The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-03-27 00:00:00

LIEBIG AND FARADAY.

His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was present at
the Faraday Lecture of the Chymical Society, delivered on
Thursday night in last week in the hall of the Royal Insti-
tution by Professor Dr. A. W. Hofmann, of the University
of Berlin. Dr. Odling was in the chair. Among the
audience were Professor Tyndall, Professor Williamson,
Professor Sylvester, Dr. Lyon Playf air. Dr. Holzmann, Dr.
W. Siemens, Dr. Andrew Clark, Professor Henrici, Dr.
Gladstone, Mr. Sprengel, and many other distinguished
persons, but the attendance of the public was comparatively
scanty.

Faraday belonged, said the lecturer, by the univer-
sality of his genius to all civilized countries, and the
Council of the Chymical Society had ordained that all
countries should be asked to join in rendering homage
to the greatest experimental thinker among mankind.
On the present occasion Germany had been invited to
take part in this international tribute and it was a
honour for him to interpret his country's homage.
His illustrious teacher and lamented friend Justua
von Liebig was a master mind like Faraday, and
Liebig's is the name and figure alone fitted to stand
on equal terms beside Faraday. To speak of Liebig
only, we should have to proclaim him one of the
greatee contributors to chymistry at large while
of organic chymistry he was the founder. But
-it is not only by the discovery of new facts that
he was distinguished, but by the conception of general
laws which illustrate both organic and inorganic
chymistry. But the great types of composition which
under the name of " radicals" he first spoke of, and
by the researches to which these led, he guided not
only his contemporaries, but will guide succeeding
ages. He was also the first to found in Europe the
great systems of education. It was at Giessen he
organized the first great laboratory of experimental in.
; and if we now admire magnificent temples
of science, let us not forget that we owe them to the
first which he established. He called around him dis-
tinguished students, many of whom were raised now to
exalted positions by their talents and learning, and
many of whom the lecturer saw before him. They would
not be wanting in the tribute of heart-felt reverence to
their. great master. (Applause.) By his keen insight into
chymical analogy he marked out the way of chymical
research, and he also showed how to keep up the supply
of human hearts and minds to prosecute his work.
He provided arms, and soldiers to wield them. There
is no greater proof of the fecundity of genius than that
it itself enriches the storehouse of science with his dis-
coveries, and also provides the means of ulterior con-
quest in ages yet to come. Which of us returning to
morrow to his lonely post in the laboratory could not
feel cheered by the example of such men as Liebig and
Faraday? It was the habit of Liebig to trace laws in
their farthest results, and their applicability to pro-
moting the practical welfare of mankind. No one has
in this way more enriched us. Liebig's labours in.
abstract science bore fruit in the useful arts. He ma-
terially elucidated great industries, the manufacture of
fulminating compounds and prussiate of potash, for in-
stance, together with materials of the most important
use in the work of the precious metals, and silver.
coated mirrors, so preferable for purposes of science
and adornment to the old mercury-backed glasses.
Illustrans commodci vitae, he never let slip any occasion
of promoting the good of his fellow-creatures. His pene-
trating philosophy could not remain a stranger to the
profound secrets of life based upon chymical change.
He revealed the dependence of plants upon the chymical
composition of the soil and air. He studied also the laws
of nutrition and development of the animal body. In
the former of these branches he was crowned with the
greatest success. He began in 1840 by his work on
agriculture and zoology, written in compliance with
the request of the British Association at their
1837 meeting at Liverpool, and he followed it up by
his work on husbandry. His labours resulted in
the establishment of the philosophy of agriculture, and
ranked him with Lavoisier, who showed in the last
century how the vegetable stands between the mineral
and the animal, and collects from the former world
food for the latter. Lavosier was followed by Humphry
Davy, and after him came Liebig. They are the three
great law-givers of modern agriculture. It was in
1842 that Liebig, passing onward from food producers
to animals, brought out his work on the subject, and
it may be taken as a result of his work that the super-
abundant animal food of thinly-peopled parts of the
earth has been, by a fast developing industry, brought
over to guard Europe against the pinch of want.
Those who are engaged in the curative art must bear
him gratitude for the discovery of chloroform, nor
will they forget chloral, the benign influences of which
will even induce sleep, and place it among the most
sublime agencies put at the disposal of therapeuticst
by chymical art. He had, he said, selected but a few
illustrations, which would satisfy them better than any
long explanations by him of Liebig's voluminous life-
work, and he asked them to accompany him in a rapid
view of Liebig's memorable contributions to chymistry
proper. But Liebig's contributions to the Royal
Society's library were in 1863 317 in number, and 283
were entirely by himself. When his pupils in Berlin
heard that he had been intrusted with this lecture they
produced all the substances which Liebig at any period
of his career more particularly illustrated; these pre-
parations now crowded the table. The first achievement
he would allude to was that which, whether or not his
most brilliant discovery, contributed most to facilitate
the labours of chymists, and was the main source of the
marvellous development of organic chymistry—analysis
by combustion of organic bodies and the determination
of their carbon by his form of measurement. Not one
there but had determined the molecular weight of
bodies, but they might not be aware that we are in-
debted for the process to Liebig. He never published
any particular paper on the subject, but merely com-
municated his method in a paper on another chymist's
researches. Its merit is simplicity, like that of his air
analysis. That an alkaline solution of pyrogenic acid
takes up oxygen and becomes more and more blackened
by its action had long been known. But it was
reserved for Liebig to found on the fact the measure-
itient of oxygen. By treating the gas to be examined
first with potash and then with pyrogenic acid,
be combined the investigation for oxygen with
that of carbonic acid. Passing to the researches
he effected by the instrumentality of his
inventions there come the fulminating compounds.
At a remote period Liebig compared fulminating with
pieric acid. There was no satisfactory analysis of the
method of fusing substances with prussiate of potash,
and he first showed how iron is taken up by ferro-
cyanides, and his experiments are the foundation of
the modern manufacture. Another valuable point
was his simple process of obtaining cyanide of potas-
sium. It is now manufactured on a large scale on his
sss, and is thus extensively used in electro-typing.
see discovery led him to others. Liebig and Wohler
furnish us with the group of aromatic compounds
which stream forth from benzol in infinite variety. At the
conclusion of the description of their experiments they
say their inquiries arrange themselves round a group
of acids. This analogy induced them to consider
the group as a kind of compound element, to which ,
they gave the name of benzol. When a chymist
is fortunate enough to encounter some such guide
in the midst of unknown nature he has good cause to
congratulate himself. If even now after 40 years the
results of this research have such fascination, what
were the feelings of contemporaries? One of them
"discerns the dawn of a new day," and suggests
orthrine for the name of the new compound element
from jv OP", "day-break." Now, the lecturer should
by rights unfold before their eyes the chain from oil of
almonds to benzolic acid. But time reminded him to
hasten on. The uric acid group furnished a path
which had not yet conducted us to the goal. Uric
acid was not all unknown in 1834, when Liebig esta-
blished its formula. It had been known in 1734, but
lit was not till 1850 that a youth in his 19th year
discovered the most fertile source of the compound.
Liebig and Wohler soon showed that its muta-
bility, its liability to chymical change, entitled
them to reap rich harvest from it. Sixteen
new and most remarkable bodies were at a single
stroke incorporated into the history of chymistry. Only
one has since disappeared and called for rectification,
and no better proof could be given of their scrupulous
accuracy. They showed how clearly they discerned the
synthetic direction which organic chymistry was about
to take. Sugar, silicine, morphine would be, they say,
synthetically prepared. One more illustration must
suffice—the remarkable results in the investigation of
alcohol. His first experiments were in 1832, when his
inquiry, undertaken for purely scientific and abstract
ends, led to the discovery of chloral and chloroform.
He discovered hydrate of chloral and its beautiful
icrystalline form. In 1847, 15 years after its discovery,
chloroform was Used for the first time as an amesthetic,
and 20 years more elapsed before Liebreich found
a similar use for chloral. At the present day thechy-
inical factories of Berlin alone produce 100 kilos. a day
of the principal ampesthetic. Liebig denied the pre-
sence of the olefiant gas previously ascribed to alcohols,
and gave their chief constituent the name of ether,
and although according to our present view the rela-
tion between alcohol and ether has changed, no one
now speaks of the olefiant theory. The new system
of chemizal notation introdnced by two French
chemists was nowhere carlier championed than here,
and by Faraday, under whose colessos they were as-
sembled. To that England owes the honour of being
foremost to recog,nise the truth of the new doctrine.
Its modification of Liebig's formuln extends also to
his ether. Williamson elucidated the question with
striking success, but Williamson owed to Liebig the
very agents he so successfully employed. Liebig
"bad no doubt we should succeed in the analysis
of ether." Liebig's dream was realized by Frank-
land. (Applause. Our respect and our admiration
are due to Liebig not only for his scientific
abstractlabour. Wse, j-earls ,ora bim that anxiety to discover
laws is not be 'dissociated from efforts for
he well-being of our race. The lecturer bore in
pie a little incident so illustrative of his goodness
of heaFt that he ventured to relate it. He then told
kroken
the story of r, soldier whom, during a tour in
the Tyrol, Liebig not only helped with florins but pro-
s tollforne Walk over mountains.
cured quinine for by
Of Faraday's kindness he had a touching example. A
gentleman had handed him a letter of 1834, in which
Faraday wrote to a student who had engaged, like
pmany others, in a dream about matter and atome, and
WM gagollo to spbMit his ramblings in philosophic
. • -

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