The Boy's Playbook of Science / Including the Various Manipulations and Arrangements of Chemical and Philosophical Apparatus Required for the Successful Performance of Scientific Experiments in Illustration of the Elementary Branches of Chemistry and Natural Philosophy

by John Henry Pepper

CHEMISTRY.

Fig 92

Alchemists at work

There is hardly any kind of knowledge which has been so slowly acquired as that of chemistry, and perhaps no other science has offered such fascinating rewards to the labour of its votaries as the philosopher's stone, which was to produce an unfailing supply of gold; or the elixir of life, that was to give the discoverer of the gold-making art the time, the prolonged life, in which he might spend and enjoy it.

Hundreds of years ago Egypt was the great depository of all learning, art, and science, and it was to this ancient country that the most celebrated sages of antiquity travelled.

Hermes, or Mercurius Trismegistus, the favourite minister of the Egyptian king Osiris, has been celebrated as the inventor of the art of alchemy, and the first treatise upon it has been attributed to Zosymus, of Chemnis or Panopolis. The Moors who conquered Spain were remarkable for their learning, and the taste and elegance with which they designed and carried out a new style of architecture, with its lovely Arabesque ornamentation. They were likewise great followers of the art of alchemy, when they ceased to be conquerors, and became more reconciled to the arts of peace. Strange that such a people, thirsting as they did in after years for all kinds of knowledge, should have destroyed, in the persons of their ancestors, the most numerous collection of books that the world had ever seen: the magnificent library of Alexandria, collected by the Ptolemies with great diligence and at an enormous expense, was burned by the orders of Caliph Omar; whilst it is stated that the alchemical works had been previously destroyed by Diocletian in the fourth century, lest the Egyptians should acquire by such means sufficient wealth to withstand the Roman power, for gold was then, as it is now, "the sinews of war."

Eastern historians relate the trouble and expense incurred by the succeeding Caliphs, who, resigning the Saracenic barbarism of their ancestors, were glad to collect from all parts the books which were to furnish forth a princely library at Bagdad. How the learned scholar sighs when he reads of seven hundred thousand books being consigned to the ignominious office of heating forty thousand baths in the capital of Egypt, and of the magnificent Alexandrian Library, a mental fuel for the lamp of learning in all ages, consumed in bath furnaces, and affording six months' fuel for that purpose. The Arabians, however, made amends for these barbarous deeds in succeeding centuries, and when all Europe was laid waste under the iron rule of the Goths, they became the protectors of philosophy and the promoters of its pursuits; and thus we come to the seventh century, in which Geber, an Arabian prince lived, and is stated to be the earliest of the true alchemists whose name has reached posterity.

Without attempting to fill up the alchemical history of the intervening centuries, we leap forward six hundred years, and now find ourselves in imagination in England, with the learned friar, Roger Bacon, a native of Somersetshire, who lived about the middle of the thirteenth century; and although the continual study of alchemy had not yet produced the "stone," it bore fruit in other discoveries, and Roger Bacon is said, with great appearance of truth, to have discovered gunpowder, for he says in one of his works:—"From saltpetre and other ingredients we are able to form a fire which will burn to any distance;" and again alluding to its effects, "a small portion of matter, about the size of the thumb, properly disposed, will make a tremendous sound and coruscation, by which cities and armies might be destroyed." The exaggerated style seems to have been a favourite one with all philosophers, from the time of Roger Bacon to that of Muschenbroek of the University of Leyden, who accidentally discovered the Leyden jar in the year 1746, and receiving the first shock, from a vial containing a little water, into which a cork and nail had been fitted, states that "he felt himself struck in his arms, shoulders, and breast, so that he lost his breath, and was two days before he recovered from the effects of the blow and the terror;" adding, that "he would not take a second shock for the kingdom of France." Disregarding the numerous alchemical events occurring from the time of Roger Bacon, we again advance four hundred years—viz., to the year 1662, when, on the 15th of July, King Charles II. granted a royal charter to the Philosophical Society of Oxford, who had removed to London, under the name of the Royal Society of London for Promoting Natural Knowledge, and in the year 1665 was published the first number of the Philosophical Transactions; this work contains the successive discoveries of Mayow, Hales, Black, Leslie, Cavendish, Lavoisier, Priestley, Davy, Faraday; and since the year 1762 has been regularly published at the rate of one volume per annum. With this preface proceed we now to discuss some of the varied phenomena of chemical attraction, or what is more correctly termed