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Combinatorial procedures have become established in recent years as alternatives to rational design in drug research, particularly when no structural information is available. This article presents the principle that was originally developed by three scientists and was honored with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2018. Furthermore, the application in the field of monclonal antibodies is discussed.

"Chemistry of Concepts" and "Historical Sense". On Philosophical Concept Formation. The question concerning concepts and their relations to objects and words has had a long and controversial history. Recently, it is challenged by an anew turn towards objects and an emphasized object-oriented ontology. The article argues that one reason for this is the reduction of concepts towards pure rational constructions and offers arguments for alternative understandings. In this context, the article proposes a re-reading of Nietzsche's particular approach and shows that Nietzsche's thought is decisively shaped by the sciences of his time, especially physiology and chemistry. Before the background of the recent increase in research interest on Nietzsche and the sciences the article examines place and function of the sciences related to the genealogy and justification of concepts. Opposing a strong naturalist reading it makes a plea for understanding Nietzsche's epistemological critique concerning concepts systematically as a triple one: philological, physiological, and historical., (© 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.)

Franz Schneider (13.09.1812-29.11.1897) in 1850 was appointed the first lecturer on "Chemistry for physicians" by the Viennese university. Two years later he accepted the professorship in the military medical schools in the "Josephinum" from where he shifted to the philosophical faculty as professor of "Common and medical chemistry". Soon after this start in 1870 he became unable to continue his work because of an explosion during experiments. Thus in 1876 the emperor called Schneider to the Austrian public health administration as director. In the following twelve years he achieved great successes in his duties. As a scientist he had worked on various topics of organic and inorganic chemistry. But beyond that Schneider succeeded in imparting to his assistants the modality of scientific work and the way of hygienic thinking. Thus his scholars Josef Nowak, Florian Kratschmer and Max Gruber were well prepared to become Austria's first university hygienists.

Experiment kits, such as physical cabinets, chemistry sets, and electricity kits designed for amateurs and children, gained huge popularity in Germany around 1900. These home laboratories connected themselves to the things of everyday life as objects of investigation and everyday knowledge as their framework of reference. In the previous centuries, portable laboratories had already accompanied travelling scientists and intellectuals. Experiment kits however, while still portable, were designed to serve as extensions of classrooms and lecture halls. The kits--available through teaching materials catalogues and early forms of mail-order catalogues--illustrate the increased attention that was given to experimental practices in general education between 1870 and 1930. An examination of these objects, which consisted of instruments, substances, and supplementary contents arranged in wooden, metal, or paper boxes, together with an analysis of their instruction manuals, shows how the miniature laboratories structured the spaces within which experiments were supposed to take place.

Atypical career of a chemist in Germany around 1800 consisted of being trained as an apothecary, followed by an occupation as a professor at a university or another institution of higher education. These conditions deeply influenced the concept and the practice of chemistry as a science. Johann Friedrich August Göttling is an intriguing example for merging education and daily duties of teaching with the self-image of a scientific chemist. He linked chemical teaching, work, and research by using different hybrid media, such as the Almanach oder Taschenbuch für Scheidekünstler und Apotheker, a stove specifically designed for the narrow student's room, portable laboratories, a pharmaceutical boarding school and textbooks. This allowed him to practice three different forms of chemistry as a science. A "socio-epistemological diagram" of German chemistry around 1800 shows that these forms neatly corresponded to the then predominant three-level epistemology. In particular, the concept of a chemical fact served to link pharmaceutical practice with teaching practice, while granting only the chemistry done by professors the status of a science.

The 1939 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry and later President of the Max Planck Society Adolf Butenandt has been increasingly exposed to criticism in recent years. One far-reaching accusation against him is his postulated participation in the human experiments executed by the SS-physician Josef Mengele in the Auschwitz concentration camp. It concerns a project initiated by anthropologist Otmar von Verschuer in 1943. For this, Verschu-ER Obtained blood samples from his assistant Mengele in the Auschwitz concentration camp. When methodological problems occurred in the project Butenandt helped Verschuer. According to the reconstruction of geneticist Benno Müller-Hill the research project included lethal human experiments: Mengele had selectively infected concentration camp detainees with tuberculosis to observe their racially conditioned resistibility against that disease, he claims. This reconstruction, however, contradicts other sources. Therefore an alternative reconstruction is offered here. According to that, the project represented a large-scale attempt of serological race diagnosis in man. Human experiments are not plausible for this project. Yet it is clearly connected to race biological research and implementation.

The German debate about Lavoisier's chemistry started late, was confined to the theory of combustion, mainly focused on two experiments and was closed relatively soon. The perspective from academic teaching allows a better understanding of these features. There was a far-reaching correspondence between the usual practice of academic chemistry teachers and the epistemic criteria taken to be relevant during the debate about Lavoisier's chemistry. A case study based on textbooks written or used at the University of Jena between 1790 and 1800 allows drawing conclusions about why and how academic chemists succeeded in integrating what was seen as the "chemical revolution" without revolutionising their own practice. If the debate had any profound impact on German chemistry at all, it was the consolidation of the rupture between academic teachers and their apothecary colleagues.

The article presents an account of Lesage's theory of corpuscules ultramondains and ether. It shows that essential attributes of the antique concept of ether still belong to his speculative physics. In accordance with this concept, Lesage understood the corpuscules ultramondains as subtle celestial matter and carriers of the primordial movements in the universe which were characterised by their proximity to the divine. On the other hand, Lesage was engaged in the contemporary debate concerning the problem of causa gravitatis. His position turns out to be halfway between dynamic corpuscularity and mechanistic physics. With the former he shared the rejection of vortex theories and the adherence to the corpuscular theory of light and the nutshell theory, with the latter the rejection of action at-a-distance and forces inherent to matter. Contrary to the accusation that he plagiarised Fatio de Duillier's theory of gravitation, it is shown that Lesage formulated a gravitational mechanism essentially different to Fatio's. Lesage used the term ether for the theory of chemical affinities. His attempt to reduce them to gravitational force failed. The complexity of chemical phenomena could not be mastered theoretically by reduction to a uniform natural force.

In the middle of the 19th century the first chemical laboratories were established at hospitals and clinics in Central Europe which performed chemical analyses for purposes of practical medicine and clinical research. A characteristic feature of these new laboratories was the use of measuring instruments. The results of these chemical methods could serve as "signs" in the diagnosis of diseases. A great step forward was the introduction of "quantitative" data as results of measurements. They allowed a greater differentiation in the description of phenomena compared with the "qualitative" data used before. Another important feature of the new signs is the possibility to derive from it knowledge of causal relations of physiological and pathological processes in the organism. The influence of this methodological change on the thinking of the physicians at the sickbed is discussed using several examples. The "chemical signs" were used in the description of diseases and for the "quantification of health" by use of "normal values" which allow a discrimination between health and disease. Chemical quantities became also important for the description and examination of functional systems in the body, e.g. the metabolism.

Justus Liebig's book Die organische Chemic in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie aroused strong opposition from scientists who felt that they were being attacked. A polarization arose particularly between Hugo von Mohl (1805-1872) and Matthias Jacob Schleiden (1805-1881) on one side, and Justus von Liebig (1803-1873) and his followers on the other side. The debate did not have the character of a purely scientific controversy, however, because social aspects also played a role. Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), who held the esteem of both parties, was able to intervene successfully to mediate this conflict. His task appeared at first difficult, but it turned out that both groups had a common enemy, the representatives and followers of the 'Romantic philosophy of nature'. Humboldt, who self-deprecatingly called himself a 'fossil', was forced to recognize that many of his friends and acquaintances, who stood nearer to, or even belonged among the founders of Naturphilosophie, for example, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) and Johann Bernhard Wilbrand (1779-1846), were also under attack. Although he had earlier been inspired by the concerns and ideas of Schelling's Naturphilosophie, he now distanced himself from them in order to mediate between modern, experimental scientists.

In this essay laboratories are dealt with as symbolic spaces that structure social relationships and ways of knowledge in chemistry. The spatial vicissitudes of the nineteenth-century research laboratory reflect, and at the same time direct, the way chemical knowledge is being produced, transmitted, and perceived.

Upon his death in 1895, Carl Schorlemmer, professor of chemistry at the Victoria University in Manchester/GB, left an extensive but unfinished and unpublished manuscript, which is now stored in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. It covers about 1100 pages and deals with the history of chemistry from antiquity to the second third of the 17th century. Based on a several years' study of this paper, an evaluation of its main parts (Chemical knowledge of antiquity/The age of alchemy/ The age of medical chemistry) is given. As compared with his book The Rise and development of organic chemistry (Manchester/London 1879) Schorlemmer seemes to have overstepped the summit of scientific-historical efficiency in the "Contributions ...". Some authors believe that he intended to write an universal history of chemistry from the Marxist point of view but this presumption cannot be supported.

The cultural history of alcoholic fermentation goes back to very early periods of human being. But only in the 19th century the nature of the biological production of alcohol was discovered. In that time chemistry and botany had a different, complementary view to alcoholic fermentation. While the positions of chemists are well-known and much discussed in the historiography of science the contribution of botanists to fermentation research is almost entirely forgotten nowadays. The work of the mycologist Oscar Brefeld, who studied yeast fermentation from 1873 to 1876, illustrates the special botanical view to the ontogenetical side of alcoholic fermentation, to morphlogical and physiological differences between growing and dying, fermenting and fermented yeast cells, and to the energetic and ecological role of fermentation as well as its universality in vegetable kingdom.

This article introduces Carl Christian Wilhelm Juch, Pharmacist, Doctor and Chemist, who, now almost forgotten, was well known in his time for his numerous works and essays on Natural Science. Some new biographic findings are disclosed. Juch's work covers a series of writings on Natural Science, in which he put great emphasis on economic and technological themes. His translation of and commentary on the Pharmacopoea Borussica 1805 provided an important contribution to pharmacy. In 1801 Juch was appointed Professor of Medicine and Chemistry at the University of Altdorf. In his position as University Professor he went 1805 to the Munic Lyceum and in 1808 to the Augsburg Realinstitut in order to teach Chemistry, Natural History and Dietetics. In 1816/17 he retired due to poor health. Juch died in Augsburg in 1821 at the age of forty-eight.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the importance of autobiographies of dispensing chemists for the history of science. The analysis of the autobiographies of E. W. Martius, D. H. Hoppe, F. T. Kützing and other pharmacists of the 18th and 19th centuries, shows that these books give much information about the history of medicine, chemistry or botany. The memoirs of pharmacists, published in the later 19th and 20th centuries, for example by Th. Fontaine or by H. Sudermann, are especially interesting origins for the history of pharmacy.

E. F. Geoffroy's table of different relations ("rapports") between different chemical substances is mainly based on empirical knowledge accumulated in 16th and 17th century metallurgy and pharmacy. The substances listed in the left half of the table were basic for the formation of salts which were produced for medical ends in the chemical-pharmaceutical practice of the 17th century. The right half of the table refers to substances and operations of metallurgy which had already been described in the metallurgical writings of the 16th century. Even Geoffroy's ordering of the substances within the columns of his table has its origin in metallurgical and pharmaceutical practice. The key concept of the conceptual framework underlying the table and its commentary is the concept of chemical compound which emerged at the end of the 17th century. Geoffroy extends the range of application of this concept, which was first limited to chemical artefacts, to include natural bodies. Eliminating the peripatetical distinction between natural bodies and chemical artefacts he formulates a new research program, consisting in the determination of the "laws" of the relations ("rapports") between different chemical substances.

In the opinion of the natural sciences and medicine of the Romantic Era, Paracelsus represents a central step from the Middle Ages to modern times. Their interpretations of this perceived kindred spirit "not free from criticism" focus on metaphysical orientations, holistic approach to cosmology and anthropology, biochemical perspective, ethical dominance, immenent union of etiology, pathophenomenology and therapy.

In chemistry (and natural science in general) reasoning in terms of analogy may be of great practical value as well as of theoretical significance. At the same, however, the use of analogy is risky and the results are uncertain. In alchemy and iatrochemistry analogies between the living and the non-living nature have been carried too far. At the end of the 19th century an analogy was drawn between chemical phenomena and the Darwinian theory of evolution. Another example of an overexaggerated analogy can be found in Lavoisier's theory of acids, where oxygen was considered to be the general principle of acidity. Reasoning by analogy is mostly based on an inner conviction. It leads to provisional predictions in such cases where the required facts are not, or incompletely, at our disposal.

Paracelsus was a topic of intense discussion during the eighteenth century in the encyclopedias, works of philosophy, natural science and medicine of this time. His contributions to chemistry and the chemical foundation of medicine were acknowledge as well as his fight against the ancient humoral pathology and specific achievements in surgery and drug therapy. In contrast, his concept of science and use of language were rejected. The gap between his expressed moral standards and his own behavior was criticized. The contemporary circumstances must be taken into consideration.

The aim of this article is to trace some features of the historical development of chemistry as an academic discipline in its relation to the emergence of pharmaceutical science. Franz Joel (1508-1579) was one of the first pharmacists whose work became very important for development of chemistry since the 17th century lectures in materia medica and in iatro-chemistry were frequent realized in university pharmacy. In the 18th century pharmacists were in some cases the precursors to professors of chemistry. In the paper there is also given a summary of the importance for the development of chemistry of J. B. Trommsdorff, S. F. Hermbstaedt, A. P. J. Du Menil and L. F. Bley.

Between 1775 and about 1800 the Phlogiston theory was replaced by the Oxygen theory. Both systems are presented briefly. Pharmacists on both sides were involved in the scientific discussions of the Chemical Revolution in Germany. Their contribution is appreciated. Finally the peculiarities of this paradigm exchange are described.

The author describes the controversy between Justus von Liebig on one side and Reichenbach and Mayrhofer on the other side. It is a controversy about problems of science and medicine which are characteristic for the late 18th and the first half of the 19th century, when Mesmerism and similar ideas of occultic and comparative phenomenona were discussed and often refused as being "not scientific". Justus von Liebig and Karl Ludwig Freiherr von Reichenbach were both chemists, both interested in scientific progress and working in this field. They were friends in the years 1830 to 1848. But later on this friendship ended when Reichenbach--who in the mean time moved to Vienna--became more and more interested in phenomenons seen by sensitive persons concerning effects of light. Although Reichenbach himself was not able to recognize the phenomenons he was sure that other persons had this ability. He had the impression that there is a special force floating through the universe, and this force he called "od". Liebig, who was not able to follow this theory and rejected it has speculation, turned against Reichenbach in 1852-3. So the controversy began and their old friendship came to an end. Reichenbach's theory of the "od", characteristic for the time of the romanticism and leading back to Mesmerism was accepted and supported by the Austrian physician Dr. Karl Wilhelm Mayrhofer who had aroused his interest by describing similar phenomenos some of this patients had. The letters of both men, the chemist and the doctor, which are well preserved (Technical Museum of Vienna) and discussed here, give a good impression of Reichenbach's ideas concerning his theory of the "od" and his philosophical ideas. As Reichenbach tried to find a philosophy corresponding to his theory and as he meant to have found this in the philosophy of Friedrich Eduard Beneke his remarks in those letters give a good information about Beneke's discussion of Reichenbach's theory. Mayrhofer, on the other hand, following Reichenbach's theory of the "od", rejected Beneke's philosophy because he himself joined another philisophy on the basis of the christian religion. However, when Reichenbach's latest book on these problems appeared in 1854, Beneke and Mayrhofer had died shortly before and no further discussion was possible. But Reichenbach's theory, based on the ideas of Mesmerism, and the controversial discussion about new explanations of the phenomenona seen by sensitive persons are characteristic for this time and also for our time as such perceptions are not entirely denied but thought over in a new way.

The activity of the anesthesiologist is centered upon the respiratory organ function; therefore, the question of how the fundamental knowledge of gas exchange was gained seems justified. During the 18th century, the elegant but incorrect phlogiston theory (G.E. Stahl, 1659-1734) dominated all theoretical conceptions about combustion and respiration. Chemistry at that time was a collection of observations without any sound hypothetical background. Our knowledge about oxidation, combustion, and respiration was developed mainly by the work of A.L. Lavoisier (1743-1794). He observed that metals gain weight during their calcination (oxidation) and concluded that air is taken up during this process. In these experiments he also proved that air consists of two elastic fluids (gases), one respirable and the other nonrespirable. After experiments with a sparrow breathing in a closed vessel until it expired, Lavoisier stated that during respiration respirable air (O2) is changed into fixed air (CO2) in the lungs with the mephitic portion of the air (N2) not taking part. These were the first investigations of respiration where accurate and reproduciable methods were applied. Respirable air is also transformed into fixed air by a burning candle. After investigations by which thermochemistry was founded, respiration could be defined as a slow form of combustion. In these and other biologically oriented experiments, Lavoisier developed direct and indirect calorimetry. He named respirable gas oxygen and explained the composition of water. In refuting the phlogiston theory, he established modern chemistry. His fate was sealed during the French revolution: in 1794 he was executed as a consequence of his activities as a farmer.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

On the occasion of C. W. Scheele's 200th anniversary of death corrections and complements to some of his important investigations and theories including discussions of priorities, are given to elucidate his works and to avoid misunderstanding (element term; tartaric, oxalic and benzoic acid; pyrolusit; earths/spar/Bologneese luminous stone/barite; Scheele/Bergman/Lavoisier; fire theory/discovery of oxygen; graphite/Wolfram; Scheele/Wenzel).