Today, the Société Royale de Chimie (French-speaking part of Belgium) and the Koninklijke Vlaamse Chemische Vereniging (Dutch-speaking part of the country) consider themselves as typical chemical societies, holding or sponsoring conferences and meetings, editing scientific journals and sustaining a local community connected to the international federations and scientific unions. The members would be most surprised though if they were to receive either the agenda or the minutes of the early meetings of the Association des Chimistes Belges, as it was first suggested to be called in 1887, as they would be astonished to discover for which practical aims the Belgian chemical society was founded. Chemical problems, finding consensus about the best and most reliable analytical procedures, and laws and rules pertaining to chemical expertise were then at the core of the debates and discussions among the members. Chemical problems? What was considered as chemistry at the time of the birth of the Belgian chemical society? Why did the first name of this Association des Chimistes Belges very soon change to Association Belge des Chimistes? And what was at stake when the general assembly decided to relabel itself Société Chimique de Belgique?¹ By focusing on a limited number of questions in the frame of this collective volume devoted to the emergence of chemical societies across Europe, this chapter aims to provide some insights on these questions that would deserve a much closer study; a fine grain analysis has not yet been achieved for the Belgian case.²