Commercial Organic Analysis

Abstract

NOTWITHSTANDING the fact that enormous numbers of text-books on chemical subjects have been appearing during recent years, a few comprehensive works on the subject of commercial analysis have been long and greatly needed. When it is considered how every day commerce has been availing itself more and more of the powers of scrutiny and control afforded by chemical analysis, this delay may appear remarkable. But the truth is that to produce such a work very exceptional qualifications and a very unusual degree of experience are necessary. A work on commercial analysis must be thoroughly practical if it is to be useful, and prescribe methods of analysis only which experience has proved to be accurate and serviceable. Analysts as a rule have their specialities-these specialities often being determined by local industries-and long experience frequently leads them to devise or modify processes without any record appearing outside their own laboratories. Almost every analyst has his own manuscript “process-book,” according to which he expects his assistants or pupils to work, and so it becomes a matter of extreme difficulty for an author to produce a work that shall be generally acceptable as a laboratory guide. The too frequently occurring discrepancies in commercial analyses may in a measure be attributed to the same cause, and there can be no doubt that a unification in the methods of conducting and recording analyses is greatly to be desired. This end will doubtless be greatly furthered by the production of standard books such as the present one.

Commercial Organic Analysis.

Vol. I. By Alfred H. Allen. (London: J. and A. Churchill, 1885.)