Chemical Society

“ The first class includes such substances as iodine, mercury, iron, carbon, and their various compounds, and such bodies as alcohol, chloroform and chloral, all of which are found in nature or can be prepared by ordinary chemical processes of manufacture. From plants many substances are obtained which at the present time we are unable to make in the chemical laboratory, and of the constitution or composition of which we are in many cases ignorant. ”

“ Organic compounds, on which our life and living depend, consist chiefly of four elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. These compounds are sometimes hard to analyze, but when once the chemist has ascertained their constitution he can usually make them out of their elements—if he wants to. He will not want to do it as a business unless it pays and it will not pay unless the manufacturing process is cheaper than the natural process. ”

“ Great Chemical Industries. Thus it is that our Government today [Pg 368] is giving most serious heed to the need of building up a great chemical industry in the United States. We have the raw materials. We need only the factories and the trained men that go with them. We need, of course, in addition to the development of the coal tar industry, a production of heavy chemicals such as chlorine, sulfuric acid and the like, all of which, however, are bound together by community interest in peace as well as in war. ”

“ The leather, glue, and kindred trades have been for many years recognized as chemical industries, but the great development of colloid chemistry in the last few years has given these trades a more definite status as such, and they can now be placed in the category of applied physical chemistry. The time is probably not far distant when some knowledge of pure physical chemistry will be a first essential to students, chemists, chemical engineers, and to all engaged in these industries in supervision, administration, or control. ”

“ After becoming acquainted with the constituent elements of all the substances within our reach and the mutual relations of these elements, the remarkable transmutations to which the bodies are subject under the influence of the vital powers of plants and animals, became the principal object of chemical investigations, and the highest point of interest. A new science, inexhaustible as life itself, is here presented us, standing upon the sound and solid foundation of a well established inorganic chemistry. ”

“ It was formerly supposed that the substances found in plants and animals, mostly complex compounds of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, could only be produced by "vital forces." If this were true it meant that chemistry was limited to the mineral kingdom and to the extraction of such carbon compounds as happened to exist ready formed in the vegetable and animal kingdoms. But fortunately this barrier to human achievement proved purely illusory. The organic field, once man had broken into it, proved easier to work in than the inorganic. ”

“ To destroy organic matter the most powerful oxidizing agents are required. We must boil it with nitric acid and chloric acid and the most perfect chemical agents. To think to get rid of organic matter by exposure to the air for a short time is absurd. ”

“ The subject of Organic Chemistry is that to which, at the present day, the eyes of all thinking members of the profession are directed, and upon which their hope of progress mainly depends,—the relations of chemical action to the functions of organized matter, the application of chemistry to physiology and pathology, are to be treated of as fully as present knowledge extends. ”

“ These substances will arise as a result of normal chemical research. We admit they may multiply much more quickly if work is specially directed towards their discovery, but it is practically impossible to control such work. ”

“ Our chemists found that starting with simple substances they could, by proper means, combine them into molecules of greater complexity, and in so doing could make many of the compounds that had hitherto been produced only as a result of living activities. For example, urea, formic acid, indigo, and many other bodies, hitherto produced only by animals and plants, were easily produced by the chemist by purely chemical methods. ”

“ When oxygen combines with a single element, what is the compound called? We have found that O makes up a certain portion of the air; later, we shall see how large the proportion is. Its tendency to combine with almost everything is a reason for the decay, rust, and oxidation of so many substances, and for conflagrations, great and small. New compounds are thusformed, of which O constitutes one factor. Water, H2O, is only a chemical union of O and H. Iron rust, Fe2O3 and H2O, is composed of O, Fe, and water. The burning of wood or of coal gives rise to carbon dioxide, CO2, and water. ”

“ So the synthesis of a single organic compound sufficed at a blow to break down the chemical barrier which the imagination of the fathers of the science had erected between animate and inanimate nature. Thenceforth the philosophical chemist would regard the plant and animal organisms as chemical laboratories in which conditions are peculiarly favorable for building up complex compounds of a few familiar elements, under the operation of universal chemical laws. ”

“ See Experiment 124. Study Figure 29, and write the reactions. 2 HNO3 breaks up into 2 NO2, H2O, and O. 94. Importance.—Sulphuric acid has been called, next to human food, the most indispensable article known. There is hardly a product of modern civilization in the manufacture of which it is not directly or indirectly used. Nearly a million tons are made yearly in Great Britain alone. It is the basis of all acids, as Na2CO3 is of alkalies. It is the life of chemical industry, and the quantity of it consumed is an index of a people's civilization. ”

“ Organic chemistry was a well-founded branch of science early in the nineteenth century, and flourishing industries, fostered by it, were in existence thirty years ago, yet it was not until the early twentieth century, and the recent war, that we witnessed the rapid growth of organic chemical warfare, which, I claim, was as revolutionary as any other war development. ”

“ But by the middle of the nineteenth century the richness of this hitherto untilled field became manifest, and scores of workers hastened to sow and to reap in it. The most striking feature, indeed, of the history of chemistry during the past sixty years has been the extraordinary expansion of the organic section of the science. The chemical literature relating to the compounds of carbon now exceeds in volume that devoted to all the rest of the elements. ”

“ The mysteries of organic chemistry are great, and the differences between its processes or reactions as they are carried out in the organism and in the laboratory are many421. The actions, catalytic and other, which go on in the living cell are of extraordinary complexity. But the contention that they are different in kind from what we term ordinary chemical operations, or that in the production of single asymmetric compounds there is actually to be witnessed, as Pasteur maintained, a “prerogative of life,” would seem to be no longer safely tenable. ”

“ This is not the only reason, however, for the unique war importance of organic chemicals. It so happens that many of them are essential to our daily life, as dyes, drugs, photographic and other synthetic products. Industries, therefore, have arisen for their manufacture. ”

“ It brings home to me what an unstable chemical compound man is. Here are the stage accessories as good as ever, while the players have all split up into hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and carbon, with traces of iron and silica and phosphorus. ”

“ Our review of production has shown the impossibility of doing so, unless we completely wipe out the organic chemical industry which is essential for world progress by its contribution of dyes, drugs, and other synthetic commodities. ”

“ In organic as in inorganic chemistry, atoms are bound together by chemical affinity, though it was formerly supposed that an additional or vital force was instrumental in forming organic compounds. For this reason none of these substances, it was thought, could be built up in the laboratory, although many had been analyzed. In 1828 the first organic compound, urea, was artificially prepared, and since then thousands have been synthesized. They are not necessarily manufactured from organic products, but can be made from mineral matter. ”

“ But since the chemist has learned how, he finds it easier to make organic than inorganic substances and he is confident that he can reproduce any compound that he can analyze. He cannot only imitate the manufacturing processes of the plants and animals, but he can often beat them at their own game.
When coal is heated in the open air it is burned up and nothing but the ashes is left. But heat the coal in an enclosed vessel, say a big fireclay retort, and it cannot burn up because the oxygen of the air cannot get to it. ”

“ Oxygen and nitrogen, nitrogen and hydrogen, hydrogen and carbon, which show no affinity for each other under ordinary circumstances, readily unite when one or both are in a nascent condition. The reason seems to be that, when the elements of a compound are torn asunder, the chemical affinity which previously bound them together is set free, ready and eager to unite the nascent elements with whatever they come in contact with. ”

“ The peculiar manner in which hydrogen gas appears to dissolve solid substances,—as iron, potassium, sodium, sulphur, phosphorus, selenium, and arsenic, may be explained by regarding the results as a manifestation of the powers of chemical affinity over the forms of bodies. In like manner, the solution of salt in water, or the mixture of alcohol in that fluid, may be viewed as chemical phenomena, although usually considered as simple cases of solution or mixture: alterations of temperature and other physical changes taking place in either. ”

“ The most interesting and, in many respects, the most important, development of the last twenty-five years has been in electro-chemistry. Electro-chemical methods are now employed for the production of a large number of elements, such as the alkali and alkaline earth metals, copper, zinc, aluminum, chromium, manganese, the halogens, phosphorus, hydrogen, oxygen, and ozone; various chemicals, including the mineral acids, hydrates, chlorates, hypochlorites, chromates, permanganates, disinfectants, alkaloids, coal tar dyes, and various carbon compounds ”

“ The fundamental task of inorganic chemistry is still connected with the classification of elements and compounds. The investigation of the classification of carbon compounds forms the field of organic chemistry; while general or physical chemistry deals with the laws of reaction, and the influence of various forms of energy in furthering or hindering chemical change. ”

“ It is assumed that American industries based on chemical processes do not flourish for lack of men trained in this branch of science. This, however, is not the case. It is not more instruction in applied chemistry that America needs, but rather a deeper and broader knowledge of pure chemistry, with a more extended training in original research.
In many of the problems we have already noticed, the solution depends upon the discovery of new compounds—the investigation and study of new reactions and relationships. ”

“ In consequence thereof we now see that these large factories, devoted to the chemical industries which have drawn into their circle the manufacture of all the heavy chemicals, the production of the intermediary products from the distillation of wood and coal-tar, the finished materials being aniline and alizarine dye-stuffs, indigo, pharmaceutical and photographic products, artificial sweeteners and artificial perfumes, are managed exclusively by scientific chemists. The practical man was forced to yield to the well-educated theoretical man. ”

“ Chemistry plays a part in every phase of life; in the arts, the industries, the household, and in the body itself, where digestion, excretion, etc., result from the action of the bodily fluids upon food. The chemical substances of most interest to us are those which affect us personally rather than industrially; for example, soap, which cleanses our bodies, our clothing, our household possessions; washing soda, which lightens laundry work; lye, which clears out the drain pipe clogged with grease; benzine, which removes stains from clothing ”

“ A mixture which will destroy micro-organisms and yet will not destroy a living cell certainly shows a fine sense of selection and discrimination not heretofore expected of a combination of chemicals or of a chemical compound. How like the wonderful elixir of medieval times, which was to the Christian a tonic and to the heathen a poison!
Here is another claim made for this nostrum:
“Two or three rectal injections of a one or two per cent. ”

“ Although it may appear that some cases of chemical combination are due to these powers,—as, for instance, when the union of oxalic acid or sulphuric acid with lime produces an insoluble salt,—we cannot thus explain the constant proportions in which the metals, sulphur, oxygen, and similar bodies, unite. It is quite certain there is a power or principle, which we [Pg 286] have not yet reached, upon which are dependent all the phenomena which we now embrace under the term chemical affinity. ”