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

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

    17/414 (page 13)
    When we consider the great number of organic substances that have been discovered during the last dozen years, and the increasing rapidity with which chemists daily discover'fresh ones; when we see, that from a simple hydrocarbon and chlorine, we may produce a hundred different compounds, and that from them we may obtain a great number of others: lastly, when we reflect upon the absence of all system, all nomenclature, for the classifi- cation and denomination of this multitude of bodies, we demand with some anxiety, whether, in a few years' time, it will be posssible for us to direct ourselves in the labyrinth of organic chemistry. The confusion which reigns in the ideas is even greater than that which obtains in the facts; for the principles upon which the majority of chemists rely, for the explanation and co-ordination of facts, are so vague, so uncertain, that not only do two chemists explain the same phenomena in two different manners, but even one and the same person abandons .the explanation he gave yester- day, for a new one that he proposes to day, and which he will abandon to-morrow for a third. This uncertainty in the principles re-acts upon the facts, of which it singularly augments the confu- sion. And indeed, to give an idea of the composition of a real body, we are accustomed to imagine two or three hypothetical bodies, to which we assign new names and special compositions, so that the study of chemistry, has not only for its object the pro- perties, the compositions, and the names of thousands of real bodies, but in addition, the properties, the compositions, and the names of a great number of purely fictitious ones.