An inaugural dissertation on a natural system of chemical classification : submitted to the public examination of the trustees and of the faculty of medicine of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the city of New York, under the authority of the regents of the University of the State of New York, Alexander H. Stevens, M.D., president of the college and of the board of trustees for the degree of doctor of medicine, on the 6th day of February, 1845. / By Oliver Wolcott Gibbs, A.M. of the city of New York.

  • Gibbs, Wolcott, 1822-1908.
Date:
1845
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An inaugural dissertation on a natural system of chemical classification : submitted to the public examination of the trustees and of the faculty of medicine of the College of Physicians and Surgeons in the city of New York, under the authority of the regents of the University of the State of New York, Alexander H. Stevens, M.D., president of the college and of the board of trustees for the degree of doctor of medicine, on the 6th day of February, 1845. / By Oliver Wolcott Gibbs, A.M. of the city of New York. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University Libraries/Information Services, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the the Augustus C. Long Health Sciences Library at Columbia University and Columbia University.

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    of the same elements new and more complex chemical pro- ducts, adapted to their growth, their structure and their wants. The animal organism found in that of the plant, nearly all the materials necessary for its own sustenance : of some of these it changed the form without altering the chemical com- position, while of others again it moulded the composition as well as the form anew. And when at length Life ceased long- er to exert over each individual its plastic force, the elements obeying their mutual affinities formed new and simpler pro- ducts, again to be brought under the sway of the vital force, and thus destined to pass through countless cycles of change, and to appear in the development and decay of myriads of organized forms. Could an atom of Carbon or of Hydrogen but speak to us what a history might it not unfold! Through every change however of the mineral, the plant, and the ani- mal, the one universal law of Chemical combination—the law of definite proportions—has from the beginning of things, held good. Thus then we are led to recognize two great de- partments of Chemical Science, the Chemistry of Unorganized and the Chemistry of Organized bodies. The former embraces all those combinations which take place under the operation of purely chemical forces, whether in the laboratory of nature or under circumstances determined by the will of man. The latter comprehends all the products of the action of the vital force upon inorganic matter, whether this action be immediate as in plants or mediate as in animals, together with those bodies which result from the former by the action of chemical reagents. It is with the first of these departments that we have at present to deal. Between the fifty-six elements into which, as already stated, all known forms of matter have been resolved, there exist numerous remarkable analogies, which separate them first into subordinate natural families or groups, and then by general though not indistinct resemblances, unite them into one indissoluble chain, each link of which differs rather in degree than in kind from its fellow on either side ; so that the whote illustrates in unorganized nature, the truth of