To decompose Vitriolated Tartar by means of the Phlogiston; or to compose Sulphur by combining the Vitriolic Acid with the Phlogiston.
Take equal parts of Vitriolated Tartar, and very dry Salt of Tartar, separately reduced to powder; add an eighth part of their weight of charcoal-dust; and mix the whole together very accurately. Throw this mixture into a red-hot crucible, placed in a furnace filled with burning coals. Cover it very close, and keep it very hot; till the mixture melt, which may be known by uncovering the crucible from time to time. There will then appear a blueish flame, accompanied with a pungent smell of Sulphur.
Take the crucible out of the fire: dissolve its contents in hot water: filter the solution through brown paper supported by a glass funnel: drop into the filtered liquor by little and little any Acid whatever. As you add the acid the liquor will grow more and more turbid, and let fall a grey precipitate. Continue dropping in more Acid till the liquor will yield no more precipitate. Filter it a second time, to separate it from the precipitate: what remains on the filter is a true inflammable Sulphur, which you may either melt or sublime into flowers.
OBSERVATIONS.
All bodies that contain the Vitriolic Acid may contribute, as well as Vitriolated Tartar, to the generation of Sulphur: so that all the neutral salts in which this Acid is a principle, the Alums, Selenites, Gypsums, Vitriols, may be substituted for it in this experiment. All these matters, with the addition of charcoal-dust only, being fused in a crucible, constantly produce Sulphur; because the Vitriolic Acid having a greater affinity with the Phlogiston than with any thing else, will quit its basis, whatever it be, to join with the Phlogiston of the charcoal, and therewith form a Sulphur.
The fixed Alkali added thereto helps to promote the fusion of the ingredients, which is necessary for effecting the desired combination. It also serves to unite with the Sulphur, when formed; and thus makes the combination called Liver of Sulphur, which prevents the Sulphur from being consumed as soon as formed: for the fixed Alkalis, which are incombustible, hinder Sulphur from burning so easily as it would do if they were not joined with it. They may afterwards be separated from each other, by the means of any Acid whatever.
This process, in which Sulphur is regenerated by recombining together the principles of which it was originally composed, is one of the most beautiful experiments that modern Chymistry hath produced. We are indebted for it to M. Stahl; and Dr. Geoffroy hath given a particular account of it in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences.
Before these gentlemen Glauber and Boyle had indeed published methods of producing Sulphur, Glauber made use of his Sal mirabile and powdered charcoal: Boyle employed the Vitriolic Acid and Oil of Turpentine. But neither of those Chymists understood the true theory of their operations: they did not thoroughly know the principles of Sulphur: they did not imagine they had composed Sulphur: they thought they only extracted what they supposed to exist previously in the matters they employed in their experiments.
M. Stahl was the first who discovered and explained the nature of Sulphur, and proved that in Glauber's and Boyle's experiments Sulphur was actually produced, by uniting together the principles of which it is constituted. This beautiful experiment gives the strongest lustre of evidence to the theory of the composition of that mixt, which acts such a capital part in Chymistry; and it can no longer be doubted, that Sulphur is actually a combination of the Vitriolic Acid with the Phlogiston.
Besides this important truth, our process for composing Sulphur by art proves several others that are equally essential and fundamental.