Elements of the Theory and Practice of Chymistry, 5th ed.

by Pierre Joseph Macquer

To distil the Nitrous Acid by the interposition of Arsenic. Blue Aqua Fortis. A new Neutral Salt of Arsenic.

Pulverize finely any quantity you please of refined Salt-petre. Mix it accurately with an equal weight of white crystalline Arsenic, well pulverized, or else with very white and very fine flowers of Arsenic. Put this mixture into a glass retort, leaving one half of it empty. Set your retort in a reverberating furnace; apply a receiver having a small hole drilled in it, and containing a little filtered rain-water; lute the receiver to the retort with stiff lute. Begin with putting two or three small live coals in the ash-hole of the furnace, and replace them with others when they are ready to go out. Go on thus warming your vessels by insensible degrees, and put no coals in the fire-place, till the retort begin to be very warm. You will soon see the receiver filled with vapours of a dark-red, inclining to a russet colour. With a bit of lute stop the little hole of the receiver. The vapours will be condensed in the water of this vessel, and give it a very fine blue colour, that will grow deeper and deeper as the distillation advances. If your Salt-petre was not very dry, some drops of Acid will also come over, and falling from the nose of the retort mix with the water in the receiver. Continue your distillation, increasing the fire little by little as it advances, but exceeding slowly, till you see that when the retort is red-hot nothing more comes off; and then let your vessels cool.

When the vessels are cold, unlute the receiver, and, as expeditiously as you can, pour the blue aqua fortis it contains into a crystal bottle; which you must seal hermetically, because this colour disappears in a short time when the liquor takes air. You will find in the retort a white saline mass moulded in its bottom, and some flowers of Arsenic sublimed to its upper cavity, and into its neck.

Pulverize the saline mass, and dissolve it in warm water. Filter the solution, in order to separate some arsenical parts that will be left on the filter. Let the filtered liquor evaporate of itself in the open air; when it is sufficiently evaporated, crystals will shoot in it representing quadrangular prisms, terminated at each extremity by pyramids, that are also quadrangular. These crystals will be in confused heaps at the bottom of the vessel: over them will be other crystals in the form of needles; a saline vegetation creeping along the sides of the vessel; and the surface of the liquor will be obscured by a thin dusty pellicle.

OBSERVATIONS.

Arsenic, as we took notice in our Elements of the Theory, besides the properties it hath in common with metallic substances, possesses others also in common with saline substances. One of the most remarkable among the latter is that of decomposing Nitre; of expelling the Acid of that Salt from its Alkaline basis, assuming its place, and forming with that Alkali a Neutral Salt, which is very soluble in water, and shoots into regular crystals.

To inquire into what passes in the decomposition of Nitre by Arsenic, and into the new Salt resulting from thence, was the design of the first Memoir given in by me to the Academy of Sciences on this subject, and from that the present process is copied. Though the whole quantity of Arsenic prescribed in the process doth not enter into the composition of the new Neutral Salt, seeing some of it sublimes in flowers, that quantity must not therefore be thought too great: for we see, on the other hand, that part of the Nitre is not decomposed. The needle-like Salt is no other than Nitre that hath not suffered any decomposition, and actually deflagrates on live coals like common Nitre.

The precaution of putting some water in the receiver is absolutely necessary, to condense the nitrous vapours that rise in the distillation: for they are so elastic, so volatile, so dephlegmated, that a very small part of them will otherwise be condensed into a liquor, while the rest will remain in the form of vapours, to which vent must be given through the small hole in the receiver, as without that they will burst the vessels with impetuosity: and consequently scarce any Acid will be obtained; especially if the Nitre employed be very dry, as it must be to be reducible into a fine powder.

The blue colour communicated by the Nitrous Acid to the water is very remarkable. The cause that produces this colour is not yet known.

Though the Acid is, on this occasion, mortified by a great quantity of water, yet, when it rises out of the retort, it is so concentrated as to form, even with that water, if too much be not put in, a most active and even smoking aqua fortis.