CHAPTER XXV

THE DAWN OF SCIENTIFIC CHEMISTRY

ALTHOUGH the belief in alchemy had been on the decline
since the end of the seventeenth century, it was not until
the first half of the eighteenth century that the practicability of
transmutation and the possibility of discovering the Elixir of
Life came to be doubted. But even in the eighteenth century
notable chemists such as Stahl and Boerhaave were not con¬
vinced that transmutation could not be carried out. There
were still those who believed that the experiences recorded by
van Helmont and Helvetius were true and that gold had thus
been made.

In Germany the alchemical belief in the Elixir was ridiculed
by Semler, who had received a sample of the ‘ salt of life ’ from
Baron Hirschen, and, treating it as the Philosopher’s Stone, was
surprised to find some gold deposited in the crucible after heating
it. Klaproth, however, a German chemist, on analysing the ‘ salt
of life’ found it to consist of a mixture of Glauber’s salt and
magnesium sulphate. The question then arose, where had the
gold come from that Semler had found in his crucible ? The
mystery was solved when Semler’s old servant confessed that,
eager to humour his master, he had slipped a number of
sheets of gold-leaf into the crucible with the ‘salt of life’;
thus Baron Hirschen’s discovery was discredited.

The dawn of scientific or modern chemistry began to break
about the middle of the seventeenth century, when earnest
workers sought to free themselves from the old traditions and
questioned theories which had prevailed in previous ages.
Owing to the researches of these men the clouds which had so
long enveloped the art of the alchemist began to roll away ; his
222

THE DAWN OF SCIENTIFIC CHEMISTRY

processes were no longer wrapped in mystery, for the experi¬
menters published their researches, and this facilitated an ex¬
change of ideas, which was furthered by the growing habit,
practised by men of similar interests, of meeting for discussion
of their experiences and views.

These meetings, or societies, as they were afterward called,
probably originated in Italy with the foundation of Porta’s
Secret Academy of Nobility in 1560, and, somewhat later,
of the Academy of Lynxes in Rome by Prince Frederigo Cesi.
This society, which consisted of four members, of whom Gallileo
was one, met together to solve their problems. The Academie
Franchise was founded in 1635 by Richelieu in Paris, and in 1665
Colbert established the Academie des Sciences, which published
its first Transactions in 1699.

In 1645 several men interested in science, including Dr
Wilkins and Dr Wallis, met in London to discuss philosophical
questions and to report on the results of their experiments. The
outbreak and troubles of the Civil War, and the consequent re¬
moval of the Court from London to Oxford in 1649, caused
them to migrate to that city, but the change had its advantages,
for here they came into contact with Robert Boyle, Dr Petty, and
Seth Ward, all of whom were ardent students of the natural
sciences. This little band of congenial souls first began to meet
at each other’s houses with the object of “discoursing and con¬
sidering all philosophical enquiries and such as related thereto.”
They also frequently met in the rooms of Dr Wilkins in Wad-
ham College, and they eventually formed what was first called
the Philosophical Society of Oxford.

In 1658 Boyle removed to London, and the society formed in
Oxford eventually became the Royal Society of London, which
was first organized in 1660 and constituted by King Charles II
on April 22, 1662, as “a body corporate and politic by the
appellation of the President, Council, and Fellowship of the
Royal Society of London for improving natural knowledge.”

John Evelyn records in his Diary the first anniversary meeting

✓ 223

LURE & ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

on November 30, 1663. The society began to publish its
Philosophical Transactions on March 6, 1664. From this date
all the famous scientific discoveries made in this country have
been brought before this parent of all other learned societies in
Great Britain. The most distinguished men in science have
been among its presidents, including Boyle himself, Sir Chris¬
topher Wren, Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Hans Sloane, Sir Humphry
Davy, Lord Kelvin, and Lord Lister.

Robert Boyle, prominent among pioneers in chemistry, was
the seventh son of Richard, Earl of Cork, and was born at
Lismore, in Ireland, in 1627. He was educated at Eton, and,
after travelling for some years on the Continent, took up his
residence at Stalbridge, in Dorsetshire, where he equipped a
laboratory so that he might carry on his studies in chemistry.
In 1654 he went to reside in Oxford so that he might come into
closer touch with the little circle of men who were deeply in¬
terested in science and philosophy. He took rooms in the High
Street on the west side of University College, and there fitted up
a laboratory in which he worked until he removed to London.

He tells us that “chymistery was his greatest delight,” and,
writing in 1649, he says, “Vulcan has so transported and be¬
witched me as to fancy my laboratory a kind of Elysium.”

Wood, the Oxford historian, gives us a glimpse of the pioneers
of science who at that time met and conferred together in the old
university city on the Isis. He mentions

Arthur Tillyard, an apothecary and great Royalist who in 1655
sold coffey publicly in his house against All Soules Coll. He was
encouraged so to do by some Royallists now living in Oxon and
by others who esteem’d themselves either virtuosi or wits, of which
the chiefest number were of All S. Coll., as Peter Pett, Thom Mil¬
lington (afterwards an eminent physician and knight), Tim Baldwin,
Christop. Wren (afterwards a great architect), George Castle,
Will Bull, etc. There were others also as Joh. Lamphire, a
physician lately ejected from New Coll, who was sometimes the
natural droll of the company; the two Wrens, sojourners in Oxon.,
Matthew and Thomas, sons of Dr Wren, Bishop of Ely, etc.

224

A LABORATORY IN I747

Stills, serpent, aludel, pelican, retorts, and other pieces of apparatus are shown.

From an engraving

From an engraving (1747)

THE DAWN OF SCIENTIFIC CHEMISTRY

Boyle’s laboratory became a centre for the students of the
new chemistry, and through them many others began to take up
the study of the fascinating science.

In this laboratory Boyle invented his pneumatical engine, or
air-pump, and also wrote his famous treatise The Skeptical
Chymisty which has now become a classic in the history of
chemistry. In it he defines an element as a substance which
cannot be decomposed, but which will enter into combina¬
tion with other elements, giving compounds capable of decom¬
position into these original elements.

To Boyle we are indebted for the discovery of the dependence
of the boiling-point of a liquid upon atmospheric pressure, and
also the knowledge, which he illustrated, of the expansive power
of freezing water. He further explained the action of the syphon
and the effect of air on the vibration of a pendulum and on
the propagation of sound. He made experiments upon the
nature of flames and on the relation of air to combustion and
on respiration. He was also the first to make hydrogen and
to prepare acetone by the distillation of the acetates of lead
and lime.

About 1665 he became deeply interested in the manufacture
of phosphorus, a substance which had intrigued alchemists and
chemists for many years. According to tradition, it was first
prepared by an old alchemist called Brandt, who lived at Ham¬
burg, and urine was its source of origin. Little, however, is
known of Brandt, but he comes into the story in connexion with
Johann Kunckel, the son of an alchemist attached to the Court
of the Duke of Holstein.

Johann Kunckel was born in 1630, and, after gaining some ex¬
perience in the laboratory of his father, he became chemist and
apothecary to the Dukes Charles and Henry of Lauenberg. He
graduated in chemistry at the University of Wittenberg, and was
afterward placed in charge of the glass-works and laboratories
of the Elector of Brandenburg at Berlin. This building was
destroyed by fire, and some time after this catastrophe King
P 225

LURE & ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

Charles XI of Sweden invited Kunckel to Stockholm, where
he was eventually made a baron with the title of von Lowen-
stern.

His chief work, Labor atorium Chymicumy was not printed until
after his death. In it he tells the story of an alchemist named
Bauduin, who together with another alchemist named Fruben
lived at Grossenhayn, in Saxony, about 1668. These men
evolved a fantastic scheme to extract what they called spiritus
mundi , or the Spirit of the World, by chemical processes.
These consisted in combining the four elements, earth, air, fire,
and water, in an alembic and distilling the quintessence of the
whole. He states that they dissolved lime in nitric acid,
evaporated it to dryness, and then exposed the residue to the
air, letting it absorb humidity. This they again distilled and
obtained what they called “humidity in a pure form,” which
they are said to have sold with considerable success.

One day Bauduin accidentally broke a vessel which contained
some of the calcined nitrate of lime and observed that, after ex¬
posure to sunlight, it became luminous in the dark. Having to
pay a visit to Dresden, he took a specimen with him. During
his stay in the city he met Kunckel, who was at that time liv¬
ing there. The latter was very much interested and became
anxious to learn how this luminous stone had been made,
but Bauduin was loath to enlighten him. Kunckel, however,
managed to obtain a small quantity of it and afterward began to
experiment himself by treating chalk with nitric acid, and even¬
tually succeeded in making some of the luminous body. In
1669 Kunckel, having occasion to go to Hamburg, took a speci¬
men of his product with him and showed it to a friend. He,
however, did not seem to be particularly surprised, and he told
Kunckel that Brandt, an old alchemist in the city, had made and
shown him something far more wonderful. Kunckel was very
anxious to see this marvel, and with his friend hurried off to
find Brandt, who, after some little inducement, produced a speci¬
men of a remarkably luminous substance which he claimed to
226

THE DAWN OF SCIENTIFIC CHEMISTRY

have discovered in the course of his experiments in search for
the Philosopher’s Stone.

Kunckel at once wrote to a friend in Dresden telling him of
the wonderful new ‘ phosphor,’ as it was called, and mentioning
Brandt. The friend, without informing Kunckel, immediately
left for Hamburg and succeeded in buying for 200 thalers
Brandt’s secret for making the substance. Kunckel, who was
determined not to be outwitted by his friend, managed to obtain
some idea of Brandt’s process, and, continuing to work on it,
he at length succeeded in making some phosphor. He was the
first to introduce it into medicine, and in his treatise Chemische
Ammerkungen , printed in 1721, he recommends a preparation,
called by him “luminous pills,” which, he states, contains
three-grain doses of his phosphorus product. The new sub¬
stance aroused great interest in the scientific world, and soon
became known throughout Europe.

About 1670 Robert Boyle, who had been travelling on the
Continent, heard, while in Germany, of the discovery of the
wonderful new chemical substance, and, becoming deeply in¬
terested in it, determined to learn all he could about its manu¬
facture. On his return to London he obtained a specimen from
Dresden which he handed to his head chemist, named Bilger,
with instructions to experiment with it with the idea of making
more of the substance.

About this time Boyle heard of a young German chemist,
named Ambrose Godfrey Hanckwitz, who had come to London
and was living in Chandos Street with his wife and family, and
was anxious to obtain work. Boyle got in touch with him with
a view to evolving a special process of manufacture, and Hanck¬
witz being a clever and industrious worker, they soon succeeded.
Between them they built a spacious laboratory in Southampton
Street, which at that time opened into Maiden Lane and ex¬
tended downward toward the Strand. Here they began to
manufacture phosphorus, or “Icy Noctiluca,” as Boyle called
the substance, and established one of the first chemists’ shops

227

LURE & ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

in London. The product made in Maiden Lane, and com¬
monly known as the ‘English phosphorus/ soon had a large
sale throughout Europe.

As a man Robert Boyle is said to have been kindly and
courteous to all with whom he came into contact, and he appears
to have had very few enemies. He never married, and remained
to the end of his life a philosopher in the truest sense of the

word and one who loved science for science’s sake. He died
in London in 1691 and was buried in the old church of St
Martin’s-in-the-Fields.

In his experiments on air Boyle helped to lay the foundations
of pneumatic chemistry, for he recognized that the air was not
a simple or elementary substance, but a heterogeneous body, or,
as he called it, “an aggregate of effluviams from such differing
bodies,” and his observations were confirmed by another re¬
markable man, John Mayow, who, during his short life, made
his mark on this period when the old alchemical theories were
gradually being superseded by the accurate investigation of
facts.

John Mayow was born in Cornwall in 1645, and went to Ox¬
ford with a view to studying medicine. He became a Fellow
of All Souls College, and in 1667, at the age of twenty-two, took
his degree. While in Oxford he became deeply interested in
228

THE DAWN OF SCIENTIFIC CHEMISTRY

experimental chemistry and devoted himself to the investiga¬
tion of the composition of air, the result of which he published
in his Tractatus de Respiratione. He showed from his experi¬
ments that air contains two gases, one of which supports com¬
bustion and the breathing of animals, while the other ex¬
tinguishes fire. The one which he said was necessary for com¬
bustion and respiration he called “Spiritus Nitro-Aereus,” or
“fiery air,” and the other, which was incapable of supporting
combustion, he showed to be left after the removal of the
“Spiritus.”

Mayow proved that the air wherein a substance is burned or
which an animal breathes diminishes in volume during the burn¬
ing or breathing, and asserted that a substance which is being
calcined lays hold of a particular constituent of the air, and not
the air as a whole. Although he was thus so near the discovery
of oxygen, his theories were not proved until the time of Priest¬
ley and Lavoisier, toward the end of the eighteenth century.
He grasped the essential facts about the formation of acids and
oxides and thus anticipated the results obtained by Lavoisier a
century later. He left Oxford in 1675 to settle in Bath, where
he practised as a physician; in 1678 he was elected a Fellow of
the Royal Society and died a few months later, in 1679, at the
early age of thirty-four. There is little doubt that had he
lived he would have exerted a still greater influence on the de¬
velopment of chemistry.

No chemist before Mayow appears to have collected gases in
flasks or vessels inverted over water and to have studied change
of volume in the gas by observing the rise and fall of the water
in the glass vessel — a discovery of great value and interest in
itself. He was a man who lived fully a century before his time.

Another chemist who did much to influence the science of this
period was Georg Ernst Stahl, who was born in 1660. To him
is mainly due the doctrine of phlogiston, which was destined
to affect the development of chemistry for more than half a
century.

229

LURE fif ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

The word ‘phlogiston/ by which Stahl named his theory, is
derived from the Greek word phlogistos , meaning ‘ burnt.* The
theory was founded on the idea that all combustible substances
contain a common principle. He held that the phlogiston of
a combustible thing escapes as the substance burns and, thus
becoming apparent to the senses, is manifested as flame or fire.
What remained after a substance had been burned was the
original substance deprived of its phlogiston. Thus, to restore
the phlogiston to the product of burning was to reform the com¬
bustible substance. Among these substances were included
those metals which changed on heating, and it was taught that
the earthy principle of a metal remained in the form of ash, or
calx, as it was sometimes called, when the metal was calcined, or
when it was deprived of its phlogiston. In other words, the
metals were considered to be compounds consisting of a metal¬
lic calx, now called the oxide, combined with phlogiston.

This, in simple words, was the theory which displaced the
belief of the earlier alchemists that metals were the results of
the spiritual actions of the three principles sulphur, mercury,
and salt. It was certainly an advance on the old doctrines
which had held sway for centuries, and it marked the beginning
of a new era in chemistry.

Although Hermann Boerhaave achieved more renown as a
physician than as a chemist, he did much toward the develop¬
ment of the new science. He was born near Leyden, in Hol¬
land, in 1668, and became remarkable for his wide knowledge
of medicine, chemistry, botany, and other branches of science.
He studied medicine at the University of Harderwyk, and after¬
ward became Professor of Physic at the University of Leyden,
of which he was Rector in 1714. His reputation as a physician
and teacher spread throughout Europe, and students came from
many countries to attend his lectures. He was a profound
believer in the value of chemistry to the art of medicine. His
work entitled Elementa Chemice, printed in 1732, achieved a
world-wide reputation and was translated into many languages,
230

DISTILLATION IN 1751
From an engraving

LABORATORY, SHOWING FURNACES AND RETORTS USED FOR DISTILLATION IN 1751

From an engraving

THE DAWN OF SCIENTIFIC CHEMISTRY

being regarded as the most luminous chemical treatise of the
time. Part of the work is devoted to the chemical principles
relating to the elements
and the decomposition
of bodies, which he
grouped under the heads
of animal, vegetable, and
fossil, and from this
developed the science of
organic and inorganic
chemistry.

Boerhaave defined
chemistry as “the art
whereby sensible bodies
contained in vessels or
capable of being con¬
tained therein are so
changed by means of
certain instruments, and
principally heat, that
their several powers and
virtues are thereby dis¬
covered with a view to
the philosophy of medi-

• y j

cine.

In 1718 he became
Professor of Chemistry
at Leyden, and in an
address which he gave
on September 21 in that
year he showed that the vagaries of the alchemists, the theories
of fermentation and effervescence, the fixing and weighing of fire,
the acid and alkali theory in physiology and medicine, and all the
errors that the chemists of one period fell into had been cor¬
rected by the subsequent investigations of chemists themselves.

231

A LABORATORY

Kiessling, 1752

LURE & ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

Apart from being a man of great learning and the most dis¬
tinguished teacher of his time, he had a wide knowledge of
languages. Burton, a contemporary, tells us that “the Latin
he spoke in lectures or conversation was so clear that he could
reveal the most abstruse points to the meanest capacities.”
He died at Leyden on September 23, 1738, in his seventieth
year.

)

232