Genre:

Review, Serial

Publications reviewed:

Gorup-Besanez 1871a Gorup-Besanez 1871b Otto 1870

Subjects:

Textbooks, Chemistry, Lecturing, Experiment, Laboratories, Reading, Education, Nomenclature, Physiological Chemistry, Pathology, Disease, Medical Treatment, Analytical Chemistry, Disciplinarity, Mapping, Adulteration, Illustration, Publishing

People mentioned:

Carl R Fresenius

Publications cited:

Hoppe-Seyler 1870 , Otto 1857

    Points out that on the 'nature of chemical attraction' and 'the laws of combination by weight [...] rests the chemical system', and yet these subjects 'in English text-books are very often slurred over altogether, or deduced from the atomic hypothesis'. Insists that 'the student' of chemistry must 'be made first of all acquainted with the laws themselves' before moving on to the 'atomic hypothesis'. Notes the 'increase in knowledge' in physiological chemistry since the 1850s, and suggests that 'While some few things remain unchanged, the whole subject has been remodelled' and that 'the darkness which hung over many zoochemical problems has been to a slight extent dispelled'. In particular, 'Zoochemical analysis is now rapidly becoming one of the chief helps in constructing scientific physiology and in the scientific treatment of disease', and the time 'is not very far off' when 'it will form an essential part of the training and equipment of every medical student'. (439) In discussing the various divisions of chemical research, observes that Eugen F F von Gorup-Besanez has 'a clearly segregative mind, which is able to survey the whole subject as a dissected map' (440). Concludes by noting that fine woodcuts 'form one of the features of the scientific publications from Vieweg's establishment', and that 'In this respect they are as unlike as possible to English scientific books, in which the woodcuts, even when not inaccurate, are coarse, or blurred, or in some way disagreeable to the eye', although 'the New Sydenham Society's version of Neubauer's book' is 'excellently illustrated, far above what is usually seen in this country' (440–41).