Philip Asher Chemistry and Toxicology for Nurses

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. Chemistry is the science that teaches of the ele ments and their compounds, and investigates the laws of their combinations. Elements are those particles of matter that, up to the present time, have not been reduced to simpler ones. For example, oxygen is said to be an element because, no matter how it may be treated, it cannot be reduced any further. The same is true Of iron and the other elements. Water, on the other hand, is a com pound because we are able to decompose it into two elements, viz., hydrogen and oxygen.