Chemistry of Kupipakwa Rasayanas – A Review
Kupipakwa Rasayanas are very popular and commonly prescribed preparations among the Ayurvedic physicians, and are looked upon as panacea. These are prepared in a specially designed glass bottle by gradual heating immersion in sand bath (Valuka Yantra). Particular chemical processes are involved in these preparations which also bear testimony to the great chemical knowledge prevailing in ancient India. In the present review, the probable chemistry of Kupipakwa Rasayanas has been discussed.
History of Chemistry
SEVERAL YEARS AGO, in my graduate seminar on science in modern America, a bright student whose previous study had been confined to the Scientific Revolution commented that he was surprised by the weakness of the secondary literature. "There is just not much substance to it," he complained. In a sense I believe he was correct. There certainly is some good literature on the history of science in America, but by comparison with the profusion of exciting and intellectually challenging books and articles on science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, or with the riches of scholarship on Darwin, that literature is very limited, both in breadth and depth of treatment. Moreover, if we divide the historical writings on science in America into categories determined by scientific discipline, then it seems fair to say that the category dealing with chemistry shows some of the greatest deficiencies. The development of chemistry in the American setting has simply not received the attention given the more glamorous disciplines of physics and biology. To judge by its treatment by historians, chemistry, far more than economics, deserves the title, "the dismal science." There is more than a little irony in this situation, for the development of chemistry in America ought to be judged a strategic site for historical research. Chemists have constituted the largest scientific community in the United States since at least the mid-nineteenth century, when reliable figures first become available; by World War I, the American Chemical Society was the largest disciplinary society in the world. Among the natural sciences, chemistry traditionally has had the closest relationship with industry, and chemists were in the vanguard of those who first succeeded in developing science-based technology, both in Europe and the United States. When authors write of "scientific medicine" or "scientific agriculture," itis often the drugs and diagnostic tests, the fertilizers, insecticides, and soil analyses of the chemist hat they have in mind. And just as chemists working for industry have produced drugs and insecticides, so too it has been chemists, working for agencies of the federal, state, and local governments, who have carried responsibilities for protecting consumers from risks sometimes associated with those products. The work of the physiologist and molecular biologist depends, in large measure, on chemistry, and chemistry has long played an important role in the work of the petrologist and geologist. Sixty years ago, Wilder Bancroft, professor of physical chemistry at Cornell, called chemistry "the central science," citing its many and diverse links with other disciplines and its intimate connections with social life. Although the physicist might challenge Bancroft's use of the definite article, few would dispute that chemistry has had a vital role in the evolution of science in modern America or that it has directly affected American industry, agriculture, and medicine.'
A New Role for Professional Scientists in Industry: Industrial Research at General Electric, 1900-1916
Only an attentive stockholder would have noticed the item. It was buried near the bottom of the Report of the Third Vice President of the General Electric Company, in that firm's 1902 Annual Report. After describing the important details of manufacturing and engineering for the year 1901, Vice President Edwin W. Rice noted: "Although our engineers have always been liberally supplied with every facility for the development of new and original designs and improvements of existing standards, it has been deemed wise during the past year to establish a laboratory to be devoted exclusively to original research. It is hoped by this means that many profitable fields may be discovered."1 With this, a major American corporation announced to the world that it had embarked on an experiment in the support of scientific research. This marked the formal unveiling of a program that had actually begun on December 15, 1900, when Willis R. Whitney, an assistant professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, had arrived in Schenectady, New York, to begin devoting two days a week to research at GE's largest manufacturing works.2 He was not the first professional scientist to be employed in American industry-or even in General Electric. Nor was his laboratory the