First outlines of a dictionary of solubilities of chemical substances / by Frank H. Storer.

  • Francis Humphreys Storer
Date:
1864
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: First outlines of a dictionary of solubilities of chemical substances / by Frank H. Storer. 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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    PREFACE The utility of a complete dictionary of the solubilities of chemical substances, or in fact of any of the physical constants of chemistry, needs no explanation. In publishing, however, these First Outlines of the Dictionary of Solubilities, which some years ago I began to compile, I wish to state the circumstances which have occasioned this course, and to request that the purport and aim of the book may be kept constantly in view. Some six years since, while attending lectures on applied science in Paris, I was first impressed with the great practical importance of a wider dissemination of our knowl- edge of the solubilities of salts, while at the same time I was convinced that Chemical Sci- ence itself might gain many advantages if all known facts respecting solubilities were gathered from the widely scattered original sources into one special comprehensive work, and thus presented in an easily accessible form. I at that time conceived the idea of collecting all the materials and embodying them in a dictionary, where each of the determinations already made might be within the reach of all persons interested, and which might, moreover, serve as a body of facts into which new and scattered ob- servations should be incorporated, and from which erroneous statements, now current, could be eliminated, as they are from time to time disproved. The importance of such a work was the more clearly impressed upon me, since I had learned, by previous ex- perience, how many difficulties and delays attend the correct determination of solubili- ties, and had observed how little attention is usually paid to the labors of earlier experi- menters, either as regards avoiding or refuting their errors, or bearing witness to the accuracy of their results. Besides furnishing, as an aid to chemical research, either in the scientific or the practical laboratory, a catalogue of known (or supposed) facts, such a compilation might answer the further purpose of indicating to those willing to labor for the advancement of science the numerous gaps in our knowledge of the subject which remain to be filled up. In proceeding to carry out this scheme, it was thought best to prepare, in the first place, a rough outline list of the names of substances, together with such general state- ments of their solubilities as are contained in standard systematic works on Chemistry, like Gmelin's Handbook, the treatises of Gerhardt, Dumas, etc. From these materials an alphabetical catalogue — the first of the kind, it is believed, ever attempted in our language — was framed, into which more detailed statements from original memoirs were to be inserted ; the matter previously taken from text-books serving merely as a guide in collating materials drawn directly from first sources, and as a means of control- ling the accuracy of the final abstracts. This part of the plan having been in a meas- ure accomplished, it was my intention, before publishing the work, to pursue the method, just indicated, of compiling from original sources until the leading chemical publications of this century, at least, had all been carefully searched, and the collected items duly
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