Volume 1

Recent advances in organic chemistry / by Alfred W. Stewart.

  • Stewart, Alfred W. (Alfred Walter), 1880-1947.
Date:
1927
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Recent advances in organic chemistry / by Alfred W. Stewart. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    GENERAL PREFACE In the present edition, the book which has hitherto been published in one-volnme form appears in a new shape, and some explanation of the change appears desirable here. Since 1908, as the work has passed from edition to edition, my attempt has always been to furnish sufficient fundamental information to allow the reader to appreciate with ease the bearing of the more recent researches, and also to preserve a proper perspective into which the newest facts can be fitted. In order to make room for fresh facts without swelling the size of the volume unduly, I have been forced to discard material from each edition in the preparation of its successor. Had it not been for the limitation in size which was imposed on the volume, the major part of this eliminated material would have been retained permanently; and I have always regretted the compulsory rejection of certain chapters. In the preparation of this fifth edition, it became clear that further progress along the old lines was now impossible. So much space had to be devoted to newer lines of research, and to completing the accounts of recent work in older branches, that some of the fundamental basis of the subject would have to be rejected in order to make room for new material; and I foresaw the probability that if this were done, the work would degenerate into a mere series of scrappy summaries lacking in any instructive value. To avert this, the book is now issued in two volumes. In the first of these, a series of themes is treated, which forms a basis for the understanding of some of the newer investigations. At the beginning of the volume I have reprinted (though with considerable revision) the historical chapter which served as an introduction to the first edition, and which contains a