PREFACE. In the spring of last year, I had the honour of delivering, at the Royal College of Physicians, a course of six lectures on Animal Chemistry; full reports of which were soon afterwards published in the Chemical News.' Encouraged by the wishes of several Fellows of the College, I have since submitted these reports to a careful revision, and formed them into the present volume. Except, however, that I have discussed with greater fulness those sections of the course which relate respectively to synthetic processes and results, to the nature of leucine and tyrosine, and to the decomposition-products of uric acid, I have allowed the lectures to remain substantially as they were delivered and reported. Excluding the pages devoted to the above-mentioned topics, whose physiological no less than chemical interest must justify the detail with which they are treated, I trust that the book will not be considered over-technical by any class of readers. At any rate, while preparing my lectures for delivery, revising the short-hand writer's a 6 manuscript, and further revising the published reports of the Chemical News,' I have made it my constant object to give such an account of modern Organic Chemistry as should, with a moderate amount of attention, be profitable and even interesting to those who are not chemists. In other words, I have striven throughout, whether or not successfully, to render my subject popular in the legitimate sense, by making it generally intelligible. I need scarcely say that these lectures are not meant to exert any direct influence upon points of medical practice. I hope, however, they may assist in convincing the profession at large of the necessity for regarding vital phenomena from a chemical point of view; and in promoting among students, especially those about to graduate, the knowledge of a highly important though much neglected branch of natural science. ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL: |