T. E. Thorpe

“ But not only were health and length of days the fortunate lot of him who possessed the philosopher’s stone; increase of wisdom and virtue equally followed from its use. As it ennobled metals, so it freed the heart from evil. It made men as wise as Aristotle or Avicenna, sweetened adversity, banished vain-glory, ambition, and vicious desires. Adam received it at the hands of God, and it was given also to Solomon, although the commentators were rather exercised to know why, as he possessed the philosopher’s stone, he should have sent to Ophir for gold. ”

“ The Philosopher’s Stone During the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries the cult of alchemy attained to the dignity of a religion. Belief in transmutation and in the virtues and powers of the philosopher’s stone, in the universal medicine, the alkahest, and the elixir of life, formed its articles of faith. ”

“ It may be, as Davy once said, that “analogy is the fruitful parent of error;” but the idea that metals could be modified—could even be changed one into the other—seemed to find support in innumerable chemical phenomena well known but imperfectly understood. The fact that alchemy—that is the profession of making gold from other metals—came to be practised by rogues is no proof that it never had, and never could have had, a philosophical basis. ”

“ The history of science can show many instances whereby the rule has been demolished by the exception. Little facts have killed big theories, even as a pebble has slain a giant. During the reign of phlogiston a few of such facts were not unknown—at least to some of the better informed of Stahl’s followers. ”

“ At that time nearly every department of human knowledge seemed to have become permeated by an eager spirit of scepticism, inquiry, and reform. The foundation of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, the Accademia del Cimento of Florence, the Academie Royale at Paris, the Berlin Academy, all within a few years of each other, was significant of the times. Chemistry was no longer to be a sacred mystery, to be known only to priests, and its secrets jealously guarded by them. Science had chafed under the domination of the schoolmen ”

“ Although there can be no doubt that this doctrine greatly stimulated the pursuit of organic chemistry, it was gradually perceived that to regard inorganic and organic chemistry as the chemistry respectively of the simple and of the compound radicals was an imperfect and misleading conception of the true relations of the two main divisions of the science. Facts showed that the properties of a substance depend more on the arrangement of its atoms than on their nature. ”

“ The fine imaginations of other philosophers concerning their physical principles may elevate the spirit by their grand ideas, but they prove nothing demonstratively. And, as chemistry is a science of observation, it can only be based on what is palpable and demonstrative. ”

“ Gold was a specific against diseases of the heart; the liquor of Luna (solution of silver) cures diseases of the brain. “The remedies,” said Paracelsus, “are subjected to the will of the stars, and directed by them. You ought, therefore, to wait until heaven is favourable before ordering a medicine.”
The Paracelsian physicians, for the most part, were a set of dangerous fanatics, who, in their contempt for the principles of Hippocrates, Galen, and Avicenna, and in their reckless use of powerful remedies, many of them metallic poisons, wrought untold misery and mischief. ”

“ Physics is concerned with the forms of energy which affect matter; chemistry with the study of matter so affected. Each, then, is complementary to the other. Philosophers of old drew no practical distinction between them, at least as regards their own studies. Men like Boyle, Black, Cavendish, Lavoisier, Dalton, Faraday, Graham, Bunsen, were pioneers “on a very broad gauge,” pushing their inquiries into territories common to the two branches as their genius or inclinations directed them. ”

“ His experimental work on the atomic weights of the elements—the great work of his life—was of supreme importance at this particular period of the development of chemistry: it served not only to give precision to, and enhance the significance and value of, Dalton’s generalisation, but it furnished chemists, for the first time, with a set of constants, ascertained with the highest exactitude of which operative chemistry was then capable, thereby contributing to the expansion of quantitative analysis, and to a more exact knowledge of the composition of substances. ”

“ The changes which substances experience under the influence of fire, air, and water, or as the result of their action on each other, are frequently so profound that even the most superficial of the early observers of chemical processes could not fail to be impressed by them. Many of these changes are, in fact, far more striking as regards alteration in outward characters—such as colour, lustre, density, etc.—than are the differences between individual metals; say, between lead and tin, or between tin and silver, or between brass and gold. ”

“ It has also happened that men who began their scientific career as chemists, like Dalton, Regnault, and Magnus, eventually gave the whole of their energies to physical measurements; or, like Black, Faraday, and Graham, devoted themselves to the elucidation of physical problems. As certain of these physical laws and problems have greatly influenced the progress of chemistry,171 it becomes necessary, in any historical treatment of the subject, to give some account of their origin, and to show how they affected the development of chemical theory. ”

“ The limited knowledge of chemical phenomena and of chemical processes which these early workers necessarily possessed, so far from precluding a belief in the possibility of transmutation, actually encouraged it. As nothing was known of the true nature of brass or of its exact relation to copper, it was not unreasonable to suppose that, if this substance could be made to acquire some of the attributes of gold by a process essentially chemical, processes of a like nature might cause it to acquire, if not all, at least so many of them as to enable it to pass for gold of greater or less fineness. ”

“ The attempt is historically interesting as being the first systematic endeavour to gain an insight into the constitution of chemical compounds—that is, to determine the manner in which the constituent atoms are grouped or arranged with respect to one another, or, in other words, to distinguish between the empirical and the rational composition of substances, which is the ultimate aim of modern chemistry. ”

“ Kunkel did much to liberate chemical literature from the mysticism and obscurity of alchemy. He was scornful of the theories of the adepts, and contemptuous of their tria prima.
I, old man that I am, who have been occupied with chemistry for sixty years, have never yet been able to discover their fixed sulphur, or how it enters into the composition of metals.... Moreover, they are not agreed among themselves respecting the kind of sulphur. The sulphur of one is not the sulphur of the other. To that one may reply that each is at liberty to baptise his child as he likes. ”

“ Aristotle, the greatest scientific thinker among the Greeks, exercised an authority almost supreme in Europe during nearly twenty centuries. His influence is to be traced throughout the literature of chemistry long after the time of Boyle. It may be detected even now. Probably few who write chemical memoirs to-day, and who follow the time-honoured practice of prefacing their own contributions to knowledge by a statement of what is already known on the subject, are aware that in so doing they are obeying the injunctions of Aristotle. ”

“ However desirable it may be in the interests of history to indicate the sequence of the surmises and facts which preceded the formulation of the atomic theory, it is very doubtful whether Dalton was, to any material extent, influenced by them. A self-educated man of lowly origin, sturdily independent and highly original, he was accustomed to rely upon his own faculty of observation and experiment for his facts, and upon his own intellectual powers and mental energy for their interpretation. ”

“ For in such speculative inquiries where the naked knowledge of the truth is the thing principally aimed at, what does he teach me worth thanks, that does not, if he can, make his notion intelligible to me, but by mystical terms and ambiguous phrases darkens what he should clear up, and makes me add the trouble of guessing at the sense of what he equivocally expresses, to that of learning the truth of what he seems to deliver. ”

“ The Chemistry of the Ancients Chemistry, as an art, was practised thousands of years before the Christian era; as a science, it dates no further back than the middle of the seventeenth century. The monumental records of Egypt and the accounts left us by Herodotus and other writers show that the ancient Egyptians, among the earliest nations of whom we have any records, had a considerable knowledge of processes essentially chemical in their nature. ”

“ Berzelius occupies a pre-eminent position in the history of chemistry, and during a considerable portion of his lifetime exercised an almost unassailable authority as a chemical philosopher. He is distinguished as an experimenter, as a discoverer, as a critic and interpreter, and as a lawgiver. His contributions to chemical knowledge range over every department of the science. He shares with Davy the honour of having established the fundamental laws of electro-chemistry. ”

“ The conception that matter is made up of particles or atoms, and that these particles are in a state of ceaseless motion, is to be met with in Hindu and Phœnician philosophy. It was taught by Anaxagoras, Leukippos, and Demokritos to the Greeks, and by Lucretius to the Romans. Leukippos and Demokritos explained the creation of the world as due solely to physical agencies without the intervention of a creative intelligence. According to their theories, the atoms are variable, not only in size, but in weight. The smallest atoms are also the lightest. Atoms are impenetrable ”

“ Three is not precisely and universally the number of the distinct substances or elements into which all compound bodies are resolvable by fire, inasmuch as some bodies afford more than three principles. Earth and water are as much chemical principles as salt, sulphur, and mercury. Even the limitation to five chemical principles is too narrow. Such is proved to be the case by the mode in which bodies, animals and vegetable, grow, and by the analysis of minerals and metals. ”

“ As the number of chemical products increased and their value in therapeutics became more and more appreciated, there arose another school of alchemists, whose energies were devoted, not to the transmutation of metals—which, however plausible as a belief, seemed hopeless of achievement—but to the more immediate practical benefits which it was recognised must follow from the closer association of chemistry and medicine. ”

“ Space will not permit of any account of the philosophical opinions of Paracelsus—of his mysticism, his theosophy, his pantheism, his extraordinary doctrine of the Archæus and Tartarus, his association of astrology with medicine. His chief merit lies in his insistence that the true function of chemistry was not to make gold artificially, but to prepare medicines and substances useful to the arts. He thereby made chemistry indispensable to medicine, and thenceforward chemistry began to be taught in the universities and in the schools as an essential part of a medical education. ”

“ This short summary will suffice to show that attempts to discover relations between the physical attributes of substances and their chemical nature were made more or less sporadically from the time that chemistry was pursued in the spirit of science. But it is only in recent times that any great accession to knowledge has resulted from such efforts. The science of physical chemistry is practically a creation of our own period. ”

“ Iatro-Chemistry The term “iatro-chemistry” denotes a particular phase in the history of medicine and of chemistry. The iatro-chemists were a school of physicians who sought to apply chemical principles to the elucidation of vital phenomena. According to them, human illnesses result from abnormal chemical processes within the body, and these could only be counteracted by appropriate chemical remedies. Although this idea did not originate with him, the chief exponent of this school is commonly said to be Paracelsus. ”

“ A man of violent passions, coarse, drunken, arrogant, and unscrupulous, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Paracelsus Bombastus von Hohenheim—to give him his full name—would seem to have possessed none of the attributes needed by the successful leader of an intellectual revolution. ”

“ Aristotle affirmed that natural science can only be25 founded upon a knowledge of facts, and facts can only be ascertained through observation and experiment. He illustrates this particularly by a reference to astronomy, “which,” he says, “is based on the observation of astronomical phenomena, and it is the case with every branch of science or art.” It is erroneous and unjust, therefore, to suppose that Aristotle’s philosophy, as he taught it, is opposed to the true methods of science. ”

“ A member of the Order of Minorites, he had a great reputation as an alchemist; and a number of books on alchemy and chemical processes are ascribed to him. He described modes of obtaining nitric acid and aqua regia, and studied their action upon metals. He obtained alcohol by distillation, and knew how to dehydrate it by the aid of carbonate of potash, which he obtained by calcining cream of tartar. He prepared various tinctures and essential oils, and a number of metallic compounds, such as red and white precipitate. To him is usually ascribed the first idea of a universal medicine. ”