America has furnished some eminent chemists in the Nineteenth Century, who have made valuable contributions to the science, notably in the field of metallurgy. It is a fact, however, which must be admitted with regret, that America has not in the field of chemical research occupied the leading place she has in mechanical progress. The European laboratory is the birthplace of most modern inventions in the chemical field, and this is so simply by reason of the fact that these more patient investigators have set themselves studiously, systematically and persistently to the work of chemical invention. It is said that some of the large commercial works in Germany have over 100 Ph. D.’s in a single manufacturing establishment, whose work is not directed to the management of the manufacture, but solely to original research, and the making of inventions. The laboratories in such works differ from those in the universities only in being more perfectly equipped, and more sumptuously appointed. The result of this is seen in the fact that in 1899 the United States imported coal tar dyes alone to the extent of $3,799,353, and 5,227,098 pounds of alizarine, most of which came from Germany, and for which we paid a good price, since the German manufacturers control the United States patents. The alizarine dyes are for the most part the artificial kind made by German chemists. Prior to 1869 the red alizarine dye was of plant origin, being obtained from madder root, and it cost $2 a pound. The German chemist produced an artificially made product, which took the place of the madder dye, and was sold at $1.20 a pound. At the end of the patent term (seventeen years) the price fell to 15c. a pound, showing that the product was produced at a profit of more than $1.05 a pound, and as millions of pounds were imported annually, it is estimated that $35,000,000 was the price paid the German chemists for their foresight in combining science with business. Many United States patents granted to foreign chemists are still in force, and the rich reward of their skill is reaped at our expense.
Discovery of elements.—In the early days of chemical knowledge, fire, air, earth and water constituted the insignificant category of the elements, which was as faulty in classification as it was small in size. Gradual splitting up of compounds, and an increase in the number of elements, has gone on progressively for some hundreds of years, until to-day the list extends well on to one hundred elementary bodies. Those which belong to the credit of the Nineteenth Century are given in the table following, with the name of the discoverer, and the date of its discovery.
| ELEMENTS DISCOVERED IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ELEMENTS. | DISCOVERER. | YEAR. | ||
| Columbium | Hatchett | 1801 | ||
| Tantalum | Ekeberg | 1802 | ||
| Iridium | Tenant | 1803 | ||
| Osmium | Tenant | 1803 | ||
| Cerium | Berzelius | 1803 | ||
| Palladium | Wollaston | 1804 | ||
| Rhodium | Wollaston | 1804 | ||
| Potassium | Davy | 1807 | ||
| Sodium | Davy | 1807 | ||
| Barium | Davy | 1808 | ||
| Strontium | Davy | 1808 | ||
| Calcium | Davy | 1808 | ||
| Boron | Davy | 1808 | ||
| Iodine | Courtois | 1811 | ||
| Cyanogen | Gay Lussac | 1814 | ||
| (Comp. rad.) | ||||
| Selenium | Berzelius | 1817 | ||
| Cadmium | Stromeyer | 1817 | ||
| Lithium | Arfvedson | 1817 | ||
| Silicon | Berzelius | 1823 | ||
| Zirconium | Berzelius | 1824 | ||
| Bromine | Balard | 1826 | ||
| Thorium | Berzelius | 1828 | ||
| Yttrium | Wohler | 1828 | ||
| Glucinum | Wohler | 1828 | ||
| Aluminum | Wohler | 1828 | ||
| Magnesium | Bussey | 1829 | ||
| Vanadium | Sefstroem | 1830 | ||
| Lanthanum | Mosander | 1839 | ||
| Didymium | Mosander | 1839 | ||
| Erbium | Mosander | 1843 | ||
| Terbium | Mosander | 1843 | ||
| Ruthenium | Claus | 1845 | ||
| Rubidium | Bunsen | 1860 | ||
| Caesium | Bunsen | 1860 | ||
| Thallium | Crookes | 1862 | ||
| Indium | Reich | 1863 | ||
| Richter | ||||
| Gallium | Boisbaudran | 1875 | ||
| Ytterbium | Marignac | 1878 | ||
| Samarium | Boisbaudran | 1879 | ||
| Scandium | Nilson | 1879 | ||
| Thulium | Cleve | 1879 | ||
| Neodymium | Welsbach | 1885 | ||
| Praseodymium | Welsbach | 1885 | ||
| Gadolinium | Marignac | 1886 | ||
| Germanium | Winkler | 1886 | ||
| Argon | Raleigh | 1894 | ||
| Ramsey | ||||
| Krypton | Ramsey | 1897 | ||
| Travers | ||||
| Neon | Ramsey | 1898 | ||
| Travers | ||||
| Metargon | Ramsey | 1898 | ||
| Travers | ||||
| Coronium | Nasini | 1898 | ||
| Xenon | Ramsey | 1898 | ||
| Monium | Crookes | 1898 | ||
| Etherion (?) | Brush | 1898 | ||
Whether or not these so-called elements are really true elementary forms of matter, which are absolutely indivisible, is a problem for the chemists of the coming centuries to solve. The classification has the approval of the present age. What new elements may be found no one may predict. Mendelejeff’s periodic law, however, suggests great possibilities in this field. Allotropism, in which the same element will present entirely different physical aspects, is also a significant and suggestive phenomenon, for in it we see carbon appearing at one time as a crude, black and ungainly mass of coal, and at another it appears as the limpid and flashing diamond. In more than one mind there is a lurking suspicion that there may, after all, be only one form of primordial matter, from which all others are derived by some wondrous play of the atoms, and if so the old idea of the alchemist as to the transmutation of metals may not be entirely wrong. The Twentieth Century may give us more light.
[CHAPTER XIX.]
Food and Drink.
[The Nature of Food]—[The Roller Mill]—[The Middlings Purifier]—[Culinary Utensils]—[Bread Machinery]—[Dairy Appliances]—[Centrifugal Milk Skimmer]—[The Canning Industry]—[Sterilization]—[Butchering and Dressing Meats]—[Oleomargarine]—[Manufacture of Sugar]—[The Vacuum Pan]—[Centrifugal Filter]—[Modern Dietetics and Patented Foods].
If called upon to name the most important of all factors of human existence, that which underlies and sustains all others, even to life itself, everyone must agree that it is food. A remarkable fact in this connection is that all animal life lives and thrives by eating some other thing that is or has been alive, or is the product of organic growth. The vegetarian may pride himself upon his higher ideals of living, but after all his fruit, vegetables, and cereals belong to the great category of living organisms, and are to a certain extent sentient and conscious, for even the plant will turn to the sun. The beasts of the field and fowls of the air live by preying upon other weaker animals and birds, these upon plants and grasses, and the plants and grasses upon the decaying mosses and organic mould of the soil, and the mosses upon still lower organisms. The big fish of the sea eat the little fish, the little fish the small fry, and these in turn live upon worms and animalcula, and so on all the way down to protoplasm. Omniverous man, in spite of his boasted civilization and enlightment, not only eats them all, flesh, fowl, fish, grain and plants, but lives exclusively upon them. But he can only live on that which has been produced by the mysterious agency of life, and this furnishes a significant suggestion for the philosopher, for it may be that life itself is only an accumulated active power or unitary force regenerated in some metamorphic way from vital force stored up in the bacteria of organic food, and necessarily connected therewith in an endless chain of reproductions, and if this be true, the hope of the scientist as to the synthesis of food from its elements must ever remain a philosophic dream, because the scientist cannot create a bacterium.