Researches on cellulose, 1895-1900 / by Cross & Bevan (C. F. Cross and E. J. Bevan).

Date:
1901
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Researches on cellulose, 1895-1900 / by Cross & Bevan (C. F. Cross and E. J. Bevan). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    and grew rapidly under the stimulus of fruitful investigation, but in turn contributed to the firmer establishment of the theoretical views to which the subject owed its systematic new birth. On the other hand, every chemist knows that it is only the simpler of the carbohydrates which are so indi- vidualised as to be connoted by a particular formula in the stereoisomeric system. Leaving the monoses, there is even a doubt as to the constitution of cane sugar ; and the elements of uncertainty thicken as we approach the question of the chemical structure of starch. T. his unique product of plant life has a literature of its own, and how little of this is fully known to what we may term the ‘ average chemist is seen by the methods he will employ for its quantitative estimation. In one particular review of our work where we are taken to task for producing ‘ an aggravating book, inchoate in the highest degree . . . disfigured by an obscurity of diction which must materially diminish its usefulness ’ [‘ Nature,’ 1897, p. 241], the author, who is a well-known and com- petent critic, makes use of the short expression in regard to the more complex carbohydrates, ‘ Above cane sugar, higher in the series, all is chaos,’ and in reference to starch, ‘ the subject is still enshrouded in mystery.’ This ‘ material ’ complexity is at its maximum with the most complex members of the series, which are the celluloses, and we think accounts in part for the impatience of our critic. ‘ Obscurity of diction ’ is a personal quantity, and we must leave that criticism to the fates. We find also that many workers whose publications we notice in this present volume quite ignore the pla7i of tne work, though they make use of its matter. We think it neces- sary to restate this plan, which, we are satisfied, is systematic, and, in fact, inevitable. Cellulose is in the first instance a structure, and the anatomical relationships supply a certain basis of classification. Next, it is known to us and is defined
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