Historical View of the Progress of Chemistry

"The only processes which can be called chemical, known to the civilized nations of antiquity, belonged to certain arts, such as metallurgy, dyeing, and the manufacture of glass or porcelain; but these processes appear to have been independent of each other, pursued in the workshop alone, and unconnected with general knowledge."

"The inhabitants of Lower Egypt, where the overflowing of the Nile covered a sandy desert with vegetation and life, might easily adopt the notion, that water, in different modifications, produced all the varieties of inanimate and organized matter; and this dogma characterized the earliest school of Greece."

"In the beginning of the Macedonian dynasty, the school of Aristotle gave a transient attention to the objects of natural science, but the great founder attempted too many subjects to be able to offer correct views of any one series.—And his erroneous practice, that of advancing general principles, and applying them to particular instances, so fatal to truth in all sciences, more particularly opposed itself to the progress of one [chemistry] founded upon a minute examination of obscure and hidden properties of natural bodies."

"Theophrastus, the successor of Aristotle, ...says, in the beginning of his book on fossils, 'stones are produced from earth, metals from water.' ...Theophrastus is perhaps the best observer among the ancients, whose works are in our possession, and [his] theories... cannot be considered as an unfavourable specimen of the theoretical physics of the age."

"[T]he Greeks... possessed, as if instinctively, the perception of everything beautiful, grand, and decorous. As philosophers, they failed not from a want of genius, or even of application, but merely because they pursued a false path,—because they reasoned more upon an imaginary system of nature, than upon the visible and tangible universe."

"Democritus is quoted by Laertius as having employed himself in processes for imitating gems, and for softening and working ivory. Caligula is said to have made experiments with the view of extracting gold from .—Dioscorides... has described the process of subliming mercury from its ores.—Even Cleopatra... might be considered as an experimenter, because... she dissolved a pearl in vinegar... but it is idle to relate such circumstances as indications of science."

"[N]ot even distillation is noticed in the works of Hippocrates or Galen; and... Dioscorides... who probably possessed whatever knowledge was at that time extant in Egypt, recommends the use of a fleece of wool or a sponge, for collecting the products from boiling or burning substances."

"The origin of chemistry, as a science of experiment, cannot be dated farther back than the seventh or eighth century of the Christian era, and it seems to have been coeval with the short period in which cultivation and improvements were promoted by the Arabians."

"The early nomenclature of chemistry demonstrates how much it owes to the Arabians.—The words alcohol, , , , , require no comment."

"The first Arabian systematic works on chemistry are said to have been composed by Geber... The preparation of medicines seems to have been the primary object in this study; and Rhases, Avicenna, and Avenzoar, who have described various chemical operations in their works, were the celebrated physicians of the age."

"[E]early chemical discoveries led to the pursuit of alchemy, the objects of which were to produce a substance capable of converting all other metals into gold: and an universal remedy calculated indefinitely to prolong the period of human life."

"The processes supposed to relate to the transmutation of metals, and the , were probably first made known to the Europeans during the time of the ..."

"The public spirit in the West, was calculated to assist the progress of all pursuits that carried with them an air of mysticism. Warm with the ardour of an extending and exalted religion, men were much more disposed to believe than to reason;—the love of knowledge and power is instinctive in the human mind; in darkness it desires light, and follows it with enthusiasm even when appearing merely in delusive glimmerings."

"The records of the middle ages contain a great variety of anecdotes relating to... pretensions of persons considered as adepts in alchemy... Some of the alchemists were low impostors, whose object was to delude the credulous and the ignorant; others seemed to have deceived themselves with vain hopes; but all followed the pursuit as a secret and mysterious study. The processes were communicated only to chosen disciples, and being veiled in the most enigmatic and obscure language, their importance was enhanced by the concealment."

"In all times men are governed more by what they desire or fear, than by what they know; and in [the middle ages] it was peculiarly easy to deceive, but difficult to enlighten, the public mind; truths were discovered but they were blended with the false and marvellous; and another era was required to separate them from absurdities, and to demonstrate their importance and uses."

"Arnald of Villa Nova... was one of the earliest European inquirers who attended to chemical operations. ...[H]e firmly believed in the transmutation of metals; the same opinions are attributed to him and to Geber; and he seems to have followed the study with no other views than those of preparing medicines, and attempting the composition of the philosopher's stone."

"That the delusions of alchemy were ardently pursued... may be learned from a reference to the public acts... ... openly condemned the alchemists as impostors, and the bull begins by stating, that "they promise what they do not perform;" and in England an act of Parliament was passed in the fifth year of the reign of Henry IV. prohibiting the attempts at transmutation, and making them felonious."

"In the beginning of the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon of Oxford applied himself to experiment, and his works offer proofs of talents, industry, and sagacity. He was a man of a truly philosophical turn desirous of investigating nature... but neither his labours nor those of Albert of Cologne, his contemporary, who appears to have been a genius of a kindred character, had any considerable influence on the improvement of their age."

"The wonders performed by the experimental art were attributed by the vulgar to magic; and at a time when knowledge belonged only to the cloister, any new philosophy was... regarded even by the learned with a jealous eye."

"of deserves [attention] on account of the novelty and variety of his experiments on metallic preparations, particularly : in his Currus triumphalis Antimonii https://books.google.com/books?id=J66EAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA11 The triumphal chariot of Antimony he has described a number of the combinations of this metal. He used the s for solutions, and seems to have been one of the first persons who observed the production of ether from alcohol."

"Cornelius Agrippa... was born at Cologne in 1486, openly professed magic and endeavoured to connect... , the hermetic art, and metaphysical philosophy; and he was followed by Paracelsus, in Switzerland and Digby, Kelly, and Dee, in England."

"The first Arabian Alchemists seem to have adopted the idea that the elements were under the dominion of spiritual beings who might be submitted to human power..."

"The speculative ideas of the Arabians were more or less adopted by their European disciples. The Rosicrucian philosophy in which gnomes, s, salamanders, and s were the spiritual agents, supposed capable of being governed or enslaved by man, seems to have originated with the alchemists of this period; and Agrippa, Paracelsus, and their followers... professed to believe in supernatural powers, in an art above experiment, in a system of knowledge not derived from the senses."

"Paracelsus... deserves... notice from the circumstance of his being the first public lecturer on chemistry in Europe, and from... his application of mercurial preparations to the cure of diseases. The magistrates of Basle established a professor's chair for their countryman, but he soon quitted an occupation in which regularity was necessary, and spent his days in wandering from place to place, searching for, and revealing secrets. He pretended to confer immortality, by his medicines, and yet died at the age of 49..."

"The enthusiasm [of Paracelsus] almost supplied his want of genius. He formed a number of new preparations of the metals, which were studied and applied by his disciples; his exaggerated censure of the methods of the ancients, and of the systems of his day, had an effect in diminishing their popularity; one error was expelled by another; and it is a great step towards improvement, that men should know they have been in delusion."

"Van Helmont of ... was formed in the school of Alchemy, and his mind was tinctured with its prejudices: but his views concerning nature and the elements were distinguished by much more philosophical acuteness, and more sagacity, than those of any former writer. He is the first person who seems to have had any idea respecting elastic fluids, different from the air of the atmosphere; and he has distinctly mentioned three of these substances, to which he applied the term es: namely aqueous gas or steam, unctuous or inflammable gas, and gas from wood or carbonic acid gas. Van Helmont developed some accurate views respecting the permanent elasticity of air, and the operation of heat upon it; and a sketch of a curious instrument very similar to the differential thermometer, is to be found in his works."

"Van Helmont has used a term not so applicable or intelligible as gas, namely, Blas; which he supposed to be an influence derived from the heavenly bodies, of a most subtile and etherial nature; and on the idea of its operations in our terrestrial system, he has endeavoured to found the vindication of astrology."

"At this period there was no taste in the public mind to restrain vain imaginations. There were no severe critics to correct the wanderings of genius. The systems of logic, adopted in the schools, were founded rather upon the analogies of words than upon the relations of things; and they were more calculated to conceal error, than to discover truth."

"Till the revival of literature in Europe, there was no attempt at philosophical discussion in any of the sciences; the diffusion of letters gradually brought the opinions of men to the standard of nature and truth; failures in the experimental arts produced caution, and the detection of imposture created rational scepticism."

"The delusions of Alchemy were exposed by Guibert, Gassendi, and Kepler. Libavius answered Guibert in a tone which demonstrated the weakness of his cause. This person was the last active experimentalist who believed that transmutation had actually been performed; and in the beginning of the 17th century the processes of rational chemistry were pursued by a number of enlightened persons..."

"George Agricola published, in 1542, his twelve books, '... on the methods of extracting and purifying the useful metals; and he was followed by Lazarus Erckern, Assay-Master General of the Empire of Germany, whose works, brought forward in 1574, contain a number of useful practices detailed in a simple and perspicuous manner."

"Lord Bacon happily described the Alchemists as similar to those husbandmen who in searching for a treasure supposed to be hidden in their land, by turning up and pulverising the soil, rendered it fertile; in seeking for brilliant impossibilities, they sometimes discovered useful realities; and in speaking of the chemistry of his time, he says, a new philosophy has arisen from the furnaces, which has confounded all the reasonings of the ancients. This illustrious man himself pointed out many important objects of chemical inquiry; but he was a still greater benefactor to the science, by his development of the general system for improving natural knowledge. Till his time there had been no distinct views concerning the art of experiment and observation."

"Lord Bacon demonstrated how little could be effected by the unassisted human powers, and the weakness of the strongest intellect... without artificial resources. He directed the attention of inquirers to instruments for assisting the senses, and for examining bodies under new relations. He taught that Man was but the servant and interpreter of Nature; capable of discovering truth in no other way but by observing and imitating her operations; that facts were to be collected and not speculations formed; and that the materials for the foundations of true systems of knowledge were to be discovered, not in the books of the ancients, not in metaphysical theories, not in the fancies of men, but in the visible and tangible external world."

"Though Van Helmont had formed some just notions respecting the properties of air, yet his views were blended with obscure and vague speculations; and it is to the disciples of Galileo that the true knowledge of the mechanical qualities and agencies of elastic fluids is owing. After Torricelli and Pascal had shewn the pressure and weight of the atmosphere, the investigation of its effects in chemical operations became an obvious problem."

"John Rey is generally quoted as the first person who shewed by experiments that air is fixed in bodies during ; but it appears from the work of this acute and learned man that he reasoned upon the processes of others rather than upon his own observations. He quotes [Modestinus] Fachsius, Libavius, Cesalpin, and Cardan, as having ascertained the increase of weight of during its conversion into a , and he mentions an experiment of Hammerus Poppius, who found that calcined by a burning-glass, notwithstanding the loss of vapours, yet was heavier after the process.."

"Rey ridicules the various notions of the Alchemists on the cause of this phenomenon; and ascribes it to the union of air with the metal; he supposes that air is miscible with other bodies besides metals, and states distinctly that it may be expelled from water."

"The observations of John Rey seem to have excited no attention amongst his contemporaries. The philosophical spirit was only beginning to animate chemistry, and the labourers in this science, occupied by their own peculiar processes, were little disposed to listen to the reasonings of an inquirer in general science; yet, though the most active of the forms of matter were neglected in the processes of the operative chemists of this day, and consequently no just views formed by them, still they discovered a number of important facts respecting the combinations and agencies of solid and fluid bodies."

"Glauber at Amsterdam, about 1640, made known several neutral salts, and several compounds of metallic and vegetable substances."

"Kunckel in Saxony and Sweden, pursued technical chemistry with very great success, and was the first person who made any philosophical experiments upon , which was accidentally discovered by Brandt in 1669."

"[Jacob] Barner in Poland, and Glaser in France, published elementary books on the science, and Borichius in Denmark, Bohn at Leipzic, and Hoffman at Halle pursued... scientific investigations with much zeal and success; and Hoffman was the first person who attempted the philosophical analysis of s."

"About the middle of this [17th] century... mathematical and physical investigations were pursued in every part of the civilized world with an enthusiasm before unknown. The new mode of improving knowledge by collecting facts, associated a number labourers in the same pursuit. It was felt that the whole of nature was yet to be investigated... distinct subjects connected with utility... sufficient to employ all enquirers, yet tending to the common end of promoting the progress of the human mind. Learned bodies were formed in Italy, England, and France, for the purpose of the interchange of opinions, the combination of labour and division of expense in performing new experiments, and the accumulation and diffusion of knowledge. The Academy del Cimento was established in 1651 under the patronage of the Duke of Tuscany; the of London, in 1660; the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris, in 1666."

"The ardour of scientific investigation was excited and kept alive by sympathy: taste was improved by discussion, and by a comparison of opinions. The conviction that useful discoveries would be appreciated and rewarded, was a constant stimulus to industry, and every field of enquiry was open for the free and unbiassed exercise of the powers of genius."

"Boyle, Hooke, and Slare, were the principal early chemical investigators attached to the of London. Homberg, Geoffroy, and the two Lemerys Nicolas & Louis], a few years later, distinguished themselves in France."

"Otto de Guericke of invented the air pump; and this instrument, improved by Boyle and Hooke, was made an important apparatus for investigating the properties of air."

"Boyle and Hooke, from their experiments, concluded that air was absolutely necessary to combustion and respiration, and that one part of it only was employed in these processes. And Hooke formed the sagacious conclusion, that this principle is the same as the substance fixed in nitre and that is a chemical process, the solution of the burning body in elastic fluid, or its union with this matter."

"Mayow of Oxford, in 1674, published his treatises on the nitro-ærial spirit, in which he advanced opinions similar to those of Boyle and Hooke, and supported them by a number of original and curious experiments; but his work, though marked by strong ingenuity, abounds in vague hypotheses. He attempted to apply the imperfect chemistry of his day to physiology; his failure was complete, but it was the failure of a man of genius."

"Boyle was one of the most active experimenters, and certainly the greatest chemist of his age. He introduced the use of tests or s, active substances for detecting the presence of other bodies: he overturned the [prevalent] ideas... that the results of operations by fire were the real elements of things, and he ascertained... important facts respecting inflammable bodies, s, es, and the phænomena of combination; but neither he nor any of his contemporaries endeavoured to account for the changes of bodies by any fixed principles."

"The solutions of the phænomena were attempted either on rude mechanical notions, or by occult qualities, or peculiar subtile spirits or ethers supposed to exist in the different bodies.—And it is to the same great genius who developed the laws that regulate the motions of the heavenly bodies, that chemistry owes the first distinct philosophical elucidations of the powers which produce the changes and apparent transmutations of the substances belonging to the earth."

"dissolves in water, es unite with s, s dissolve in acids. Is not this, says Newton, on account of an attraction between their particles? Copper dissolved in aquafortis is thrown down by . Is not this because the particles of the iron have a stronger attraction for the particles of the acid, than those of copper: and do not different bodies attract each other with different degrees of force?"

"A transient view of the progress of chemical philosophy will prove that the most brilliant discoveries, and the happiest theoretical arrangements belonging to it are of very recent origin; and a few historical details and general observations upon the progress and effects of the science will form, perhaps, no improper introduction to the elements of this branch of knowledge."