Excerpt from The Determination of Hydrogen Ions: An Elementary Treatise on the Hydrogen Electrode, Indicator and Supplementary Methods With an Indexed Bibliography on Applications
Poincare in The Foundations of Science remarks, "There are facts common to several sciences, which seem the common source of streams diverging in all directions and which are comparable to that knoll of Saint Gothard whence spring waters which fertilize four different valleys."
Such are the essential facts of electrolytic dissociation.
Among the numerous developments of the theory announced by Arrhenius in 1887 none is of more general practical importance than the resolution of "acidity" into two components - the concentration of the hydrogen ions, and the quantity of acid capable of furnishing this ionized hydrogen. For two reasons the hydrogen ion occupies a unique place in the estimation of students of ionization. First, it is a dissociation product of the great majority of compounds of biochemical importance. Second, it is the ion for which methods of determination have been best developed. Its importance and its mensurability have thus conspired to make it a center of interest. The consequent grouping of phenomena about the activity of the hydrogen ion is unfortunate when it confers undue weight upon a subordinate aspect of a problem or when it tends to obscure possibilities of broader generalization. Nevertheless, such grouping is often convenient, often of immediate value and frequently illuminating. Especially in the field of biochemistry it has coordinated a vast amount of material. It has placed us at a point of vantage from which we must look with admiration upon the intuition of men like Pasteur, who, without the aid of the precise conceptions which guide us, handled "acidity" with so few mistakes.
In the charming descriptions of his experimental work Pasteur has given us glimpses of his discernment of some of the effects of "acidity" in biochemical processes. In the opening chapter of Studies on Fermentation he noted that the relatively high acidity of must favors a natural alcoholic fermentation in wine, while the low acidity of wort induces difficulties in the brewing of beer.
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