April io, 1891.] 



SCIENCE. 



203 



were looked upon by their fi-iends as being eccentric young 

 men, who probably would never do any good for them- 

 selves; and these few students found practical instruction 

 in the private laboratories of some of the London teachers. 



The practical teaching of chemistry appears to have been 

 undertaken in Scotland much earlier than in England, for 

 Dr. D. B. Reid held practical classes at the University of 

 Edinburgh as early as 18H2. Graham came to London from 

 Glasgow in 1837, and until the opening of the Birkbeck Lab- 

 oratory, in 1846, he had from time to time private students 

 working in his laboratory. And so with the other teachers, 

 who all had private or articled pupils. I doubt whether the 

 pupils received much systematic instruction ; but tliey gained 

 an insight into laboratory work, saw how apparatus was put 

 together, and how analyses were made. We have indeed to 

 wait some years before public laboratories are established, 

 for not till 1845 is the College of Chemistry opened : and this 

 appears to have been really the first public laboratory in 

 London; and its object, as stated by its founders, is "to 

 establish a practical school of chemistry in England.'' About 

 the same time both University and King's College estab- 

 lished laboratories. The council of our society recognized 

 the importance of these occurrences: for in the annual re- 

 port in 1847 they say, " Although an event not immediately 

 connected with the society, the council has much pleasure in 

 commemorating the late successful establishment in London 

 of chemical laboratories expressly designed to further the 

 prosecution of original research. The new laboratories of 

 the College of Chemistry, and of the two older Colleges of 

 the London University, now offer facilities for practical in- 

 struction and res^rch not surpassed, we believe, in any 

 foreign school." 



While speaking of laboratories in London, I should, how- 

 ever, mention that the Pharmaceutal Society established a 

 laboratory especially, if not exclusively, for its own students, 

 as early as 1843. 



It was not till several years later, till 1850 and 1851, that 

 the medical schools in London established classes of practical 

 chemistry. 



If we consult the scientific journals of the time immediately 

 pi'eceding the formation of our society, we find it was by no 

 means a period of chemical activity in this country, but 

 rather a dull time, given more to the study and slow devel- 

 opment of the science than to discovery. Methods of analy- 

 sis, both organic and inorganic, had been much improved; 

 and the dominant idea was the determination of the empiri- 

 cal composition of bodies, and the preparation of new com- 

 pounds, whose existence was predicted by a study of Dalton's 

 "Atomic Theory." Graham, Kane, and Johnson of Durham 

 were the leaders in scientific chemistry, and the authors of 

 the most important chemical papers of the time. Graham 

 had very lately published his notable paper on the constitu- 

 tion of salts, — a paper which gained for him, some years 

 after its publication, a royal medal. Kane was an active 

 worker and a bold theorist, and at this time his reputation 

 was much increased by a paper on the chemical history of 

 archil and litmus. Johnson was also a most active chemist. 

 His contributions relate to many branches of the science, 

 but especially to the chemical composition of minerals. In 

 1841, hotvever, he was engaged on a long series of papers on 

 the constitution of resins. He will probably be best known 

 and remembered as an agricultural chemist. Faraday we 

 can hardly claim as a chemist at this time, for he was then 

 rapidly publishing his long series of experimental researches 

 in electricity. While speaking of electricity, I should state 



that it was in 1840 that Smee described his battery, and the 

 Society of Arts awarded him a gold medal for it. An im- 

 portant branch of our science was, however, coming into 

 existence, — a branch which has found many and successful 

 investigators in this country. I mean photography. It was 

 in 1840 that Herschel published in the " Philosophical Trans- 

 actions " his elaborate paper on the chemical action of the 

 rays of the solar spectrum, — a paper in which he recognizes a 

 new prismatic color beyond the violet, and chemical activity 

 in the spectrum beyong the red, and, besides discussing 

 many other matters, establishes his previously discovered 

 hyposulphite of soda as the best agent for the fixing of sun- 

 pictures. Fox-Talbot had previously given an account of 

 photogenic drawing, and claims that as far back as 1835 he 

 took pictures of his house by means of a camera and chloride- 

 of-silver paper; but it is not till 1838 that the secretary of the 

 Royal Society extracts from him a clear account of the de- 

 tails of his process, and it is in 1841 that he is granted a 

 patent for improvements in obtaining pictures or representa- 

 tions of objects. Again, in the following year, Herschel 

 published another paper of much importance. I can here 

 only mention how actively this line of research was prose- 

 cuted by Robert Hunt; how many, ingenious, and interesting 

 were the experiments he made; and how valuable was the 

 account he afterwards gave of this subject in his "Researches 

 on Light." Thus the work done in this branch of chemistry 

 at the time of which I am speaking is certainly noteworthy,, 

 probably more so than in other branches of chemistry. In 

 fact, of other advances in chemistry there is little to record ; 

 but I may mention that Clarke's process for determining 

 the hardness of water also holds its jubilee this year, for it 

 was in 1841 that a patent was granted to Dr. T. Clarke for 

 a new mode of rendering certain waters less impure and less 

 hard. 



Not a single chemical paper appears in the " Philosophical 

 Transactions" for 1841; but there are two papers which were 

 much discussed at this time, and, although they were readily 

 shown to be erroneous, still are interesting as indicating the 

 chemical ideas of the day. One is by Robert Rigg, who is 

 carrying on an experimental inquiry on fermentation, and 

 is termed "Additional Experiments on the Formation of 

 Alkaline and Earthy Bodies by Chemical Action when Car- 

 bonic Acid is Present." It is published in the " Proceedings 

 of the Royal Society." The other is a paper by Dr. S. M. 

 Brown, entitled " The Conversion of Carbon into Silicon," 

 and is published in the "Transactions of the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh." 



With regard to the first paper, Mr. Rigg believes that he 

 has demonstrated, that, when fermentation takes place, a 

 great and direct increase in alkaline and earthy salts, viz., of 

 potass, soda, and lime, occurs, — an increase varying from 

 fifteen to nineteen times the original amount. Denham 

 Smith, who has only very lately passed away, showed that 

 the theory simply rested on inaccurate experiment. 



The object of the other paper is to demonstrate, that, ou 

 heating paracyanogen, nitrogen is given off, and a residue of 

 silicon remains. Dr. Brett and Mr. Denham Smith contro- 

 verted this, and, in a paper in the Philosophical Magazine^ 

 proved that the supposed silicon was simply carbon in a very 

 incombustible state. So important an experiment was this 

 alleged conversion of carbon into silicon considered to be at 

 the time of its publication, that it attracted Liebig's attention ; 

 and in a letter to Dr. Playfair, which was communicated to 

 the meeting of the British Association at Plymouth in 1841, 

 Liebig says he has repeated Dr. Brown's experiment on the 



