In the beginning there was a word - "al chemi", or alchemy. It goes back to the Egyptian hieroglyph hmi, meaning black (fertile) land. The same hieroglyph also denoted Egypt itself, the place where alchemy, which was often called "Egyptian art", may have originated. For the first time the term is found in the manuscript of Julius Firmicus (4th century AD). J. Liebig wrote about alchemy that it "never was anything other than chemistry."
The next word was "iatrochemistry" - a direction in natural science and medicine that appeared in the 16th century. It assigned the main role in the occurrence of diseases to violations of chemical processes in the body and set the task of finding chemical means for their treatment. The origin and development of iatrochemistry, which was most widespread in Germany and the Netherlands, is associated with the activities of Paracelsus (1493–1541), as well as the physician and anatomist F. Boe (1614–1672), who formulated its main provisions and opened the first chemical laboratory at Leiden University for analyses. Representatives of iatrochemistry paid attention to the study of the processes of digestion, as well as the sex and other glands; distinguish between "acid" and "alkaline" diseases. Iatrochemistry in the second half of the 18th century ceased to exist as a direction in medicine, but gave rise to experimental chemistry.
Most chemists of the 16th-18th centuries had a medical education and served as apothecaries. Further, since synthetic chemistry did not yet exist, substances for drugs were extracted in their natural state from minerals and plants, and this required methods for analyzing, separating and purifying substances. Analytical chemistry is developing. Then military interests and the demands of consumers called into being other branches of chemistry.
Now chemistry consists of five major sections. These are analytical chemistry, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, physical chemistry and technical chemistry. And then they divide, forming a hundred different chemistries. Such diversity makes one think that the time has come for chemistry to add, not divide.
Academician Yu. A. Kosygin wrote: “By the end of the 20th century, science, as it were, was divided into layers ... A specialist often became isolated in his layer, carried away by details within it ... This created a narrowness of scientific thinking, oblivion of the integrity of the world, the problems of which can be solved only by joint work in different specialties or their interpenetration. The division into specialties creates an atmosphere of mustiness and helplessness.”
Thus, the first task of the article is to show the absurdity of such a division in relation to chemistry. The sections are taken from chemical encyclopedias, reviews, web pages of universities and research institutes, titles of textbooks and journals. The second task is to familiarize neophytes with the variety of chemical solutions to everyday problems. And the third task. As a professional, it is unpleasant for the author to hear at all angles: “grown without chemistry”, “the product does not contain chemicals” and other strange slogans. Where do you go without chemistry!
Analytical chemistry is the development of methods for determining the chemical composition of a substance. It arose earlier than other chemical sciences, and until the end of the 18th century, chemistry was defined as a science that studies the chemical composition of substances. Historically, this is the first scientific proper chemistry.