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cal work. Here, however, lie attended Chevreul's lectures, and 

 became acquainted with the brilliant Dumas, whose enthusiasm seems 

 to have revived the young Irishman's love for chemistry, and decided 

 his choice of a scientific rather than a medical career. 



Shortly after returning to Dublin, in 1831, Kane obtained the 

 Lecturership in Chemistry at the medical school then maintained by 

 the Apothecaries' Company of Ireland, and this office he held until 

 1843. Most of his time was now devoted to scientific teaching and 

 investigation, while a portion was occupied in completing his studies 

 in Medicine and Arts. Although he never practised as a physician, 

 he obtained the licence of the Dublin College of Physicians in 1835, 

 and was elected to the Fellowship of that body in 1843. 



When fairly established in professorial work Kane commenced the 

 examination of some compounds of the metal platinum, and pub- 

 lished accounts of the stannous chloroplatinite, of a substance which 

 he regarded as platinoso-platinic iodide, Pt 2 I 6 , and of other bodies, in 

 the ' Dublin Journal of Medical and Chemical Science.' Brit his 

 work on the salts of some of the complex platinum bases derived 

 from ammonia only appeared at the end of a paper in the ' Philoso- 

 phical Transactions ' for 1842, entitled " Contributions to the Chemi- 

 cal History of Palladium and Platinum." This paper was chiefly 

 concerned with the compounds of palladium, of which he described 

 a suboxide and a corresponding chloride, Pd 2 Cl 2 ; while the action of 

 alkalies on palladious chloride, PdCl 2 , afforded several basic sub- 

 stances which he regarded as definite compounds. In the course of 

 the same investigation Kane produced a number of interesting bodies 

 by the action of ammonia on the salts of palladium, which doubtless 

 included derivatives of the bases palladamine and palladiamine, sub- 

 sequently recognised by Dr. Hugo Miiller in his fine investigation of 

 similar interactions. 



During the " thirties " much progress was made in evolving order 

 out of the apparently chaotic masses of organic compounds. Early 

 in the decade Dumas had propounded his ephemeral " etherine " 

 theory of ordinary alcohol and its derivatives ; Liebig and Wohler 

 had been led to recognise the existence of compound radicals ; and, 

 later on, the laws of substitution were made out by Dumas, and the 

 theory of types was proposed. Kane's acquaintance with Dumas and 

 association with Liebig — in whose laboratory he sometimes worked 

 during the summer months — led him to take an active part in the 

 discussions of the time, and to propose the theory of the nature of 

 common ether and alcohol which now prevails — namely, that they 

 include the radical ethyl, C 2 H 5 . It is true that Berzelius arrived at 

 the same conclusion about the same time, and worked out the 

 subject with his usual thoroughness ; but Kane claimed to be the 

 independent discoverer of what was then termed the " Ethyl Theory." 



