"In the familiar conversations of these friendly visits, he always appeared to me to be a much more extraordinary being than even his writings, and vast discoveries, would have led me to suppose him; and, in the extent of intellectual powers, I shall ever think that he lived and died without an equal."
The reader has already been made acquainted with those experiments which led Davy to modify the prevailing opinions, with regard to the constitution of the muriatic and oxymuriatic acids; and on the false assumption that oxygen existed in the latter gas, to refer the deposition of water which takes place upon heating a metallic oxide in the former, to the supposition that muriatic acid contains a large proportion of water as essential to its composition. Upon observing, however, that charcoal, if freed from hydrogen and moisture, even when ignited to whiteness in oxymuriatic, or muriatic acid gas, by the Voltaic battery, did not effect the least change in them, he was led to suspect the accuracy of his previous conclusion; and on retracing his steps, and entering upon a new path of enquiry, he ultimately succeeded, after one of the most acute controversies that ever sprang from a chemical question, in recalling philosophers to the original theory of Scheele, by establishing the important truth, that oxymuriatic acid is, in the true logic of chemistry, a simple body, which becomes muriatic acid by its union with hydrogen.
The new views arising out of such a revolution in chemical opinion are certainly not the least important of those to which the discoveries of Davy have given birth. Dr. Johnson has remarked, that "one of the most hazardous attempts of criticism is to choose the best amongst many good." I am much mistaken, however, if the chemists of Europe will not, without hesitation, pronounce his researches into the nature of oxymuriatic acid, and its relations, with the exception of those by which he established the chemical laws of Voltaic action, to be by far the most important of all his labours; not only as evincing the ascendancy of his genius, and the steadiness of his perseverance, but as marking a new and splendid era in chemical science.
It is much more difficult to eradicate an ancient error than to establish a new truth; and on this occasion, he had not only to contend against the pampered errors of a domineering system, but against the equivocal and illusive evidence, or, if I may be allowed the expression, the apparent neutrality of facts by which the truth of his theory was to be judged. In consequence of the constant and often unsuspected interference of water, there is scarcely a result connected with the chemical history of the bodies in dispute, that did not admit of being equally well explained upon the hypothesis that oxymuriatic acid is a compound, as upon that of its being a simple or undecompounded substance. The question could never have been determined but by an investigation of the most refined and subtile nature; so delicately was the evidence balanced, that nothing but the keenest eye, and the steadiest hand, could have determined the side on which the beam preponderated.
The illustrious discoverer of oxymuriatic acid considered that body as muriatic acid freed from hydrogen, or, in the obscure language of the Stahlian school, as muriatic acid deprived of phlogiston, whence he assigned to it the name of dephlogisticated muriatic acid. Upon the establishment of the antiphlogistic theory by Lavoisier, it became essential to the generalization which distinguished it, that a body performing the functions of an acid, and above all, supporting the process of combustion, should be regarded as containing oxygen in its composition; and facts were not wanting to sanction such an inference. The substance could not even be produced from muriatic acid, without the action of some body known to contain oxygen; while the fact of such a body becoming deoxidated by the process, seemed to demonstrate, beyond the possibility of error, that the conversion of the muriatic into the oxymuriatic acid, was nothing more than a simple transference of oxygen from the oxide to the acid: an opinion which was universally adopted, and which for nearly thirty years triumphed without opposition.
The body of evidence by which Davy overthrew this doctrine, and established the undecompounded nature of oxymuriatic acid, is to be found in a succession of papers read before the Royal Society, viz. in that already announced,—in his Bakerian Lecture for 1810,—and in a subsequent memoir read in February 1811.
It will be impossible for me to follow the author through all the intricacies of the enquiry; but I shall seize upon some of its more prominent points, and give a general outline of its bearings.
No sooner had his suspicions been excited with regard to the compound nature of oxymuriatic acid, than it occurred to him that, if oxygen were really present in that body, he might readily obtain it from some of its compounds; that, for instance, its combination with tin would yield an oxide of that metal by ammonia; while those with phosphorus would furnish, on analysis, either the phosphorous, or phosphoric acid. But after experiments in which the presence of water was most cautiously excluded, the results he had anticipated were not obtained. In the place of an oxide of tin, the product, on the application of heat, volatilized in dense and pungent fumes; and, instead of obtaining an acid of phosphorus, a body possessing new and unexpected properties resulted. Again,—it had been stated, in confirmation of the theory that recognised the presence of oxygen in oxymuriatic acid, that when this latter body and ammonia were made to act upon each other, water was formed: our chemist frequently repeated the experiment, and convinced himself that such was not the fact.
It had been shown by Mr. Cruickshank, and more recently proved by MM. Gay Lussac and Thénard, that oxymuriatic acid and hydrogen, when mixed in nearly equal proportions, produce a matter almost entirely condensable by water, which is common muriatic acid; and that water is not deposited in the operation. Davy made many experiments on the subject, and he found, that when these gases were mingled together in equal volumes over water, introduced into an exhausted vessel, and fired by the electric spark, muriatic acid resulted, although, at the same time, there was a certain degree of condensation, and a slight deposition of vapour; but on repeating the experiment in a manner still more refined, and by carefully drying the gases, such condensation became proportionally less.
When, in addition to the above experimental evidence, it is stated that MM. Gay Lussac and Thénard had proved, by a copious collection of instances, that in the usual cases where oxygen is eliminated from oxymuriatic acid, water is always present, and muriatic acid gas is formed; and as it has been moreover shown that oxymuriatic is converted into muriatic acid gas by combining with hydrogen, it is scarcely possible to avoid the conclusion, that the oxygen is derived from the decomposition of water, and not from that of the acid.