The connection of chemistry and medicine : address at the opening of the medical classes, Tuesday, October 21st, 1890 / by John Ferguson, M.A., LL.D., F.S.A., Regius Professor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow.

  • Ferguson, John, 1838-1916.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The connection of chemistry and medicine : address at the opening of the medical classes, Tuesday, October 21st, 1890 / by John Ferguson, M.A., LL.D., F.S.A., Regius Professor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    for discussion ; opinions about the nature of the elements or principles of compound bodies, held by the alchemists on one hand and by the spagyrists on the other, were subjected to a minute criticism by Boyle, who agreed with neither, and who pro- posed a definition which has since been adopted as the most reasonable. In another direction Becher gave the first generalized theory of the most important of all chemical actions—oxidation — which, although subsequently proved to be erroneous, prevailed for a whole century, quite as long as our present theory, and helped chemists to the better understanding of many phenomena, and to the discovery of many elements and com- pounds. Thus chemistry in the seventeenth century, as a science apart from all applications, started on an independent existence, with the sole aim of finding out the laws and processes according to which one kind of matter acts upon another. But it had no sooner done so than it rewarded pharmacy and technology ten-fold. Immediately the knowledge of all kinds of substances increased, and the pharmacist then, as he is now, was bewildered with the abundance of material with which chemical investigation supplied him. The services, however, rendered to medicine by chemistry do not stop with an improved phar-