163S
XEW BOOKS
MERCK‘S 1907 INDEX. THIRIIEr)i’rIox. An cticyclopedia for t h e clieinist. pliariliacist and physician, stating the iiiiiiies and synonyms, chemical nature and forniulas, physical form, appearance ailti properties, melting and boiliiig points, specific qravities a n d metliotls of testing, physiological effects. therapeutic lises, niodes of ;~111iini~tration and application, ordinary and iiiaxiiiiuni (loscs. i i ~ c o r n ~ ~ a t i l ~ i l i t i e s , antidotcs. special c;iutions, liitits 011 keeping ;ind liantlling. etc., of tlre cliimicals and drugs used iti clietiiistry, tnetlicinc and tlie arts. IIcrck S: Co., S e i \ - York.
T h e chief difference between this and the previous editions consists i i i the introduction of a large nuniber of crude drugs a n d t h e omission of exact price quotations. T h e approximate price of any chemical listed in t h e I n d e x can be easily found b y a system of numbers a s explained in t h e preface. The large amount of useful information in a very concise form should make t h e book very raluable to chemists, physicians and phariiiacists. H . M. GOKDIX. SIX LECTURES o s THE THERMODYNAMIC POTENTIAL ASD I T S .\PPI,ICATIOS TO PKORLEMS OFCHEMICALA N D PHYSICAL EQUILIBRIUM, IKTXODCCED BY Tn-o LECBY J . J. T A N TURES o s COSCESTRATED SOLUTIOXS A X D OSMOTICPRESSL~RH.:. LAAK. Braunschweig, F. Vieweg & Son, 1906. Price 3.50 niarks.
If one should enter a staid house of worship and without previous warning find in t h e pulpit t h e Reverend Bill Sunday exhorting t h e congregation with coatless harangue, h e might experience t h e same surprise and shock as comes to tlie traveler in t h e austere realm of thermodynamics when h e first peruses this little book of van Laar’s. From t h e cold page of print we probably get little idea of t h e fervor with which these lectures were originally delivered. But what t h e printer could do h e has done. T h e exclamation point is t h e favorite mark of punctuation, and t h e print becoines more emphatic with the growing intensity of h e author, until in t h e peroration i t culminates in a type of such size and blackness as a yellon. journalist miglit view with pride. In the first chapter the author discusses the dangers that first arise wlien t h e laws of dilute solutioiis are applied to concentrated solutions. V7ith special severity he deals with the hydrate iiunibers which Jones has calculated, by first assuming that the freezing-point lowering of every solution really follows t h e law of van’t Hoff, and then finding t h e degree of h5-dration which would account for any observed discrepancy. “ I n this K a y ” , says the author. “we can prove anytliing..” l h e force of this criticism is, however, to sonie extent lost wheii in the second chapter the author himself niakes a calculatioii in which unconsciously, h e uses a method of reasoning cvliich is identical in principle with that of Jones, and somewhat less justifiable. H e assumes that t h e physical behavior of any simple liquid can be calculated from that of any other simple liquid. T h e fact that this is not true of most liquids, h e ascribes to association, and from t h e discrepancy between the calculated behavior a n d that observed, h e calculates t h e degree of association. Thus lie states
