Lecture Notes for Chemical Students

Abstract

IN this, the second part of “Lecture Notes for Chemical Students,” Dr. Frankland develops very fully his own peculiar notation. The use of thick letters, as CH₄; of contracted symbols for many organic radicles, as Ayo for C₅H₁₁O; of a peculiar way of writing the formulae of well-known substances, so as at first signt to make them appear as if they were new compounds, as NPhO₂, representing nitrobenzol; these and a few other remarkable characteristics will make this book, we should think, seem rather startling to the ordinary student. By combining attendance on lectures on organic chemistry with careful reading and a good deal of patient work, the student will find these “Lecture Notes” very useful, containing as they do, in small space, the results of the latest investigations as these bear upon the molecular constitution of organic compounds. Very large use is made of graphic formulae, and also of the theory of types. The types used are somewhat different from, those with which we are familiar in the text-books, and certainly the names applied to them are derived more from an anatomical than a chemical vocabulary; thus, the marsh gas type is termed the “Monadelphic,” the methyl type the “Diadelphic,” and so on. The very useful and scientific method of writing the formulae of all organic acids, as containing the group COHO; all alcohols, as containing CH₂HO; and all aldehydes, as containing COH, is adopted throughout. The relations of alcohols, aldehydes, and acids; the passage from one class of alcohols, &c., to another; and very many other points of great scientific value, too commonly overlooked in the text-books, are here all carefully noted. As we said, the book requires attentive study, but this it will certainly repay.

Lecture Notes for Chemical Students.

—Vol. II. Organic Chemistry. By E. Frankland. (London: John Van Voorst.)