The progress of scientific chemistry in our own times : with biographical notices / by William A. Tilden.

  • William A. Tilden
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The progress of scientific chemistry in our own times : with biographical notices / by William A. Tilden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    VI ] SYNTHESIS OF ALIZARIN complex compounds has been effected by making use of this principle. Enough has now been said to indicate the lines upon which research has travelled during the last forty years or more, but it must be obvious that the practical success of such operations is greatly dependent upon providing the right physical condi¬ tions, and these can only be arrived at as the result of much experience in the laboratory. The artificial production of complex carbon com¬ pounds, possessing properties which render them applicable to a great variety of practical purposes, may be justly regarded as one of the triumphs of modem chemistry. Many of these compounds, such, for example, as salicylic acid, used extensively as an antiseptic and as a remedial agent in medicine, indigo and alizarin as dyes, coumarin and vanillin as perfumes, are identical with the compounds pre¬ viously known only as products of vegetable life, and obtainable only from the substance of the several plants which yield them. Some of these discoveries, in consequence of which it has become possible to dispense with the cultivation or collection of large quantities of a plant, have been followed by economic results of far-reaching effect. One of the most notable instances of this kind is supplied by the case of alizarin, the chief red colouring matter of the madder root. The cultivation of this plant, the Rubia tinctorum of the botanist, of which the wild variety is found commonly in hedges in
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