A Handbook of Chemical Tecnology

Abstract

EVERY one who has studied chemistry from a scientific point of view must have been more or less struck with the fact that nearly all our manuals of chemistry have much of their space occupied with detailed descriptions of various manufacturing processes, and many must have asked why this is. It is not easy to see what utility there is in describing, in works professedly devoted to a scientific subject, such processes as those for the manufacture of chamois leather, wine, vinegar, china and earthenware, &c. &c.; and yet our largest and most ambitious manual, in common with its smaller companions, devotes scores of its pages to the consideration of such subjects. This fashion is much to be deprecated for many reasons: in the first place, these processes are utterly useless to the student, as, in the majority of cases, they illustrate no rule, elucidate no reaction. In the second, it is utterly impossible to do full justice to them in the space to which they must perforce be confined; and in the last, much valuable matter about the rarer elements and reactions is squeezed out of place altogether, or passed over with a mere mention.

A Handbook of Chemical Tecnology.

By Rudolph Wagner Treanslated and edited from the eighth German edition, with extensive additions by William Crookes, F.R.S. (London: J. and A. Churchill, 1872.)