The History of Chemistry, Volume 1 (of 2)

Bacon, Lord Verulam, as early as the commencement of the 17th century, had pointed out the importance of chemical investigations, and had predicted the immense advantages which...

The spirit which Newton had infused for the mathematical science was so great, that during many years they drew within their vortex almost all the scientific men in Great Britai...

The word _chemistry_ (χημεια, _chemeia_) first occurs in Suidas, a Greek writer, who is supposed to have lived in the eleventh century, and to have written his lexicon during th...

Paracelsus first raised the dignity of chemistry, by pointing out the necessity of it for medical men, and by showing the superiority of chemical medicines over the disgusting d...

Hitherto we have witnessed only the first rude beginnings, or, as it were, the early dawn of the chemical day. It is from the time of Paracelsus that the true commencement of ch...

Notwithstanding the assertions of Olaus Borrichius, and various other writers who followed him on the same side, nothing is more certain than that the ancients have left no chem...

Hitherto I have spoken of Alchymy, or of the chemical manufactures of the ancients. The people to whom scientific chemistry owes its origin are the Arabians. Not that they prose...

the latter announces a method which had occurred to him to pay his debts. “You know,” says he, “the beautiful transparent stone used for kindling fire.” “Do you mean glass (τον...

Hitherto I have treated of the alchymists, or iatro-chemists, and have brought the history of chemistry down to the beginning of the eighteenth century. But during the seventeen...

I have been induced by a wish to prosecute the history of the opinions first supported by Paracelsus, and carried so much further by Van Helmont and Sylvius, to give a connected...

Chemistry, unlike the other sciences, sprang originally from delusion and superstition, and was at its commencement exactly on a level with magic and astrology. Even after it be...