ROMANCE OF THE LABORATORY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20291, 27 December 1927, Page 13

ROMANCE OF THE LABORATORY.

It is impossible to follow in detail the progress of creative chemistry in the last few years, for the synthetic chemist has made rapid strides indeed. Nowadays he will fashion for you the silks and shoes and precious stones that adorn your person, the perfumes and flavours that give pleasure to your palate, and the colours that delight yout eye. The making of sugar and starch presents no difficulty to him now, and indeed there is no doubt that soon the very food we eat will be made by his art. All this has been made possible by the chemist’s endless toil in less than 100 years, and so vast are the possibilities'of the chemistry of to-morrow that they cannot be estimated (writes J. F. St. B. Barclay in the Edinburgh Weekly Scotsman). Even now successful processes for obtaining oil from coal are being developed by our great British chemical industry, which means that henceforth the oil wells of America will rule us no more, and that the vast coalfields of Britain are vast oilfields of the future. The importance of this development is very great, especially as sole control throughout the British Empire will be held by a great British chemical firm. But perhaps the most startling development of all in the realm of creative chemistry has been ■ recently prophesied by our famous scientists. it is said that even as man has built up in the laboratory many of the organic compounds found in living organisms, so in the future he will bo able to combine that work until be evolves masses of protoplasm which exhibit vitality and manifest one of the forms of life. The creation of life itself by the chemist! It is an awe-inspiring thought, and yet one that comes well within the bounds of probability and reason. For the might of the synthetic chemist has slowly waxed throughout the years, and now his kingdom is at hand. The world of the future will no more be the world of Nature, the harsh and relentless, but the world of man the chemist, and the omnipotent, who’will remould it nearer to his heart's desire.