Some encomiums upon the excellent treatise of chemistry by Berzelius : also objections to his nomenclature, and suggestions respecting a substitute, deemed preferable, in a letter to Professor Silliman / by Robert Hare.

  • Hare, Robert, 1781-1858.
Date:
[1834]
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Some encomiums upon the excellent treatise of chemistry by Berzelius : also objections to his nomenclature, and suggestions respecting a substitute, deemed preferable, in a letter to Professor Silliman / by Robert Hare. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    SOME ENCOMIUMS UPON THE EXCELLENT TREATISE OF CHEMISTRY, BY BERZELIUS; ALSO Objections to his Nomenclature, and Suggestions respecting a Substitute, deemed preferable, in a Letter to Professor Silliman. BY ROBERT HARE, M.D. Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pennsylvania. &T7/ Philadelphia, June, 1834. My Dear Silliman, I have already apprized you, that last year I had the honour to receive from the celebrated Berzelius, six volumes of his admirable treatise of Chemistry; to which, during the last summer, I gave much time, in order to avail myself of the vast fund of useful prac- tical knowledge which it contains. I am of opinion that to adepts in the science, this treatise is the most interesting and instructive compilation of chemical knowledge which has ever issued from the press. It comprises much matter for which Chemistry is indebted entirely to the genius, skill, and industry of the author, while scarcely any subject in it is so treated, as not to create a renovated interest in the reader, however previously familiar with the sci- ence. Sweden may with reason be proud of her Scheele, her Bergman, and her Berzelius. The last, but not the least, of these great che- mists, aided by an Herculean intellect, and commencing at the point at which his predecessors terminated their glorious career, may be considered as possessing attainments which have never been excelled. Yet the sun is not without spots, nor is Berzelius without errors; unless indeed, those which I have ascribed to him, are phantoms of my own intellectual vision. 1 concur with those chemists who consider the relation ascer- tained by Berzelius, between the quantities of oxygen in oxybases, and in oxacids, as a necessary consequence of the laws of combina- tion, on which the Daltonian theory has been founded. I con- ceive also that the interesting facts which demonstrate the exist- ence of the relation alluded to, would be more easily understood and remembered, if referred to the theory of atoms, than when made the basis of his doctrine of capacities for saturation, and of the numbers by which those capacities are expressed. Moreover, I do not approve of his nomenclature. This is a sub- ject highly interesting to me at this time. The last edition of my text book is exhausted, and in publishing a new edition I shall be obliged either to adopt the nomenclature of Berzelius, or to adhere y '. - » ■. f f^i •