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» A TEXT-BOOK OF QUANTITATIVE INORGANIC
ANALYSIS
Arthur I. Vogel. Second Edition. Longmans, Green and Co.,
London, 1951. xxiii + 918 pp. Illustrated. 25.5 X 16 cm.
$10.
This is a very interesting and somewhat unusual type of book.
It could be used by a beginner—even perhaps by a self-taught
one—though cases of heart-failure might be reported among
American sophomores at their first sight of the volume. (It
weighs four pounds.) All the material in the usual American
texts of quantitative analysis seems to be here, rather concisely
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presented, and without any special concessions to the immaturity
of young students. In addition, however, there is a vast array of
detailed procedures, by all the familiar techniques, for nearly
all the elements and inorganic radicals any commercial analyst
Downloaded via 223.188.18.198 on March 14, 2020 at 11:12:50 (UTC).
is likely to need to determine, so that the book might serve, rather
better than any other I know, as the sole reliance of an analyst
from his beginning days to direction of a control laboratory in
some industry. The theoretical foundations are presented in
Chapter One (149 pages). Especially good are the treatments
of the solubility product, buffer solutions, and neutralization
indicators, in which simple corrections to the approximate
equations are given in terms of activity coefficients. The dis-
cussion of strong-acid-strong-base titration curves could be
improved by the use of the general equation pH =
-log (l-x)C
where x is the fraction titrated and C is the original acid concen-
tration corrected for volume change, and again for weak acids
and strong bases, pH pK + log —.
= This same treatment would
1-2
also be useful in the later section where redox titrations arc
discussed. The detailed table of precipitates and their weighing
forms on page 101 is perhaps out of place in the section on theory
of gravimetric analysis, but it is a very convenient summary of
a lot of information. The long section on organic precipitants is
up to date and satisfactory. The second chapter covers analy-
tical techniques and is very complete regarding apparatus,
including descriptions of the new Swiss “gram-atic” as well as
other air-damped balances. The Main-Smith crucible lid was
unfamiliar to the reviewer and seems an excellent idea. Does
anyone sell them? Instead of the usual five or six, fifteen acidi-
metric primary standards are described in some detail. The
volumetric chapter (3) includes methods for barium and sulfate,
for Te in presence of Se, for quantitative reductions with chromous
and vanadous as well as titanous salts, for the preparation of
sodium starch glycolate, for oxidations with chloramine-T, and
for water hardness with “versene,” for which the author suggests
the nickname “didiette.” There is an 80-page section on syste-
matic gravimetric analysis, including about 35 elements and 27
anions—a sort of compressed “Hillebrand and Lundell” without
the volumetric methods. Electrolysis, including controlled
potentials and elaborate directions for constructing apparatus,
gets 50 pages and “complex materials” such as brass, steel, and
cement another 50 In Chapter 5 (70 pages) colorimetric methods
are discussed with a wealth of illustrations of modern equip-
ment. Chapters 6 to 11 cover potentiometry, conductimetry,
polarography, amperometry, gas analysis, and micro-methods,
and with the appendixes and indexes amount to another 350 pages.
The appendixes contain a lot of useful material of the sort
for which one of the handbooks is usually consulted, including
both 4-place and 5-place logarithms, table of chemical factors
and their logarithms, the Greek alphabet, apothecaries’ weight
319
and volumes, and finally a guide to enable students with varying
degrees of ambition and industry to plan their courses through
the book. On the whole, the work seems very comprehensive,
very well written, and extraordinarily free from typographical
and other errors. (No check of numerical problems, etc., was
made). This is perhaps the single work on quantitative analysis
with which the reviewer would most like to be shipwrecked on a
desert island, so long as he didn’t have to swim with it. Some
space could have been saved by an even more elaborate system
of cross references than was used, and some repetition is unavoid-
able in a book that is intended for both tyro and expert. When
the third edition is published it will need a section on high-
frequency titrations, and perhaps one on titrations in non-aqueous
solutions.
NORRIS F. IIALL
University Wisconsin
op
Madison, Wisconsin .
• A STUDY OF ANTIMETABOLITES
D. W. Wooley, Member, The Rockefeller Institute for Medical
Research. lohn Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1952. xiii +
269 pp. 37 figs. 15.5 X 23.5 cm. $5.
The well-known author reviews in an authoritative way a
field that has essentially been developed during the last decade,
although the introductory historical chapter of his book shows
that scattered observations having a distinct bearing on the
problem were already made at earlier dates. The basic phenom-
enon is that even minor chemical changes in many metaboli-
cally important compounds will, when given to an organism,
result in symptoms characteristic of the specific lack of the origi-
nal compound. This central idea is then expanded by discussing
in a more or less detailed fashion all the observations accumulated
by many workers of antimetabolic activity. Examples are the
growth-inhibiting action of sulfanilamide on bacteria and its
prevention by p-aminobenzoic acid, the production of thiamine
deficiency by pyrithiamine, the antagonism of both these com-
pounds in isolated enzyme systems, antagonists against fat-
soluble vitamins, against hormones, and so on. The scope of
the book is perhaps best indicated by mentioning that the author
lists in an extensive table 43 metabolites and their antagonistic
structural analogs and that he gives in another table 24 anti-
metabolites for pantothenic acid alone. The author’s favored
hypothesis concerning the mechanism of antimetabolic activity
is the concept that the antimetabolite forms a complex with an
enzyme or another protein with which the normal metabolite
reacts and that, in contrast with normal conditions, the enzyme-
antimetabolite complex cannot be converted into the normal
products. While this view can be applied directly, or with some
auxiliary assumptions, to many cases, some remain for which it
is not entirely satisfactory. For example, the author points out
that it is difficult to see how the above theory can explain the
stimulation of organisms by subinhibitory concentrations of some
antimetabolites. In other chapters the spectrum of activity of
antimetabolites, their natural occurrence and significance, is
discussed. Of special interest here is that in some cases naturally
occurring antimetabolites apparently are directly causing
disease. It is obvious that antimetabolite activity of certain
compounds has great possibilities in chemotherapy and pharma-
cology, opening new ways for the explanation of drug activity
and offering one avenue to a rational chemotherapy, as contrasted