Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, May, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900Various
Science
Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, May, 1900: Vol. 57, May, 1900 to October, 1900
Various
Science -- Periodicals; Technology -- Periodicals
their nature, and were discovered by chemical methods. Physiology
without chemistry could not exist; even the phenomena of respiration
were meaningless before the discovery of oxygen. The human body is a
chemical laboratory, and without the aid of the chemist its mysteries
can not be unraveled.
To agriculture also chemistry is a potent ally, whose value can
hardly be overrated. It has created fertilizers and insecticides for
the use of the farmer and taught their intelligent use, and in the
many experiment stations of the world it is daily discovering facts
or principles which are practically applicable to agriculture. The
beet-sugar industry was developed by chemical researches and chemical
methods; the arts of the dairy have been chemically improved; the
food of all civilized nations is better and more abundant than it was
before the chemist gave his aid to its production. Adulteration, always
practiced, is now easily detected by chemical analysis, and, though the
evil still exists, the remedy for it is in sight. To Liebig, who gave
to agricultural chemistry its first great impulse forward, mankind is
indebted to an amount which is beyond all computation.
In manufactures the influence of chemistry is seen at every turn.
When the century began, probably no industrial establishment in the
world dreamed of maintaining a chemical laboratory; to-day, hundreds
are well equipped and often heavily manned for the sole benefit of
the intelligent manufacturer. Coal gas is a chemical product; its
by-products are ammonia and coal tar; from the latter, as we have
seen, hundreds of useful substances, the discoveries of the last half
century, are prepared. Better and cheaper soap and glass owe their
existence to chemical improvement in the making of alkalies; chemical
bleaching has replaced the tedious action of sunlight and dew; chemical
dyestuffs give our modern fabrics nearly all their hues. Metallurgy is
almost wholly a group of chemical processes; every metal is extracted
from its ores by methods which rest on chemical foundations; analyses
of fuel, flux, and product go on side by side with the smelting. The
cyanide and chlorination processes for gold, the Bessemer process for
steel, are apt illustrations of the advances in chemical metallurgy;
but before these come into play the dynamite of the miner, another
chemical invention, must have done its work underground. For rare
minerals, the mere curiosities of twenty years ago, uses have been
found; from monazite we obtain the oxides which form the mantle of the
Welsbach burner; from beauxite, aluminum is made. The former waste
products of many an industry have also revealed unsuspected values, and
chemistry has the sole honor of their discovery.
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