Bigamous Hydrogen—a Protest

Abstract

NATURE is always both helpful and challenging and though these be degenerate days, in which the policeman stops duelling, as there is no organised scientific police force, some of us must answer her call and at least constitute ourselves special constables in protection of the liberties of our craft. Scientific son as I am, plus sixty years old, of Frankland, who was the first to enunciate the doctrine of valency, upon which our entire system of structural chemistry is based, I have been accustomed always to regard hydrogen as the most single-minded and moral of monogamists. If the story of chemistry, especially that of paraffinic chemistry, mean anything, it is that carbon and hydrogen are mutually satisfied when the carbon atom is married with four hydrogen atoms. The indifference to all external temptation of such unions is most remarkable: whether rightly or wrongly, we have, in consequence, built our entire symbolic edifice upon the assumption that hydrogen is a consistent monad.