246 
THE PHARMACEUTICAL JOURNAL AND TRANSACTIONS. [September 2S, 1872. 
lions are carried in any department of knowledge, 
the examiners be well informed and practically 
familiar with the subject-matter referred to, and 
time enough he allowed for the testing process, there 
will he little to fear from the effects of any mere 
process of cramming, Time, however, is an impor¬ 
tant element in a trustworthy examination ; and it 
is, I believe, by extending and economising its em¬ 
ployment that improvement will be effected, more 
perhaps than in any other way, in this department. 
One method of economising the time of the exami¬ 
ners would be by making the Minor, as well as the 
Major examination, to a great extent a written one. 
Hut even then the viva voce examination would ad¬ 
mit of extension with advantage, so that the effect 
of these changes would be not to lessen but to in¬ 
crease the work of the examiners. A great augmen¬ 
tation of this work seems in fact to be inevitable, on 
account, not only of extension of the time de¬ 
voted to each candidate, but also of increase in the 
number of candidates for examination. To meet the 
demand thus made on the Board of Examiners, I 
would suggest the appointment of assessors rather 
than additional Examiners. There is a good deal of 
work connected with the examinations which might 
be advantageously assigned to competent assessors, 
and the examiners would thus be spared much of 
their labour. Should the Society be relieved of the 
charges hitherto incurred for education, it would be 
able to devote more of its resources to the establish¬ 
ment of a thoroughly efficient system of examination. 
The work of examination is the all-important work 
of the Pharmaceutical Society to which the best 
energies of its best men may be honourably and bene¬ 
ficially devoted. The provision for education which 
the Society has made, and by the establishment of 
which it lias laid the foundation of its [lower, and 
obtained the confidence of all classes, both in and 
out of Parliament, will be a lasting evidence of disin¬ 
terested zeal and generous devotion in a cause, the 
canying out of the objects of which has been so far 
accomplished, that the Society may now prepare 
to apply its available means in another direction, in 
support of what has become its great and primary 
object. 
CHEMICAL NOMENCLATURE. * 
BY PROFESSOR A. CRUM BROWN. 
Setting aside in the meantime “trivial” or “proper 
names ” (names which are simply arbitrary words or 
marks, each indicating, in virtue of a convention ap¬ 
plicable to each individual case, a particular sub¬ 
stance), there are two systems, or kinds of systems of 
chemical nomenclature. These may be distinguished 
as 1st, the composition system, and 2nd, the functional 
or relational system, or class of systems. In the first the 
name of a compound indicates the elements or radicals 
contained in it, and sometimes their proportions. Thus 
Chlornatrium, Chloriod, dreifach Chloriod, Siliciumwas- 
serstoff, etc. In English we have few names so distinctly 
compositional in form (we have, indeed, zinc methyl and 
all the other allied names), but many of our names, al¬ 
though functional in form, are really compositional. 
Thus, chloride of A means with us nothing more than, 
or different from, a compound containing the elements 
chlorine and A; and chloride of sodium, chloride of 
iodine, ter-chloride of iodine, siliciureted hydrogen 
not only represent the same substances as the German 
names just quoted, but tell us neither more nor less 
* Paper read before the Chemical Section of the British 
Association at Brighton, 
about the substances than these German names do. On 
the other hand, functional names indicate the chemical 
relations between substances. We may take as examples 
such names as the anhydride, the amide, the aldehyde, 
the nitrile of acetic acid. These derivatives of acetic 
acid contain no acetic acid, but they stand in certain 
definite relations to that substance, and the anhydrides, 
amides, aldehydes, and nitriles of other acids stand in 
the same relation to them. What is still, notwithstand¬ 
ing the efforts of modern chemists, the common popular 
nomenclature of salts, although originally intended as a 
compositional nomenclature, might with perfect consis¬ 
tency, be retained as a functional nomenclature. The 
objection to the term “muriate of soda” was that the 
substance 60 named contains no soda. But the amide of 
benzoic acid contains no benzoic acid. Soda contains 
oxygen; muriate of soda contains none (unless chlorine 
be an oxide), but the nitrile of benzoic acid contains no 
oxygen, although the acid itself does. The name muriate 
of soda originally meant the compound of anhydrous 
muriatic acid, 2HC1—H 2 0, and anhydrous soda Na 2 0, 
(2HC1 — H 2 0) -j-Na 2 0. We may now, if we please, 
use the name to mean the result of the action 2HC1 + 
Na 2 0—HoO. If we do so, the name becomes afunctional 
one, and”the phrase “muriate of,” or, what is neither 
better nor worse, “hydrochlorate of,” expresses the com¬ 
plex operation—addition of hydrochloric acid and si¬ 
multaneous separation of water. Similarly, in the case 
of such names as sulphate of potash, nitrate of oxide of 
silver, etc.,the phrases “ sulphate of,” “nitrate of” ex¬ 
press the complete operations, addition of sulphuric, or 
nitric acid, and simultaneous separation of water. 
While the old view that salts are compounds of anhy¬ 
drous acids and anhydrous bases is now abandoned by 
most theoretical chemists, a relic of this view still remains 
in the most advanced systems of nomenclature, producing 
an inconsistency really inconvenient to the teacher and 
student. 
The objection taken to the name hydrochlorate of 
soda was not only that the substance contains no soda, 
but also that it contains no hydrochloric acid ; this ob¬ 
jection is perfectly valid against the name as a composi¬ 
tional one, but does it not equally hold against the words 
sulphate, nitrate, acetate, etc. ? If we are to have hy- 
dric sulphate and hydric acetate for sulphuric and acetic 
acids, why not hydric muriate for muriatic acid ? That 
this question is not altogether an absurd one will be 
obvious if we consider that all chlorides are not muriates. 
Those substances which are by general consent called 
salts stand in a definite genetic relation to the corre- 
ponding acids (or the hydric salts of the series), and it is 
inconvenient to have the same general name—chloride 
—applied to substances which do stand in this relation 
to hydrochloric acid, and also to those which do not. 
We may divide the chlorides into two groups, very dif¬ 
ferent in character in their extreme members, and gra¬ 
dually shading into one another. We may take chloride 
of sodium as a representative of the one, and the chloride 
of phosphorus as a representative of the other. Chloride 
of sodium is a muriate; the chloride of phosphorus might 
be better described as the double anhydride of muriatic 
and phosphorous acids. We may call the acids and acid 
anhydrides negative, the hydrated bases and anhydrous 
bases positive ; arranged in a series, we find the series a 
continuous one from the most positive or basic oxides or 
hydrates to the most negative ; it is, however, convenient 
to have a zero point, and it is no disadvantage if this 
zero point be an arbitary one. When we come to express 
numerically the amount of positiveness or negativeness 
of those oxides and hydrates, it will be necessary to 
have a zero point, and a very convenient one is that 
which corresponds pretty nearly to the generally under¬ 
stood limit between bases and acids, and depends upon 
the direction in which the action A+water = Bfi-hydro¬ 
chloric acid takes place ; where A is a chloride and B a 
hydrated or anhydrous oxide. 
