The scientific foundations of analytical chemistry : treated in an elementary manner / by Wilhelm Ostwald ; translated with the author's sanction by George M'Gowan.

Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The scientific foundations of analytical chemistry : treated in an elementary manner / by Wilhelm Ostwald ; translated with the author's sanction by George M'Gowan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    AUTHOR’S PREFACE Analytical Chemistry, or the art of recognising differ- ent substances and determining their constituents, takes a prominent position among the applications of the science, since the questions which it enables us to answer arise wherever chemical processes are employed for scientific or technical purposes. Its supreme im- portance has caused it to be assiduously cultivated from a very early period in the history of chemistry, and its records comprise a large part of the quantita- tive work whicli is spread over the whole domain of the science. There is, however, a remarkable contrast between the extent to which the technique of analytical chemistry has been elaborated and its scientific treat- ment. Even in the best works on the subject the latter is almost entirely confined to the giving of equation - formulse, which show the results of the chemical reactions in question in the ideal limit cases. That as a matter of fact, instead of the supposed com- plete reactions, incomplete ones leading to a state of chemical equilibrium take place, that there is no such