Practical Organic Chemistry for Advanced Students

Abstract

IN this enlarged edition Dr. Julius Cohen has increased greatly the value of the book as a manual for advanced students by adding chapters on organic analysis and the determination of the molecular weight. Under the latter heading we are glad to see he describes the preparation of the silver salts of organic acids and of the platinum salts of bases—two operations the description of which is frequently omitted from similar works. The appendix, which treats of the theory in the form of a note on each preparation, has also been enlarged. Our experience has been that students will not trouble to hunt theory in the limbo of an appendix, and the matter of these notes would have been more usefully incorporated in the preparations themselves. The explanations are necessarily condensed and frequently difficult to understand; for example (p. 193), “Aldehydes can only be obtained directly from the fatty acids by distilling the calcium salt with calcium formate; but in no case by direct reduction, unless in the form of lactones.”

Practical Organic Chemistry for Advanced Students.

By Dr. Julius B. Cohen. Pp. xi + 284. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1900.) Price 2s. 6d.