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Other documents randomly have
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have studied the progress of the analytical, as well as the
mechanical sciences. We are compelled to pause and look
backwards here; just as happened in the history of astronomy, when
we arrived at the brink of the great mechanical inductions of Newton,
and found that we must trace the history of Mechanics, before we
could proceed to mechanical Astronomy. The terms “force, attraction,
inertia, momentum,” sent us back into preceding centuries then, just
as the terms “composition” and “element” send us back now.

Nor is it to a small extent that we have thus to double back upon

our past advance. Next to Astronomy, Chemistry is one of the most
ancient of sciences;—the field of the earliest attempts of man to
command and understand nature. It has held men for centuries by a
kind of fascination; and innumerable and endless are the various
labors, the failures and successes, the speculations and
conclusions, the strange pretences and fantastical dreams, of those
who have pursued it. To exhibit all these, or give any account of
them, would be impossible; and for our design, it would not be
pertinent. To extract from the mass that which is to our purpose, is
difficult; but the attempt must be made. We must endeavor to
analyse the history of Chemistry, so far as it has tended towards the
establishment of general principles. We shall thus obtain a sight of
generalizations of a new kind, and shall prepare ourselves for others
of a higher order.
 B O O K XIV.

T H E A N A LY T I C A L S C I E N C E .
HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY.
. . . . . . . Soon had his crew
Opened into the hill a spacious wound,
And digged out ribs of gold . . . .
Anon out of the earth a fabric huge
Rose like an exhalation, with the sound
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet,
Built like a temple.
Milton. Paradise Lost, i.
 CHAPTER I.

Improvement of the Notion of Chemical Analysis, and Recognition of it as

the Spagiric Art.

T HE doctrine of “the four elements” is one of the oldest

monuments of man’s speculative nature; goes back, perhaps, to
times anterior to Greek philosophy; and as the doctrine of Aristotle
and Galen, reigned for fifteen hundred years over the Gentile,
Christian, and Mohammedan world. In medicine, taught as the
doctrine of the four “elementary qualities,” of which the human body
and all other substances are compounded, it had a very powerful
and extensive influence upon medical practice. But this doctrine
never led to any attempt actually to analyse bodies into their
supposed elements: for composition was inferred from the
resemblance of the qualities, not from the separate exhibition of the
ingredients; the supposed analysis was, in short, a decomposition of
the body into adjectives, not into substances.

This doctrine, therefore, may be considered as a negative state,

antecedent to the very beginning of chemistry; and some progress
beyond this mere negation was made, as soon as men began to
endeavor to compound and decompound substances by the use of
fire or mixture, however erroneous might be the opinions and
expectations which they combined with their attempts. Alchemy is a
step in chemistry, so far as it implies the recognition of the work of
the cupel and the retort, as the produce of analysis and synthesis.
How perplexed and perverted were the forms in which this
recognition was clothed,—how mixed up with mythical follies and
extravagancies, we have already seen; and the share which
Alchemy had in the formation of any sounder knowledge, is not such
as to justify any further notice of that pursuit.

The result of the attempts to analyse bodies by heat, mixture, and

the like processes, was the doctrine that the first principles of things
are three, not four; namely, salt, sulphur, and mercury; and that, of
these three, all things are compounded. In reality, the doctrine, as
thus stated, contained no truth which was of any value; for, though
the chemist could extract from most bodies portions which he called
salt, 262 and sulphur, and mercury, these names were given, rather
to save the hypothesis, than because the substances were really
those usually so called: and thus the supposed analyses proved
nothing, as Boyle justly urged against them. 1
1 Shaw’s Boyle. Skeptical Chymist, pp. 312, 313. &c.

The only real advance in chemical theory, therefore, which we can

ascribe to the school of the three principles, as compared with those
who held the ancient dogma of the four elements, is, the
acknowledgment of the changes produced by the chemist’s
operations, as being changes which were to be accounted for by the
union and separation of substantial elements, or, as they were
sometimes called, of hypostatical principles. The workmen of this
school acquired, no doubt, a considerable acquaintance with the
results of the kinds of processes which they pursued; they applied
their knowledge to the preparation of new medicines; and some of
them, as Paracelsus and Van Helmont, attained, in this way, to great
fame and distinction: but their merits, as regards theoretical
chemistry, consist only in a truer conception of the problem, and of
the mode of attempting its solution, than their predecessors had
entertained.
 This step is well marked by a word which, about the time of which
we speak, was introduced to denote the chemist’s employment. It
was called the Spagiric art, (often misspelt Spagyric,) from two
Greek words, (σπάω, ἀγείρω,) which mean to separate parts, and to
unite them. These two processes, or in more modern language,
analysis and synthesis, constitute the whole business of the chemist.
We are not making a fanciful arrangement, therefore, when we mark
the recognition of this object as a step in the progress of chemistry. I
now proceed to consider the manner in which the conditions of this
analysis and synthesis were further developed.
 CHAPTER II.

Doctrine of Acid and Alkali.—Sylvius.

A MONG the results of mixture observed by chemists, were many

instances in which two ingredients, each in itself pungent or
destructive, being put together, became mild and inoperative; each
263 counteracting and neutralizing the activity of the other. The
notion of such opposition and neutrality is applicable to a very wide
range of chemical processes. The person who appears first to have
steadily seized and generally applied this notion is Francis de la Boé
Sylvius; who was born in 1614, and practised medicine at
Amsterdam, with a success and reputation which gave great
currency to his opinions on that art. 2 His chemical theories were
propounded as subordinate to his medical doctrines; and from being
thus presented under a most important practical aspect, excited far
more attention than mere theoretical opinions on the composition of
bodies could have done. Sylvius is spoken of by historians of
science, as the founder of the iatro-chemical sect among physicians;
that is, the sect which considers the disorders in the human frame as
the effects of chemical relations of the fluids, and applies to them
modes of cure founded upon this doctrine. We have here to speak,
not of his physiological, but of his chemical views.
2 Sprengel. Geschichte der Arzneykunde, vol. iv. Thomson’s
History of Chemistry in the corresponding part is translated from
Sprengel.

The distinction of acid and alkaline bodies (acidum, lixivum) was

familiar before the time of Sylvius; but he framed a system, by
considering them both as eminently acrid and yet opposite, and by
applying this notion to the human frame. Thus 3 the lymph contains
an acid, the bile an alkaline salt. These two opposite acrid
substances, when they are brought together, neutralize each other
(infringunt), and are changed into an intermediate and milder
substance.
3 De Methodo Medendi, Amst. 1679. Lib. ii. cap. 28, sects. 8 and
53.

The progress of this doctrine, as a physiological one, is an

important part of the history of medical science in the seventeenth
century; but with that we are not here concerned. But as a chemical
doctrine, this notion of the opposition of acid and alkali, and of its
very general applicability, struck deep root, and has not been
eradicated up to our own time. Boyle, indeed, whose disposition led
him to suspect all generalities, expressed doubts with regard to this
view; 4 and argued that the supposition of acid and alkaline parts in
all bodies was precarious, their offices arbitrary, and the notion of
them unsettled. Indeed it was not difficult to show, that there was no
one certain criterion to which all supposed acids conformed. Yet the
general conception of such a combination as that of acid and alkali
was supposed to 264 be, served so well to express many chemical
facts, that it kept its ground. It is found, for instance, in Lemery’s
Chemistry, which was one of those in most general use before the
introduction of the phlogistic theory. In this work (which was
translated into English by Keill, in 1698) we find alkalies defined by
their effervescing with acids. 5 They were distinguished as the
mineral alkali (soda), the vegetable alkali (potassa), and the volatile
alkali (ammonia). Again, in Macquer’s Chemistry, which was long the
text-book in Europe during the reign of phlogiston, we find acids and
alkalies, and their union, in which they rob each other of their
characteristic properties, and form neutral salts, stated among the
leading principles of the science. 6
4 Shaw’s Boyle, iii. p. 432.

5 Lemery, p. 25.

6 Macquer, p. 19.

In truth, the mutual relation of acids to alkalies was the most

essential part of the knowledge which chemists possessed
concerning them. The importance of this relation arose from its being
the first distinct form in which the notion of chemical attraction or
affinity appeared. For the acrid or caustic character of acids and
alkalies is, in fact, a tendency to alter the bodies they touch, and thus
to alter themselves; and the neutral character of the compounds is
the absence of any such proclivity to change. Acids and alkalies
have a strong disposition to unite. They combine, often with
vehemence, and produce neutral salts; they exhibit, in short, a
prominent example of the chemical attraction, or affinity, by which
two ingredients are formed into a compound. The relation of acid and
base in a salt is, to this day, one of the main grounds of all
theoretical reasonings.

The more distinct development of the notion of such chemical

attraction, gradually made its way among the chemists of the latter
part of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century,
as we may see in the writings of Boyle, Newton, and their followers.
Beecher speaks of this attraction as a magnetism; but I do not know
that any writer in particular, can be pointed out as the person who
firmly established the general notion of chemical attraction.
 But this idea of chemical attraction became both more clear and
more extensively applicable, when it assumed the form of the
doctrine of elective attractions, in which shape we must now speak
of it. 265
 CHAPTER III.

Doctrine of Elective Attractions. Geoffroy. Bergman.

T HOUGH the chemical combinations of bodies had already been

referred to attraction, in a vague and general manner, it was
impossible to explain the changes that take place, without supposing
the attraction to be greater or less, according to the nature of the
body. Yet it was some time before the necessity of such a
supposition was clearly seen. In the history of the French Academy
for 1718 (published 1719), the writer of the introductory notice
(probably Fontenelle) says, “That a body which is united to another,
for example, a solvent which has penetrated a metal, should quit it to
go and unite itself with another which we present to it, is a thing of
which the possibility had never been guessed by the most subtle
philosophers, and of which the explanation even now is not easy.”
The doctrine had, in fact, been stated by Stahl, but the assertion just
quoted shows, at least, that it was not familiar. The principle,
however, is very clearly stated 7 in a memoir in the same volume, by
Geoffroy, a French physician of great talents and varied knowledge,
“We observe in chemistry,” he says, “certain relations amongst
different bodies, which cause them to unite. These relations have
their degrees and their laws. We observe their different degrees in
this;—that among different matters jumbled together, which have a
certain disposition to unite, we find that one of these substances
always unites constantly with a certain other, preferably to all the
rest.” He then states that those which unite by preference, have “plus
de rapport,” or, according to a phrase afterwards used, more affinity.
“And I have satisfied myself,” he adds, “that we may deduce, from
these observations, the following proposition, which is very
extensively true, though I cannot enunciate it as universal, not
having been able to examine all the possible combinations, to assure
myself that I should find no exception.” The proposition which he
states in this admirable spirit of philosophical caution, is this: “In all
cases where two substances, 266 which have any disposition to
combine, are united; if there approaches them a third, which has
more affinity with one of the two, this one unites with the third and
lets go the other.” He then states these affinities in the form of a
Table; placing a substance at the head of each column, and other
substances in succession below it, according to the order of their
affinities for the substance which stands at the head. He allows that
the separation is not always complete (an imperfection which he
ascribes to the glutinosity of fluids and other causes), but, with such
exceptions, he defends very resolutely and successfully his Table,
and the notions which it implies.
7 Mém. Acad. Par. 1718, p. 202.

The value of such a tabulation was immense at the time, and is

even still very great; it enabled the chemist to trace beforehand the
results of any operation; since, when the ingredients were given, he
could see which were the strongest of the affinities brought into play,
and, consequently, what compounds would be formed. Geoffroy
himself gave several good examples of this use of his table. It was
speedily adopted into works on chemistry. For instance, Macquer 8
places it at the end of his book; “taking it,” as he says, “to be of great
use at the end of an elementary tract, as it collects into one point of
view, the most essential and fundamental doctrines which are
dispersed through the work.”
8 Pref., p. 13.
 The doctrine of Elective Attraction, as thus promulgated, contained
so large a mass of truth, that it was never seriously shaken, though it
required further development and correction. In particular the
celebrated work of Torbern Bergman, professor at Upsala, On
Elective Attractions, published in 1775, introduced into it material
improvements. Bergman observed, that not only the order of
attractions, but the sum of those attractions which had to form the
new compounds, must be taken account of, in order to judge of the
result. Thus, 9 if we have a combination of two elements, P, s,
(potassa and vitriolic acid), and another combination, L, m, (lime and
muriatic acid,) though s has a greater affinity for P than for L, yet the
sum of the attractions of P to m, and of L to s, is greater than that of
the original compounds, and therefore if the two combinations are
brought together, the new compounds, P, m, and L, s, are formed.
9 Elect. Attract., p. 19.

The Table of Elective Attractions, modified by Bergman in

pursuance of these views, and corrected according to the advanced
knowledge of the time, became still more important than before. The
next step 267 was to take into account the quantities of the elements
which combined; but this leads us into a new train of investigation,
which was, indeed, a natural sequel to the researches of Geoffroy
and Bergman.

In 1803, however, a chemist of great eminence, Berthollet,

published a work (Essai de Statique Chimique), the tendency of
which appeared to be to throw the subject back into the condition in
which it had been before Geoffroy. For Berthollet maintained that the
rules of chemical combination were not definite, and dependent on
the nature of the substances alone, but indefinite, depending on the
quantity present, and other circumstances. Proust answered him,
and as Berzelius says, 10 “Berthollet defended himself with an
acuteness which makes the reader hesitate in his judgment; but the
great mass of facts finally decided the point in favor of Proust.”
Before, however, we trace the result of these researches, we must
consider Chemistry as extending her inquiries to combustion as well
as mixture, to airs as well as fluids and solids, and to weight as well
as quality. These three steps we shall now briefly treat of.
10 Chem. t. iii. p. 23.
 CHAPTER IV.

Doctrine of Acidification and Combustion.—Phlogistic Theory.

P UBLICATION of the Theory by Beccher and Stahl.—It will be

recollected that we are tracing the history of the progress only of
Chemistry, not of its errors;—that we are concerned with doctrines
only so far as they are true, and have remained part of the received
system of chemical truths. The Phlogistic Theory was deposed and
succeeded by the Theory of Oxygen. But this circumstance must not
lead us to overlook the really sound and permanent part of the
opinions which the founders of the phlogistic theory taught. They
brought together, as processes of the same kind, a number of
changes which at first appeared to have nothing in common; as
acidification, combustion, respiration. Now this classification is true;
and its importance remains undiminished, whatever are the
explanations which we adopt of the processes themselves.

The two chemists to whom are to be ascribed the merit of this

step, and the establishment of the phlogistic theory which they
connected 268 with it, are John Joachim Beccher and George Ernest
Stahl; the former of whom was professor at Mentz, and physician to
the Elector of Bavaria (born 1625, died 1682); the latter was
professor at Halle, and afterwards royal physician at Berlin (born
1660, died 1734). These two men, who thus contributed to a
common purpose, were very different from each other. The first was
a frank and ardent enthusiast in the pursuit of chemistry, who speaks
of himself and his employments with a communicativeness and
affection both amusing and engaging. The other was a teacher of
great talents and influence, but accused of haughtiness and
moroseness; a character which is well borne out by the manner in
which, in his writings, he anticipates an unfavorable reception, and
defies it. But it is right to add to this that he speaks of Beccher, his
predecessor, with an ungrudging acknowledgment of obligations to
him, and a vehement assertion of his merit as the founder of the true
system, which give a strong impression of Stahl’s justice and
magnanimity.

Beccher’s opinions were at first promulgated rather as a correction

than a refutation of the doctrine of the three principles, salt, sulphur,
and mercury. The main peculiarity of his views consists in the offices
which he ascribes to his sulphur, these being such as afterwards
induced Stahl to give the name of Phlogiston to this element.
Beccher had the sagacity to see that the reduction of metals to an
earthy form (calx), and the formation of sulphuric acid from sulphur,
are operations connected by a general analogy, as being alike
processes of combustion. Hence the metal was supposed to consist
of an earth, and of something which, in the process of combustion,
was separated from it; and, in like manner, sulphur was supposed to
consist of the sulphuric acid, which remained after its combustion,
and of the combustible part or true sulphur, which flew off in the
burning. Beccher insists very distinctly upon this difference between
his element sulphur and the “sulphur” of his Paracelsian
predecessors.

It must be considered as indicating great knowledge and talent in

Stahl, that he perceived so clearly what part of the views of Beccher
was of general truth and permanent value. Though he 11 everywhere
gives to Beccher the credit of the theoretical opinions which he
promulgates, (“Beccheriana sunt quæ profero,”) it seems certain that
he had the merit, not only of proving them more completely, and
applying them more widely than his forerunner, but also of
conceiving them 269 with a distinctness which Beccher did not attain.
In 1697, appeared Stahl’s Zymotechnia Fundamentalis (the Doctrine
of Fermentation), “simulque experimentum novum sulphur verum
arte producendi.” In this work (besides other tenets which the author
considered as very important), the opinion published by Beccher was
now maintained in a very distinct form;—namely, that the process of
forming sulphur from sulphuric acid, and of restoring the metals from
their calces, are analogous, and consist alike in the addition of some
combustible element, which Stahl termed phlogiston (φλογίστον,
combustible). The experiment most insisted on in the work now
spoken of, 12 was the formation of sulphur from sulphate of potass
(or of soda) by fusing the salt with an alkali, and throwing in coals to
supply phlogiston. This is the “experimentum novum.” Though Stahl
published an account of this process, he seems to have regretted his
openness. “He denies not,” he says, “that he should peradventure
have dissembled this experiment as the true foundation of the
Beccherian assertion concerning the nature of sulphur, if he had not
been provoked by the pretending arrogance of some of his
contemporaries.”
11 Stahl, Præf. ad Specim. Becch. 1703.

12 P. 117.

From this time, Stahl’s confidence in his theory may be traced

becoming more and more settled in his succeeding publications. It is
hardly necessary to observe here, that the explanations which his
theory gives are easily transformed into those which the more recent
theory supplies. According to modern views, the addition of oxygen
takes place in the formation of acids and of calces, and in
combustion, instead of the subtraction of phlogiston. The coal which
Stahl supposed to supply the combustible in his experiment, does in
fact absorb the liberated oxygen. In like manner, when an acid
corrodes a metal, and, according to existing theory, combines with
and oxidates it, Stahl supposed that the phlogiston separated from
the metal and combined with the acid. That the explanations of the
phlogistic theory are so generally capable of being translated into the
oxygen theory, merely by inverting the supposed transfer of the
combustible element, shows us how important a step towards the
modern doctrines the phlogistic theory really was.

The question, whether these processes were in fact addition or

subtraction, was decided by the balance, and belongs to a
succeeding period of the science. But we may observe, that both
Beccher and Stahl were aware of the increase of weight which
metals undergo in 270 calcination; although the time had not yet
arrived in which this fact was to be made one of the bases of the
theory.

It has been said, 13 that in the adoption of the phlogistic theory, that
is, in supposing the above-mentioned processes to be addition
rather than subtraction, “of two possible roads the wrong was
chosen, as if to prove the perversity of the human mind.” But we
must not forget how natural it was to suppose that some part of a
body was destroyed or removed by combustion; and we may
observe, that the merit of Beccher and Stahl did not consist in the
selection of one road or two, but in advancing so far as to reach this
point of separation. That, having done this, they went a little further
on the wrong line, was an error which detracted little from the merit
or value of the progress really made. It would be easy to show, from
the writings of phlogistic chemists, what important and extensive
truths their theory enabled them to express simply and clearly.