92 
EDITORIAL. 
American chemical students in its English garb, a large number of persons 
whose business or taste incline them to chemical pursuits, have not met 
with the work. It has been looked upon as one of the most comprehensive 
treatises of the modern school of organic chemistry accessible to the Eng- 
lish student, and appearing as it now does with the notes of an American 
Editor, it should be increased in value. 
The most striking peculiarity of Dr. Gregory's book, is the omis- 
sion of any connected account of the imponderables, heat, light, electricity 
and magnetism. The author considering these subjects as appertaining 
more properly to a course on physics, which should be included in the pre- 
liminary studies of the student, has omitted them chiefly because the time 
devoted to an ordinary course of lectures in medical institutions is too 
brief to enable the lecturer to illustrate them properly. 
Whilst admitting the force of this reasoning as applied to students pro- 
perly j9?^-educated, Ave think it very different when considered in relation 
to a large number of the candidates for the diploma in this country, whose 
preliminary education in science has been far too meagre to properly fit 
them for practitioners. To such, the important bearing which electricity 
and heat especially, have in chemistry and medical science, renders their 
elucidation in connection with the course on chemistry, a matter of no 
small importance. 
The first forty pages are devoted to an explanation of the laws of affinity 
combination, definite proportion, isomorphism, isomerism, etc. The metal- 
loids are then treated of, followed by the metals and their binary com- 
pounds, the theory of the constitution of salts, and a condensed description 
of the salts themselves. 
The organic part, which is treated in much more detail than the inorganic 
division, is evidently that portion of the work in which the author feels 
the strongest interest himself, and which he believes should most forcibly 
attract the medical student, from its connection with physiology, toxicolo- 
gy, etc. A pretty full account is given of the doctrines of radicals, types, and 
substiutions, of oxidation, and fermentative metamorphoses, in the first thir- 
ty pages. The radicals and their derivatives, commencing with amidogen, 
occupy a large portion of the remainder of the book, and present these sub- 
jects, elaborate as they are, in as clear a view, as their abstruseness will 
perhaps admit. The organic acids and alkalies, coloring substances, and 
neutral principles, are followed by the pyrogenous products of organic 
bodies, and a general notice of animal chemistry, which concludes the work. 
As a text book for the purely chemical student, Dr. Gregory's treatise 
ranks deservedly high. We do not know how far the British medical 
universities and colleges are enabled to imbue their pupils with the funda- 
mental doctrinesof organic chemistry, as set forth in the work before us, and 
acquaint them with details; but it appears to us that this important branch 
of chemical science needs some master hand to simplify its arrangements, 
with a view to the wants of the medical student, by which he can escape 
