A Laboratory Manual of Organic Chemistry

Abstract

IT will be readily understood in these days of rapid research that the appearance of a compendium of the latest reagents, processes and apparatus, intended to curtail the labour of the laboratory, would prove acceptable to organic chemists, and it is not surprising that the second German edition of this work should have appeared within a brief period. Its success in Germany may be taken as a guarantee that the English translation will be well received. The original will already have found its way, without doubt, into some of our laboratories. There are many useful laboratory methods scattered through the literature, which are frequently difficult to lay one's hand on at once. The present volume, which has been compiled with much discrimination, gives an account of all the important laboratory operations used in organic research, carefully described and illustrated. In these descriptions either the original account is reproduced, or a sufficiently detailed description is supplied by the author, so that a final appeal to the reference may generally be dispensed with—an important point, since herein lies the essence of the book's utility. The less important methods are briefly mentioned with a reference to the original paper. To try and strike a mean between these two extremes is obviously useless, and occasionally the author falls into this error. For example, under “aluminium chloride” (p. 105), it is stated that this substance is prepared from aluminium and chlorine. Then follows a fairly long account of a method by Gattermann, from aluminium and hydrochloric acid. The description is unaccompanied by any diagram, and is so incomplete that I am confident that any one who attempted to prepare it for the first time from this description would fail. In such a case the author would render a greater service by simply giving the reference. A Laboratory Manual of Organic Chemistry. By Dr. Lassar-Cohn. Translated by Alexander Smith, B.Sc., Ph.D. Pp. vii + 403. (London: Macmillan and Co., 1895.)