November 28, 1913] 



SCIENCE 



781 



children of Israel drink it " stimulated the 

 search for a life-giving tincture of gold (the 

 aurum potabile). It was held that Moses pos- 

 sessed vconderful chemical knowledge, acquired 

 from the Egyptians, and theories were ad- 

 vanced that he dissolved the golden image in 

 aqua regia or else alloyed it with lead or mer- 

 cury. Stahl in 1698 advanced the new expla- 

 nation that Moses dissolved the gold by treat- 

 ment with supersaturated liver of sulphur 

 (hepar sulphuris supersaturatum, ex cequis 

 partihus salis alcali et sulphuris citrini). 

 From Stahl, evidently, the late author bor- 

 rowed his own idea, which we can of course 

 interpret only as a piece of lecture-room pleas- 

 antry. 



The famous (enigma chemicum concerning 

 the nine-lettered name of the philosopher's 

 stone, which is translated in part on page 154, 

 is another interesting example of the specula- 

 tions in which alchemists were wont to in- 

 dulge. The answer " arsenicon " which the 

 author gives, is only one of many solutions 

 that have been proposed; <f>oiocTcf)6poi (phos- 

 phorus), KLvdfiapis (cinnabar) Kaa-LTipoi (tin) 

 and other Greek words have been distorted in 

 a vain effort to meet the requirements of the 

 riddle. 



A critical reader might object to several 

 statements in the book for reasons of inaccu- 

 racy. It is wrongly stated, for example, on 

 page 17 that sugar was employed by the an- 

 cient Egyptians. The earliest reliable infor- 

 mation — that found in old Chinese writings — 

 places the probable date of the earliest manu- 

 facture of cane-sugar between a.d. 300 and 600. 

 The (ToKyap of Galen and aaxxapov of Dios- 

 corides and other Greek writers was not our 

 modern cane-sugar, but in all probability the 

 eastern tabascliir, a gummy silieious exuda- 

 tion of the bamboo. 



The statement (p. 183) that Aristotle origi- 

 nated the idea of a fifth element (the ether or 

 quintessence) requires to be modified. The 

 same conception occurs earlier in Plato, who, 

 in the Timseus (end of Chap. XX.), mentions 

 a fifth substance or essence (e/xinrTri <JvcrT(Ta(n) , 

 which included the four elements of fire, air, 

 water and earth. This notion, which fore- 



shadowed later assumptions concerning the 

 unity of matter, is also found in the writings 

 of the early Pythagoreans, from whom the idea 

 was probably first borrowed. 



The fifth section of the book was not fin- 

 ished by the late author and this part of the 

 volume shows in consequence considerable evi- 

 dences of incompleteness. Many of the chap- 

 ters are in fact so fragmentary that a student 

 can obtain only an imperfect and confused 

 idea of modern chemistry. The chapter upon 

 physiological chemistry, for example, makes no 

 mention of the work of Claude Bernard and 

 leaves the subject of fermentation where it was 

 left by Dumas. The editor's arrangement of 

 the author's lecture notes in this part of the 

 book seems particularly unfortunate. We 

 wonder, for example, in the grouping of chem- 

 ists by chapters, why Wohler was not associ- 

 ated with Liebig rather than with Stas, and 

 why Bunsen was not placed with Kirchhoff 

 rather than with Victor Meyer. There is also 

 in places a lack of agreement between different 

 sections. The discovery of columbium, for ex- 

 ample, is credited to Wallaston in 1809 on page 

 348 and to Hatchett in 1801 on page 521. In 

 some ways it would have been better to have 

 closed the history with the end of the life-work 

 of Liebig and Dumas. This marks fairly well 

 the end of an epoch and would have enabled 

 the editor to eliminate fragmentary chapters 

 and thus give the book a greater appearance 

 of finish. 



The typography of the new book is, as a 

 whole, excellent. The method of printing the 

 formulas of propyl and isopropyl iodides on 

 page 469 is faulty, as it gives them the appear- 

 ance of being unsaturated compounds. There 

 are also several cases of careless typesetting, a 

 most glaring instance being the heading of 

 chapter 32. 



A posthumous work published under adverse 

 conditions must necessarily receive due con- 

 sideration for evidences of incompleteness and 

 mistakes of revision. After a careful reading 

 of the book, we believe that the publication of 

 Dr. Campbell Brown's lectures upon the history 

 of chemistry was well worth while. The finely 



