garments. Later fibers were plucked from the sheepskin, the cocoon and
the cotton-ball, twisted together and woven into cloth. Nowadays it is
possible to make a complete suit of clothes, from hat to shoes, of any
desirable texture, form and color, and not include any substance to be
found in nature. The first metals available were those found free in
nature such as gold and copper. In a later age it was found 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