A History of Science Volume IV Part 3

By paying constant heed to this matter of the affinities, chemists are able to make diagrammatic pictures of the plan of architecture of any molecule whose composition is known. In the simple molecule of water (H2O), for example, the two hydrogen atoms must have released each other before they could join the oxygen, and the manner of linking must apparently be that represented in the graphic formula H--O--H.

With molecules composed of a large number of atoms, such graphic representation of the scheme of linking is of course increasingly difficult, yet, with the affinities for a guide, it is always possible.

Of course no one supposes that such a formula, written in a single plane, can possibly represent the true architecture of the molecule: it is at best suggestive or diagrammatic rather than pictorial.

Nevertheless, it affords hints as to the structure of the molecule such as the fathers of chemistry would not have thought it possible ever to attain.

PERIODICITY OF ATOMIC WEIGHTS

These utterly novel studies of molecular architecture may seem at first sight to take from the atom much of its former prestige as the all-important personage of the chemical world. Since so much depends upon the mere position of the atoms, it may appear that comparatively little depends upon the nature of the atoms themselves. But such a view is incorrect, for on closer consideration it will appear that at no time has the atom been seen to renounce its peculiar personality. Within certain limits the character of a molecule may be altered by changing the positions of its atoms (just as different buildings may be constructed of the same bricks), but these limits are sharply defined, and it would be as impossible to exceed them as it would be to build a stone building with bricks. From first to last the brick remains a brick, whatever the style of architecture it helps to construct; it never becomes a stone. And just as closely does each atom retain its own peculiar properties, regardless of its surroundings.

Thus, for example, the carbon atom may take part in the formation at one time of a diamond, again of a piece of coal, and yet again of a particle of sugar, of wood fibre, of animal tissue, or of a gas in the atmosphere; but from first to last--from gla.s.s-cutting gem to intangible gas--there is no demonstrable change whatever in any single property of the atom itself. So far as we know, its size, its weight, its capacity for vibration or rotation, and its inherent affinities, remain absolutely unchanged throughout all these varying fortunes of position and a.s.sociation. And the same thing is true of every atom of all of the seventy-odd elementary substances with which the modern chemist is acquainted. Every one appears always to maintain its unique integrity, gaining nothing and losing nothing.

All this being true, it would seem as if the position of the Daltonian atom as a primordial bit of matter, indestructible and non-trans.m.u.table, had been put to the test by the chemistry of our century, and not found wanting. Since those early days of the century when the electric battery performed its miracles and seemingly reached its limitations in the hands of Davy, many new elementary substances have been discovered, but no single element has been displaced from its position as an undecomposable body. Rather have the a.n.a.lyses of the chemist seemed to make it more and more certain that all elementary atoms are in truth what John Herschel called them, "manufactured articles"--primordial, changeless, indestructible.

And yet, oddly enough, it has chanced that hand in hand with the experiments leading to such a goal have gone other experiments arid speculations of exactly the opposite tenor. In each generation there have been chemists among the leaders of their science who have refused to admit that the so-called elements are really elements at all in any final sense, and who have sought eagerly for proof which might warrant their scepticism. The first bit of evidence tending to support this view was furnished by an English physician, Dr. William Prout, who in 1815 called attention to a curious relation to be observed between the atomic weight of the various elements. Accepting the figures given by the authorities of the time (notably Thomson and Berzelius), it appeared that a strikingly large proportion of the atomic weights were exact multiples of the weight of hydrogen, and that others differed so slightly that errors of observation might explain the discrepancy. Prout felt that it could not be accidental, and he could think of no tenable explanation, unless it be that the atoms of the various alleged elements are made up of different fixed numbers of hydrogen atoms. Could it be that the one true element--the one primal matter--is hydrogen, and that all other forms of matter are but compounds of this original substance?

Prout advanced this startling idea at first tentatively, in an anonymous publication; but afterwards he espoused it openly and urged its tenability. Coming just after Davy's dissociation of some supposed elements, the idea proved alluring, and for a time gained such popularity that chemists were disposed to round out the observed atomic weights of all elements into whole numbers. But presently renewed determinations of the atomic weights seemed to discountenance this practice, and Prout's alleged law fell into disrepute. It was revived, however, about 1840, by Dumas, whose great authority secured it a respectful hearing, and whose careful redetermination of the weight of carbon, making it exactly twelve times that of hydrogen, aided the cause.

Subsequently Stas, the pupil of Dumas, undertook a long series of determinations of atomic weights, with the expectation of confirming the Proutian hypothesis. But his results seemed to disprove the hypothesis, for the atomic weights of many elements differed from whole numbers by more, it was thought, than the limits of error of the experiments. It was noteworthy, however, that the confidence of Dumas was not shaken, though he was led to modify the hypothesis, and, in accordance with previous suggestions of Clark and of Marignac, to recognize as the primordial element, not hydrogen itself, but an atom half the weight, or even one-fourth the weight, of that of hydrogen, of which primordial atom the hydrogen atom itself is compounded. But even in this modified form the hypothesis found great opposition from experimental observers.

In 1864, however, a novel relation between the weights of the elements and their other characteristics was called to the attention of chemists by Professor John A. R. Newlands, of London, who had noticed that if the elements are arranged serially in the numerical order of their atomic weights, there is a curious recurrence of similar properties at intervals of eight elements This so-called "law of octaves" attracted little immediate attention, but the facts it connotes soon came under the observation of other chemists, notably of Professors Gustav Hinrichs in America, Dmitri Mendeleeff in Russia, and Lothar Meyer in Germany.

Mendeleeff gave the discovery fullest expression, explicating it in 1869, under the t.i.tle of "the periodic law."

Though this early exposition of what has since been admitted to be a most important discovery was very fully outlined, the generality of chemists gave it little heed till a decade or so later, when three new elements, gallium, scandium, and germanium, were discovered, which, on being a.n.a.lyzed, were quite unexpectedly found to fit into three gaps which Mendeleeff had left in his periodic scale. In effect the periodic law had enabled Mendeleeff to predicate the existence of the new elements years before they were discovered. Surely a system that leads to such results is no mere vagary. So very soon the periodic law took its place as one of the most important generalizations of chemical science.

This law of periodicity was put forward as an expression of observed relations independent of hypothesis; but of course the theoretical bearings of these facts could not be overlooked. As Professor J. H.

Gladstone has said, it forces upon us "the conviction that the elements are not separate bodies created without reference to one another, but that they have been originally fashioned, or have been built up, from one another, according to some general plan." It is but a short step from that proposition to the Proutian hypothesis.

NEW WEAPONS--SPECTROSCOPE AND CAMERA

But the atomic weights are not alone in suggesting the compound nature of the alleged elements. Evidence of a totally different kind has contributed to the same end, from a source that could hardly have been imagined when the Proutian hypothesis, was formulated, through the tradition of a novel weapon to the armamentarium of the chemist--the spectroscope. The perfection of this instrument, in the hands of two German scientists, Gustav Robert Kirchhoff and Robert Wilhelm Bunsen, came about through the investigation, towards the middle of the century, of the meaning of the dark lines which had been observed in the solar spectrum by Fraunhofer as early as 1815, and by Wollaston a decade earlier. It was suspected by Stokes and by Fox Talbot in England, but first brought to demonstration by Kirchhoff and Bunsen, that these lines, which were known to occupy definite positions in the spectrum, are really indicative of particular elementary substances. By means of the spectroscope, which is essentially a magnifying lens attached to a prism of gla.s.s, it is possible to locate the lines with great accuracy, and it was soon shown that here was a new means of chemical a.n.a.lysis of the most exquisite delicacy. It was found, for example, that the spectroscope could detect the presence of a quant.i.ty of sodium so infinitesimal as the one two-hundred-thousandth of a grain. But what was even more important, the spectroscope put no limit upon the distance of location of the substance it tested, provided only that sufficient light came from it. The experiments it recorded might be performed in the sun, or in the most distant stars or nebulae; indeed, one of the earliest feats of the instrument was to wrench from the sun the secret of his chemical const.i.tution.

To render the utility of the spectroscope complete, however, it was necessary to link with it another new chemical agency--namely, photography. This now familiar process is based on the property of light to decompose certain unstable compounds of silver, and thus alter their chemical composition. Davy and Wedgwood barely escaped the discovery of the value of the photographic method early in the nineteenth century.

Their successors quite overlooked it until about 1826, when Louis J. M.

Daguerre, the French chemist, took the matter in hand, and after many years of experimentation brought it to relative perfection in 1839, in which year the famous daguerreotype first brought the matter to popular attention. In the same year Mr. Fox Talbot read a paper on the subject before the Royal Society, and soon afterwards the efforts of Herschel and numerous other natural philosophers contributed to the advancement of the new method.

In 1843 Dr. John W. Draper, the famous English-American chemist and physiologist, showed that by photography the Fraunhofer lines in the solar spectrum might be mapped with absolute accuracy; also proving that the silvered film revealed many lines invisible to the unaided eye. The value of this method of observation was recognized at once, and, as soon as the spectroscope was perfected, the photographic method, in conjunction with its use, became invaluable to the chemist. By this means comparisons of spectra may be made with a degree of accuracy not otherwise obtainable; and, in case of the stars, whole cl.u.s.ters of spectra may be placed on record at a single observation.

As the examination of the sun and stars proceeded, chemists were amazed or delighted, according to their various preconceptions, to witness the proof that many familiar terrestrial elements are to be found in the celestial bodies. But what perhaps surprised them most was to observe the enormous preponderance in the sidereal bodies of the element hydrogen. Not only are there vast quant.i.ties of this element in the sun's atmosphere, but some other suns appeared to show hydrogen lines almost exclusively in their spectra. Presently it appeared that the stars of which this is true are those white stars, such as Sirius, which had been conjectured to be the hottest; whereas stars that are only red-hot, like our sun, show also the vapors of many other elements, including iron and other metals.

In 1878 Professor J. Norman Lockyer, in a paper before the Royal Society, called attention to the possible significance of this series of observations. He urged that the fact of the sun showing fewer elements than are observed here on the cool earth, while stars much hotter than the sun show chiefly one element, and that one hydrogen, the lightest of known elements, seemed to give color to the possibility that our alleged elements are really compounds, which at the temperature of the hottest stars may be decomposed into hydrogen, the latter "element" itself being also doubtless a compound, which might be resolved under yet more trying conditions.

Here, then, was what might be termed direct experimental evidence for the hypothesis of Prout. Unfortunately, however, it is evidence of a kind which only a few experts are competent to discuss--so very delicate a matter is the spectral a.n.a.lysis of the stars. What is still more unfortunate, the experts do not agree among themselves as to the validity of Professor Lockyer's conclusions. Some, like Professor Crookes, have accepted them with acclaim, hailing Lockyer as "the Darwin of the inorganic world," while others have sought a different explanation of the facts he brings forward. As yet it cannot be said that the controversy has been brought to final settlement. Still, it is hardly to be doubted that now, since the periodic law has seemed to join hands with the spectroscope, a belief in the compound nature of the so-called elements is rapidly gaining ground among chemists. More and more general becomes the belief that the Daltonian atom is really a compound radical, and that back of the seeming diversity of the alleged elements is a single form of primordial matter. Indeed, in very recent months, direct experimental evidence for this view has at last come to hand, through the study of radio-active substances. In a later chapter we shall have occasion to inquire how this came about.

IV. ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

ALBRECHT VON HALLER

An epoch in physiology was made in the eighteenth century by the genius and efforts of Albrecht von Haller (1708-1777), of Berne, who is perhaps as worthy of the t.i.tle "The Great" as any philosopher who has been so christened by his contemporaries since the time of Hippocrates.

Celebrated as a physician, he was proficient in various fields, being equally famed in his own time as poet, botanist, and statesman, and dividing his attention between art and science.

As a child Haller was so sickly that he was unable to amuse himself with the sports and games common to boys of his age, and so pa.s.sed most of his time poring over books. When ten years of age he began writing poems in Latin and German, and at fifteen entered the University of Tubingen.

At seventeen he wrote learned articles in opposition to certain accepted doctrines, and at nineteen he received his degree of doctor. Soon after this he visited England, where his zeal in dissecting brought him under suspicion of grave-robbery, which suspicion made it expedient for him to return to the Continent. After studying botany in Basel for some time he made an extended botanical journey through Switzerland, finally settling in his native city, Berne, as a practising physician. During this time he did not neglect either poetry or botany, publishing anonymously a collection of poems.

In 1736 he was called to Gottingen as professor of anatomy, surgery, chemistry, and botany. During his labors in the university he never neglected his literary work, sometimes living and sleeping for days and nights together in his library, eating his meals while delving in his books, and sleeping only when actually compelled to do so by fatigue.

During all this time he was in correspondence with savants from all over the world, and it is said of him that he never left a letter of any kind unanswered.

Haller's greatest contribution to medical science was his famous doctrine of irritability, which has given him the name of "father of modern nervous physiology," just as Harvey is called "the father of the modern physiology of the blood." It has been said of this famous doctrine of irritability that "it moved all the minds of the century--and not in the departments of medicine alone--in a way of which we of the present day have no satisfactory conception, unless we compare it with our modern Darwinism."(1)

The principle of general irritability had been laid down by Francis Glisson (1597-1677) from deductive studies, but Haller proved by experiments along the line of inductive methods that this irritability was not common to all "fibre as well as to the fluids of the body," but something entirely special, and peculiar only to muscular substance. He distinguished between irritability of muscles and sensibility of nerves.

In 1747 he gave as the three forces that produce muscular movements: elasticity, or "dead nervous force"; irritability, or "innate nervous force"; and nervous force in itself. And in 1752 he described one hundred and ninety experiments for determining what parts of the body possess "irritability"--that is, the property of contracting when stimulated. His conclusion that this irritability exists in muscular substance alone and is quite independent of the nerves proceeding to it aroused a controversy that was never definitely settled until late in the nineteenth century, when Haller's theory was found to be entirely correct.

It was in pursuit of experiments to establish his theory of irritability that Haller made his chief discoveries in embryology and development. He proved that in the process of incubation of the egg the first trace of the heart of the chick shows itself in the thirty-eighth hour, and that the first trace of red blood showed in the forty-first hour. By his investigations upon the lower animals he attempted to confirm the theory that since the creation of genus every individual is derived from a preceding individual--the existing theory of preformation, in which he believed, and which taught that "every individual is fully and completely preformed in the germ, simply growing from microscopic to visible proportions, without developing any new parts."

In physiology, besides his studies of the nervous system, Haller studied the mechanism of respiration, refuting the teachings of Hamberger (1697-1755), who maintained that the lungs contract independently.

Haller, however, in common with his contemporaries, failed utterly to understand the true function of the lungs. The great physiologist's influence upon practical medicine, while most profound, was largely indirect. He was a theoretical rather than a practical physician, yet he is credited with being the first physician to use the watch in counting the pulse.

BATTISTA MORGAGNI AND MORBID ANATOMY

A great contemporary of Haller was Giovanni Battista Morgagni (1682-1771), who pursued what Sydenham had neglected, the investigation in anatomy, thus supplying a necessary counterpart to the great Englishman's work. Morgagni's investigations were directed chiefly to the study of morbid anatomy--the study of the structure of diseased tissue, both during life and post mortem, in contrast to the normal anatomical structures. This work cannot be said to have originated with him; for as early as 1679 Bonnet had made similar, although less extensive, studies; and later many investigators, such as Lancisi and Haller, had made post-mortem studies. But Morgagni's De sedibus et causis morborum per anatomen indagatis was the largest, most accurate, and best-ill.u.s.trated collection of cases that had ever been brought together, and marks an epoch in medical science. From the time of the publication of Morgagni's researches, morbid anatomy became a recognized branch of the medical science, and the effect of the impetus thus given it has been steadily increasing since that time.

WILLIAM HUNTER

William Hunter (1718-1783) must always be remembered as one of the greatest physicians and anatomists of the eighteenth century, and particularly as the first great teacher of anatomy in England; but his fame has been somewhat overshadowed by that of his younger brother John.

Hunter had been intended and educated for the Church, but on the advice of the surgeon William Cullen he turned his attention to the study of medicine. His first attempt at teaching was in 1746, when he delivered a series of lectures on surgery for the Society of Naval Pract.i.tioners.

These lectures proved so interesting and instructive that he was at once invited to give others, and his reputation as a lecturer was soon established. He was a natural orator and story-teller, and he combined with these attractive qualities that of thoroughness and clearness in demonstrations, and although his lectures were two hours long he made them so full of interest that his pupils seldom tired of listening.

He believed that he could do greater good to the world by "publicly teaching his art than by practising it," and even during the last few days of his life, when he was so weak that his friends remonstrated against it, he continued his teaching, fainting from exhaustion at the end of his last lecture, which preceded his death by only a few days.

For many years it was Hunter's ambition to establish a museum where the study of anatomy, surgery, and medicine might be advanced, and in 1765 he asked for a grant of a plot of ground for this purpose, offering to spend seven thousand pounds on its erection besides endowing it with a professorship of anatomy. Not being able to obtain this grant, however, he built a house, in which were lecture and dissecting rooms, and his museum. In this museum were anatomical preparations, coins, minerals, and natural-history specimens.

Hunter's weakness was his love of controversy and his resentment of contradiction. This brought him into strained relations with many of the leading physicians of his time, notably his own brother John, who himself was probably not entirely free from blame in the matter. Hunter is said to have excused his own irritability on the grounds that being an anatomist, and accustomed to "the pa.s.sive submission of dead bodies,"

contradictions became the more unbearable. Many of the physiological researches begun by him were carried on and perfected by his more famous brother, particularly his investigations of the capillaries, but he added much to the anatomical knowledge of several structures of the body, notably as to the structure of cartilages and joints.

JOHN HUNTER

In Abbot Islip's chapel in Westminster Abbey, close to the resting-place of Ben Jonson, rest the remains of John Hunter (1728-1793), famous in the annals of medicine as among the greatest physiologists and surgeons that the world has ever produced: a man whose discoveries and inventions are counted by scores, and whose field of research was only limited by the outermost boundaries of eighteenth-century science, although his efforts were directed chiefly along the lines of his profession.

Until about twenty years of age young Hunter had shown little apt.i.tude for study, being unusually fond of out-door sports and amus.e.m.e.nts; but about that time, realizing that some occupation must be selected, he asked permission of his brother William to attempt some dissections in his anatomical school in London. To the surprise of his brother he made this dissection unusually well; and being given a second, he acquitted himself with such skill that his brother at once predicted that he would become a great anatomist. Up to this time he had had no training of any kind to prepare him for his professional career, and knew little of Greek or Latin--languages entirely unnecessary for him, as he proved in all of his life work. Ottley tells the story that, when twitted with this lack of knowledge of the "dead languages" in after life, he said of his opponent, "I could teach him that on the dead body which he never knew in any language, dead or living."

By his second year in dissection he had become so skilful that he was given charge of some of the cla.s.ses in his brother's school; in 1754 he became a surgeon's pupil in St. George's Hospital, and two years later house-surgeon. Having by overwork brought on symptoms that seemed to threaten consumption, he accepted the position of staff-surgeon to an expedition to Belleisle in 1760, and two years later was serving with the English army at Portugal. During all this time he was constantly engaged in scientific researches, many of which, such as his observations of gun-shot wounds, he put to excellent use in later life.

On returning to England much improved in health in 1763, he entered at once upon his career as a London surgeon, and from that time forward his progress was a practically uninterrupted series of successes in his profession.