Abstract
THIS is chemistry. Of how few books professing to be books on chemistry can it be said that they teach us anything of the science. The student who begins the study of the carbon compounds has to suffer many things from the text-books. Some of them present him with dry bones in the shape of isolated facts and bold assertions regarding structural formulae and the linking of atoms. Others lead him into speculations which he is unprepared to follow; he makes little flights into these and comes back fancying he is a chemist. Other books (there are not many of them) proceed on the true scientific lines; but very frequently their pages are encumbered with too many facts about more or less widely separated compounds, or they deal so much with groups of compounds, rather than with typical individual bodies, that the beginner soon loses his way, becomes perplexed, and is ready to abandon the pursuit.
An Introduction to the Study of the Compounds of Carbon; or, Organic Chemistry.
By Ira Remsen, Professor of Chemistry in the Johns Hopkins University. Pp. x., 364. (Boston: Ginn, Heath, and Co., 1885.)
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MUIR, M. An Introduction to the Study of the Compounds of Carbon; or, Organic Chemistry . Nature 32, 99–100 (1885). https://doi.org/10.1038/032099a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/032099a0