Chemist's shop

“ The view long maintained—until late in the nineteenth century, in fact—that organic and inorganic chemistry are separated from each other by a wide gap, is no longer held. Hundreds of organic substances, some of them of great complexity, have been made in the chemist’s laboratory, and can now be classed as properly with inorganic as with organic substances. The gap has been closed, and there is now but one chemistry. Only the most intricate chemical compounds still lie beyond the chemist’s grasp, and the isolation of these may be at any time overthrown. ”

“ If you have ever played ring-around-a-rosy you will get the idea. In Chapter IV I explained that the anilin dyes are built up upon the benzene ring of six carbon atoms. The rubber ring consists of eight at least and probably more. Any substance containing that peculiar carbon chain with two double links C=C-C=C can double up—polymerize, the chemist calls it—into a rubber-like substance. So we may have many kinds of rubber, some of which may prove to be more useful than that which happens to be found in nature. ”

“ In 1846 he returned to England and was appointed professor of chemistry at the Royal Institution in Manchester, where he had settled in practice as a consulting chemist. He now devoted himself almost entirely to questions of industrial chemistry, tanning, the desulphurisation of coke, the protection of iron ships from rust, the manufacture of chlorate of potash, iron puddling, calico-printing, &c. A few years later he took up the manufacture of coal-tar products, especially of phenic or carbolic acid, which he was the first to manufacture in a pure state in this country. ”

“ But the same kind of handling by the chemist may be devoted to the delicate construction of a molecule which gives a certain colour to the dyer's vat and so pleases the eye that the great cloth industries feel the consequence, and nations themselves are affected by the flow of trade. After all, since the processes of the physical world operate ultimately through the power and properties of molecules, it is not surprising that the chemist's work in these and numberless other ways has such tremendous influence in the world. ”

“ The best place to purchase the principal materials are the undermentioned places: for the Fulminating Silver, and Brugnatelli's Ditto, is Messrs. Accum and Garden, Old Compton-Street, London, and every other Manufacturing Chemist; the glass globes, of all sizes, are to be had of F. Pastorelli, Barometer and Thermometer Manufacturer, No. 4, Cross-Street, Hatton-Garden, London. The spiders are to be had of most glass blowers—for the cards, &c. every one is aware where to apply. ”

“ There are only about a dozen primary products extracted from coal tar, but from these the chemist is able to build up hundreds of thousands of new substances. This is true creative chemistry, for most of these compounds are not to be found in plants and never existed before they were made in the laboratory. It used to be thought that organic compounds, the products of vegetable and animal life, could only be produced by organized beings, that they were created out of inorganic matter by the magic touch of some "vital principle." ”

“ Each article is put down in a catalogue which shows the shelf or bottle where it may be found. Every known metal, every chemical known to science, every kind of glass, stone, earth, wood, fibre, paper, skin, cloth, is to be found there. In making up the chemical collection an assistant was kept at work for weeks going through the three most exhaustive works on chemistry in English, French, and German, making a note of every substance mentioned, and this list constituted the order for chemicals, an order, by the way, which it required seven months to fill. ”

“ In the later or creative stages we enter the domain of chemistry, for it is the chemist alone who possesses the power of reducing a substance to its constituent atoms and from them producing substances entirely new. But the chemist has been slow to realize his unique power and the world has been still slower to utilize his invaluable services. Until recently indeed the leaders of chemical science expressly disclaimed what should have been their proudest boast. The French chemist Lavoisier in 1793 defined chemistry as "the science of analysis." ”

“ I know that in some places there are chemists who habitually find considerably more phosphoric acid and more ammonia in any given fertilizer than it actually contains. If a young chemist dares to find the amounts actually present, and to state the results, the manufacturer discards them, and takes the highest and false ones obtained by the initiated chemist. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Phenacetin, saccharin, synthetic vanilla, benzine, naphthaline, analine dyes, carbolic acid, are only a few of the many substances won to the consumer by the chemist in his laboratory; and this is only one field of research. The chemist is always busy (as now with rubber, camphor, etc.) , working at the synthesis of natural products in the hope that he will be able to 335find a means of manufacturing them in quantities at a cost which will make them, commercially possible, and thus lessen the drain on the world’s natural supply. ”

“ Jones' Chemical Lecture Room, S.W. Corner of Fourth and Chestnut Streets, a lecture will be delivered on the properties of nitrous oxide, or the exhilarating gas, accompanied with a number of experiments. A large quantity will be prepared to exhibit its effects when inhaled. ”

“ Commercially educated employees control the consumption of chemicals of all kinds in each department, and based on their figures, and the figures of the consumption of water, gas, steam, ice, compressed and rarified air, etc., used in the processes, exact calculations are made for each product monthly. Furthermore, there are scientific laboratories, one for inorganic chemistry, another for coal-tar colors of the benzine and naphthaline series, a third for those of the alizarine and anthraquinone groups, another for pharmaceutical and photographic products. ”

“ Concurrently with these technical developments of coal-tar products, the scientific chemist was carrying on his investigations. The compounds which science had given to commerce were made on a scale that enabled the investigator to obtain his materials in quantities that appeared fabulous in the early days when aniline was regarded as a laboratory curiosity, and magenta had been seen by only a few chemists.
The fundamental problem which the modern chemist seeks to solve is in the first place the composition of a compound, i.e. ”

“ For a long time the only chemical laboratories known were the pharmacies, and of course all chemical work was then done by the pharmacists. If any one desired a knowledge of chemistry, his only way to acquire it was to enter a pharmacy, and this whether he desired to practice the art or not. It was not until between the twentieth and thirtieth year of the present century that there existed any laboratory in which a student could acquire a special knowledge of chemistry. ”

“ And if the substances and processes investigated by the inorganic chemist are destined to become commercially important, it is impossible to place the manufacture on a sound commercial basis without ample knowledge of physical methods, and their application to the most economical methods of accelerating certain reactions and retarding others, so as to obtain the largest yield of the required product at the smallest cost of time, labor and money. ”

“ 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. ”

“ One of Grover’s constantly repeated axioms about laboratory work was:
“Do the first thing first!”
All life, the scientific student always had insisted, was like the chemical compounds they handled. No matter what the problem might be, no matter how it looked, it could be analyzed the way compounds would be analyzed, the elements could be isolated, and the base—the guide to the whole condition—could be known. Sodium, a metal, very unstable, combined with chlorine, a gas, turned into sodium chloride, and that was a salt—common table salt, in fact. ”

“ To build a one-hundred-and-fifty pound man, only fourteen elements, altogether, are needed. Five of them are the above-named gases—there is enough gas in a man to fill a gasometer of 3,649 cubic feet—and nine are solids, found in almost any handful of clay you might take up at random; that is to say, carbon, calcium, phosphorus, iron, sulphur, sodium, potassium, silicon, and magnesium. In most people minute quantities of a few other things are found, such as copper, aluminium, manganese, lead, mercury, arsenic, and lithium; but these substances are probably always trespassers. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Besides the large laboratories for general chemistry and analytical chemistry, there are smaller laboratories for volumetric analysis, for organic chemistry, for sanitary chemistry with special reference to the analysis of water and air, for oil and gas analysis, for the optical and chemical examination of sugars, starches, etc., for the determination of molecular weights, and so on. In the industrial laboratories, the students are taught how to manufacture chemicals with due regard to economy of material, space and time. ”

“ The period of discovery by accident has long gone by. The chemist nowadays decides first just what kind of a dye he wants, and then goes to work systematically to make it. He begins by drawing a diagram of the molecule, double-linking nitrogen or carbon and oxygen atoms to give the required [Pg 79] intensity, putting in acid or basic radicals to fasten it to the fiber, shifting the color back and forth along the spectrum at will by introducing methyl groups, until he gets it just to his liking.
Art can go ahead of nature in the dyestuff business. ”

“ Of equal scientific interest, however, and often of great commercial importance is the determination of the percentage of other acids and bases present. The analyst is often called on, in the examination of these bodies, to make known the content of water both free and combined, of organic and volatile matter, of carbon dioxid, sulfur, chlorin, fluorin, silica, iron, alumina, calcium, manganese, magnesia, and the alkalies. The estimation of some of these bodies presents problems of considerable difficulty, and it would be vain to suppose that the best possible methods are now known. ”

“ Students of the history of our science will find them to be so.
But all these early chemists—ancient, if you please—are gone. They cultivated chemistry with pleasure and ardor. Some left visible imprints, while scarce a vestige remains of others. Their labours have made our path easier. A century hence, many honoured to-day and respected for their achievements, will receive scant consideration, though [Pg 28] the work of the present looms up large in our judgment.
The founding of the Columbian Chemical Society in 1811 was an event in the chemical circles of Philadelphia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An extended examination of the subject would show us that pharmacy played a very important part in the founding, particularly of that field of chemistry which is usually designated by the name "organic chemistry"—a field in which many of the brilliant modern victories of chemists have been achieved. Without the fundamental work of pharmacists in extracting from plants their valuable constituents, organic chemistry would to-day be in its infancy, instead of being what it is—a giant of mighty strength, exerting a controlling influence upon a number of important occupations, including pharmacy. ”

“ A few glass rods in short lengths do for stirrers. A little ingenuity is better than much apparatus.
Of reagents, all those to be found in a well-appointed laboratory may occasionally be of service, but the rough and ready prospector can get along fairly well with the following: Carbonate of soda, borax, microcosmic salt, cobalt solution, cyanide of potassium, lead granulated, bone ash, test papers of blue litmus and turmeric, the former for proving the presence of acid in a solution and the latter that of an alkali. ”