Cooley's Cyclopædia of Practical Receipts and Collateral Information in the Arts, Manufactures, Professions, and Trades..., Sixth Edition, Volume I

Cooley's Cyclopædia of Practical Receipts and Collateral Information in the Arts, Manufactures, Professions, and Trades..., Sixth Edition, Volume I

The design of the present work is briefly, but not completely expressed in its title-page. Independently of a reliable and comprehensive collection of formul and processes in nearly all the industrial and useful arts, it contains a description of the leading properties and applications of the substances referred to, together with ample directions, hints, data, and allied information, calculated to facilitate the development of the practical value of the book in the shop, the laboratory, the factory, and the household. Notices of the substances embraced in the Materia Medica of our national pharmacopias, in addition to the whole of their preparations, and numerous other animal and vegetable substances employed in medicine, as well as most of those used for food, clothing, and fuel, with their economic applications, have been included in the work. The synonymes and references are other additions which will prove invaluable to the reader. Lastly, there have been appended to all the principal articles referred to brief, but clear, directions for determining their purity and commercial value, and for detecting their presence and proportions in compounds. The sources from which I have derived the vast mass of materials forming this volume are such as to render it deserving the utmost confidence. I have invariably resorted to the best and latest authorities, and have consulted almost innumerable volumes, both British and foreign, during its compilation. Secondary channels of information have been scarcely ever relied on when original authorities were within my reach. A large portion of the work has been derived from my personal experience and observations in the departments of applied chemistry and hygiene, and from the processes of various laboratories and manufactories, many of which I can the more confidently recommend from having either inspected or witnessed their employment on an extensive scale. The indiscriminate adoption of matter, without examination, has been uniformly avoided, and in no instance has any formula or process been admitted into this work, unless it rested on some well-known fact of science, had been sanctioned by usage, or come recommended by some respectable authority. The settlement of doubtful or disputed pointsviii has often occupied me a greater number of hours, and not unfrequently a greater number of days, than that of the lines of letter-press which convey the results to the public. In all cases precedence has been given to the standard formul of our national pharmacopias, and to those processes which long experience, or well-conducted experiments, have shown to be the most successful, profitable, and trustworthy. In general, the sources of information have been indicated, for the purpose of enabling the reader to form a better estimation of their value. Whenever this is not the case, in reference to borrowed formul and data, the omission has arisen from the impossibility of determining to whom the merit is justly due. I have endeavoured as much as possible, in the present work, to avoid confusion of the medical weights with those commonly used in trade and commercean attempt which, so far as I am aware, has not been successfully carried out in any other quarter. For this purpose I determined to entirely abandon the usual arbitrary signs or characters employed to represent the divisions of the apothecaries pound, and to distinguish the two weights from each other, by simply printing, in different type, the plain English names and abbreviations representing their several denominations. The medical signs for the imperial gallon and its subdivisions have also been abandoned for their common English names. It would have afforded me pleasure to have reduced all the quantities to one uniform standard, had it been practicable, or, in all cases, advisable. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 39733
Author: Cooley, Arnold James
Release Date: May 19, 2012
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Contributor (Author): Tuson, Richard Vine, 1832-1888