THE REVIVAL OF INORGANIC CHEMISTRY. 



By H. N. Stokes. 



Nothing- can be more instructive to the student interested in the 

 results of intellectual cross fertilization than the effect of the recent 

 fecundation of chemistry by physics. Through the application of phys- 

 ical methods and ideas to chemistry, the latter has given birth to a new 

 branch of study, physical chemistry, which promises to produce as radi- 

 cal a change in our conceptions of molecular phenomena as did the 

 overthrow of the phlogiston theory or the introduction of the conception 

 of valency at a later period. 



The attempt of Berthollet to introduce dynamical conceptions into 

 chemistry, at the beginning of the century, fell on thorny ground, and 

 from that day until very recent years the growth of chemistry, great as 

 it has been, has been most remarkably one-sided. The Periodic Law 

 has been discovered, many new elements have been found, new com- 

 pounds without number have been prepared, the rules governing their 

 formations and transformations have been ascertained, and even their 

 microscopic anatomy has been studied to such an extent that for count- 

 less of them we have established formulas which express, schematically, 

 the relative arrangement of the atoms in the molecule. In stereochem- 

 istry we have even gone so far as to be able to indicate, in a rough way, 

 the actual relations of the atoms in space; yet, with all this, a most 

 important part of the problem has been almost neglected. To use a 

 biological expression, chemistry has been enormously developed on the 

 morphological, and but little on the physiological side. Chemists have 

 concerned themselves greatly with the products of chemical reactions, 

 and but little with the nature of the reactions themselves. The mole- 

 cule has been treated as a dead, rigid body is treated by the anatomist, 

 but its study as a living, moving mass, filled with energy and capable 

 of reacting by virtue of this energy, has been largely left to the future. 

 Even as late as 1882 the German physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond 

 used the words which have since been in the mouth of every physical 

 chemist: " In contradistinction to modern chemistry, we may call phy- 

 sical chemistry the chemistry of the future." 



'Annual address of the president of the Chemical Society of Washington, deliv- 

 ered March 30, 1899. Reprinted from Science, N. S., Vol. IX, No. 226, pp. 601-615, 

 April 28, 1899. 



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