possible to
extract iron from its ores and today we have artificial alloys made of
multifarious combinations of rare metals. The medicine man dosed his
patients with decoctions of such roots and herbs as had a bad taste or
queer look. The pharmacist discovered how to extract from these their
medicinal principle such as morphine, quinine and cocaine, and the
creative chemist has discovered how to make innumerable drugs adapted to
specific diseases and individual idiosyncrasies.

In the later or creative stages we enter the domain of chemistry, for it
is the chemist alone who possesses the power of reducing a substance to
its constituent atoms and from them producing substances entirely new.
But the chemist has been slow to realize his unique power and the world
has been still slower to utilize his invaluable services. Until recently
indeed the leaders of chemical science expressly disclaimed what should
have been their proudest boast. The French chemist Lavoisier in 1793
defined chemistry as "the science of analysis." The German chemist
Gerhardt in 1844 said: "I have demonstrated that the chemist works in
opposition to living nature, that he burns, destroys, analyzes, that the
vital force alone operates by synthesis, that it reconstructs the
edifice torn down by the chemical forces."

It is quite true that chemists up to the middle of the last century were
so absorbed in the destructive side of their science that they were
blind to the constructive side of it. In this respect they were less
prescient than their contemned predecessors, the alchemists, who,
foolish and pretentious as they were, aspired at least to the formation
of something new.

It was, I think, the French chemist Berthelot who first clearly
perceived the double aspect of chemistry, for he defined it as "the
science of analysis _and synthesis_," of taking apart and of putting
together. The motto of chemistry, as of all the empirical sciences, is
_savoir c'est pouvoir_, to know in order to do. This is the pragmatic
test of all useful knowledge. Berthelot goes on to say:

Chemistry creates its object. This creative faculty, comparable
to that of art itself, distinguishes it essentially from the
natural and historical sciences.... These sciences do not
control their object. Thus they are too often condemned to an
eternal impotence in the search for truth of which they must
content themselves with possessing some few and ofte