Hugh Munro Ross

“ Increasing attention was paid to the investigation of the properties of substances and of their effects on the human body, and chemistry profited by the fact that it passed into the hands of men who possessed the highest scientific culture of the time, Still, belief in the possibility of transmutation long remained orthodox, even among the most distinguished men of science. ”

“ Pure white mercury, fixed by the virtue of white non-corrosive sulphur, engenders in mines a matter which fusion changes into silver, and united to pure clear red sulphur it forms gold, while with various kinds of impure mercury and sulphur the other bodies are produced. ”

“ Wooden sleepers continued to be used, the rails being secured by spikes passing through the extremities, but about 1793 stone blocks also began to be employed—an innovation associated with the name of Benjamin Outram, who, however, apparently was not actually the first to make it. This type of rail (fig. 1) was known as the plate-rail, tramway-plate or barrow way-plate—names which are preserved in the modern term “plate layer” applied to the men who lay and maintain the permanent way of a railway. ”

“ Possibly this is one of the books about gold and silver of which Diocletian decreed the destruction about A.D. 290—an act which Gibbon styles the first authentic event in the history of alchemy (Decline and Fall, chap. xiii.) . The author of these receipts is not under any delusion that he is transmuting metals; the MS. is merely a workshop manual in which are described processes in daily use for preparing metals for false jewellery, but it argues considerable knowledge of methods of making alloys and colouring metals. ”

“ A train weighing 92 tons could be drawn by one engine at the rate of 5 m. an hour. The principal business of the new railway was the conveyance of minerals and goods, but from the first passengers insisted upon being carried, and on the 10th of October 1825 the company began to run a daily coach, called the “Experiment,” to carry six inside, and from fifteen to twenty outside, making the journey from Darlington to Stockton and back in two hours. ”

“ Some traditionary knowledge might be secreted in the temples and monasteries of Egypt: much useful experience might have been acquired in the practice of arts and manufactures, but the science of chemistry owes its origin and improvement to the industry of the Saracens. ”

“ Richard Trevithick, indeed, had in 1804 tried a high-pressure steam locomotive, with smooth wheels, on a plate-way near Merthyr Tydvil, but it was found more expensive than horses; John Blenkinsop in 1811 patented an engine with cogged wheel and rack-rail which was used, with commercial success, to convey coal from his Middleton Colliery to Leeds; William Hedley in 1813 built two locomotives—Puffing Billy and Wylam Dilly—for hauling coal from Wylam Colliery, near Newcastle ”

“ It must be noted that the processes described by the alchemists of the 13th century are not put forward as being miraculous or supernatural; they rather represent the methods employed by nature, which it is the end of the alchemist’s art to reproduce artificially in the laboratory. But even among the late Arabian alchemists it was doubted whether the resources of the art were adequate to the task; and in the West, Vincent of Beauvais remarks that success had not been achieved in making artificial metals identical with the natural ones. ”

“ It may be supposed that originally the public roads, when worn by the cartage of the coal, were repaired by laying planks of timber at the bottom of the ruts, and that then the planks were laid on the surface of special roads or ways [1] formed between the Collieries and the river. “The manner of the carriage,” says Lord Keeper North in 1676, “is by laying rails of timber . . . exactly straight and parallel, and bulky carts are made with four rowlets fitting these rails, whereby the carriage is so easy that one horse will draw down four or five chaldrons of coals” (from 10.6 to 13.2 tons) . ”

“ In the Leiden museum there are a number of papyri which were found in a tomb at Thebes, written probably in the 3rd century A.D., though their matter is older. Some are in Greek and demotic, and one, of peculiar interest from the chemical point of view, gives a number of receipts, in Greek, for the manipulation of base metals to form alloys which simulate gold and are intended to be used in the manufacture of imitation jewellery. ”

“ In the course of the 19th century the idea that the different elements are constituted by different groupings or condensations of one primal matter—a speculation which, if proved to be well grounded, would imply the possibility of changing one element into another—found favour with more than one responsible chemist ”

“ In America the development of the locomotive dates from almost the same time as in England. The earliest examples used in that country, apart from a small experimental model constructed by Peter Cooper, came from England. In 1828, on behalf of the Delaware & Hudson Canal Company, which had determined to build a line, 16 m. long, from Carbondale to Honesdale, Pennsylvania, Horatio Allen ordered three locomotives from Messrs Foster & Rastrick, of Stourbridge, and one from George Stephenson. ”

“ But the Arabs did not acquire their knowledge of this literature at first hand. The earliest Hellenic culture in the East was Syrian, and the Arabs made their first acquaintance with Greek chemistry, as with Greek philosophy, mathematics, medicine, &c., by the intermediary of Syriac translations. (See Arabian Philosophy and Syriac Literature.) Examples of such translations are preserved in MSS. at the British Museum, partly written in Syriac, partly in Arabic with Syriac characters. ”

“ This statement represents a doctrine widely held in the 13th century, and also to be found in the Greek alchemists, that everything endowed with a particular apparent quality possesses a hidden opposite quality, which can be rendered apparent by fire. Later, as in the works attributed to Basil Valentine, sulphur, mercury and salt are held to be the constituents of the metals. ”

“ On the Liverpool & Manchester railway they were usually 12 ft. or 15 ft. long and weighed 35 ℔ to the yard, and they were fastened by iron wedges to chairs weighing 15 or 17 ℔ each. The chairs were in turn fixed to the sleepers by two iron spikes, half-round wooden cross sleepers being employed on embankments and stone blocks 20 in. square by 10 in. deep in cuttings. The fish bellied rails, however, were found to break near the chairs, and from 1834 they began to be replaced with parallel rails weighing 50 ℔ to the yard. ”

“ La chimie au moyen âge (text and translation of Syriac and Arabic treatises on alchemy, 3 vols., 1893) . Much bibliographical and other information about the later writers on alchemy is contained in Bibliotheca Chemica (2 vols., Glasgow, 1906) , a catalogue by John Ferguson of the books in the collection of James Young of Kelly (printed for private distribution) . (H. M. R.)
↑ An alchemistical work bearing the name of Ostanes speaks of a divine water which cures all maladies—an early appearance of the universal panacea or elixir of life. ”

“ About the beginning of the 20th century, however, the view was promulgated that the spontaneous production of helium from radium may be an instance of the transformation of one element into another. (See Radioactivity; also Element and Matter.)
See M. P. E. Berthelot, Les Origines de l’alchimie (1885) ; Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (text and translation, 3 vols., 1887–1888) ; Introduction à l'étude de la chimie des anciens et du moyen âge (1889) ”

“ Similar systems of symbols, but elaborated to include compounds, appear in Greek MSS. of the 10th century, preserved in the library of St Mark’s at Venice. Subsequently electrum (an alloy of gold and silver) disappeared as a specific metal, and tin was ascribed to Jupiter instead, the sign of mercury becoming common to the metal and the planet. Thus we read in Chaucer (Chanouns Yemannes Tale) :—
The bodies sevene eek, lo! ”