Chemical method, notation, classification, & nomenclature / by Auguste Laurent ; translated by William Odling.

  • Laurent, Auguste, 1807-1853.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chemical method, notation, classification, & nomenclature / by Auguste Laurent ; translated by William Odling. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    15/414
    ami practical study of organic compounds; so that, by associating analogous and separating dissimilar bodies by characters sufficiently numerous and decided, we might, from the simple inspection of their symbolic formulae, foresee the greatest possible number of the reactions they could experience, and the products they could originate. In a word, he undertook to do, for the entire collec- tion of actual chemical researches, according to a general and uniform method of classification, that which at the present day each chemist does for his own proper discoveries, with an arbitrary diversity of views and expressions. Has he completely succeeded in this great undertaking, for which perhaps chemistry does not yet afford a collection of suf- ficiently numerous and well-assured materials? We dare not give an unhesitating affirmative; and it would be an injustice to require one. But what each must propose to himself in reading this work, is to see if, in the greatest number of examples upon which it is founded, the views of Laurent are conformable to experiment; so that each may have well-grounded chances of finding them productive for himself, as they were for the author, and frequently for others. Should they have this effect, limited though it be, Ave shall best applaud his views by labouring to perfect them. To repel or reject them, at first sight, because they are strange, or enounced with a.too absolute hardihood of expression, would be a policy but little profitable for science. If occasionally he has shaken somewhat too rudely this great edifice, formed of parts progressively added to one another, it is, that from observ- ing the incoherence of the materials of which it was composed, he thought it would be more profitable to labour at its reconstruction, than to persevere in conserving it such as it is. lie only wished to aid this achievement, by pointing out the relations of forms and of symbols which, in default of intimate notions, should offer generally well founded motives for associa- tion or disjunction. Chemistry might, in many cases, be able to extend beyond this empiricism, in which it has hitherto been confined. The rotatory power possessed by the constituent molecules of