the dry and wet way, 

 and his second year to quantitative analy- 

 sis, and, although the methods employed in 

 teaching the latter may possibly have under- 

 gone some slight modification, there is cer- 

 tainly no great difference between the rou- 

 tine of simple salt and mixture followed by 

 quantitative analysis practiced at the pres- 

 ent day and that which was in vogue in the 

 days of our fathers and grandfathers. 



Since, then, the present system has held 

 the field for so long, not only in this country 

 but also on the Continent, it is worth while 

 considering whether it affords the best 

 training which a student who wishes to 

 become a chemist can undergo in the 

 short time during which he can attend at 

 a college or university. In considering 

 this matter I was led in the first place to 

 carefully examine old books and other rec- 

 ords, with the object of finding out how the 

 present system originated, and I think that 

 valuable and interesting information bear- 

 ing on the subject may be obtained from a 

 very brief sketch of the rise and develop- 

 ment of the present sj'stem of teaching 

 chemistry, and especially in so far as it 

 bears on the inclusion of qualitative analy- 

 sis. Unfortunately, it is not so easy to 

 gain a good historical acquaintance with 

 the matter as I first imagined would be the 

 case, and this is due in a large measure to 

 the fact that so few of the laboratories which 

 took an active part in the development of 

 the present system of chemical training 

 have left any record of the methods which 

 they employed. In this connection I may, 



perhaps, be allowed to suggest that it would 

 be a valuable help to the future historian 

 if all prominent teachers of chemistry 

 would leave behind them a brief record of 

 the system of teaching adopted in their lab- 

 oratories, showing the changes which they 

 had instituted, the object of these changes 

 and the results which followed their adop- 

 tion. 



There is no doubt that the progress of 

 practical chemistry went largely hand in 

 hand with the progress of theoretical chem- 

 istry, for as the latter gradually developed! 

 so the necessity for the determination of 

 the composition, first of the best known, 

 and then of the rarer minerals and other 

 substances, became more and more marked. 



The analytical examination of substances 

 in the dry way was employed in very early 

 times in connection with metallurgical op- 

 erations, and especially in the determina- 

 tion of the presence of valuable constitu- 

 ents in samples of minerals. Cupellation 

 was used by the Greeks in the separation of 

 gold and silver from their ores and in the 

 purification of these metals. Geber knew 

 that the addition of niter to the ore facili- 

 tated the separation of gold and silver, and 

 subsequently Glauber (1604-1668) called 

 attention to the fact that many commoner 

 metals could easily be separated from their 

 ores with the aid of niter. 



But it was not till the eighteenth century 

 that any marked progress was made in 

 analysis in the dry way, and the progress 

 which then became rapid was undoubtedly 

 due to the discovery of the blowpipe, and 

 to the introduction of its use into analytical 

 operations. The blowpipe is mentioned for 

 the first time in 1660, in the transactions of 

 the Accademia del Cimento of Florence, but 

 the first to recommend its use in chemical 

 operations was Johann Andreas Cramer in 

 1739. The progress of blowpipe analysis 

 was largely due to Gahn (1745-1818), who 

 spent much time in perfecting its use in the 



