Recent advances in the phlogiston theory:

Mining the really old literature

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Bartow CulpPurdue University

Criteria

• Pre- and early 19th century books, journals, and images

• Available online• Free (mostly)

De rerum natura Titus Lucretius Carus

(~94 B.C. – 49 B.C.)

• An Epicurean philosopher who explained the world in terms of indivisible “atoms”

• Fully translated text available (and searchable) at Project Gutenberg www.gutenberg.org

• Also available at the Archimedes Project Website (vide infra)

Some Lucretian quotes:

“This ultimate stock we have devised to name Procreant atoms, matter, seeds of things, Or primal bodies, as primal to the world.”

“Nothing exists per se except atoms and the void ”

“Bodies, again, are partly primal germs of things, and partly Unions deriving from the primal germs.”

“…those elements from which alone all things created are,

And how accomplished by no tool of the Gods.”

De re metallicaGeorgius Agricola (1494-1555)

Source: The Archimedes Project <http://archimedes2.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/>

Achimedes Project page from De rerum natura, with lexicon entry

Alchemy sources:<http://www.levity.com/alchemy/index.html>

Alchemy Website:Example of transcribed text

Mary the ProphetessTranscribed from the British Library MS. Sloane 3641 folios 1-8.

The original text was printed in a number of compendia in Latin and German, the Auriferae artis 1572, Alchymia vera 1604, Arnaldus de Villa Nova Opus Aureum 1604, Lumen chymicum novum 1624 and in the sixth volume of the Theatrum chemicum 1659.

The practise of Mary the Prophetess in the Alchymicall Art.

Aros the Philosopher had a meeting with Mary the Prophetess the Sister of Moyses, and approaching to her, he paid her respect and said unto her. O Prophetess, I have truly heard many say of you that you whiten the Stone in one day.And Mary said, Yea, Aros, even in a part of one day.

Alchemy Website:Example of transcribed text

Everburning Lights ascribed to Trithemius

“Hearuppon followeth the process & practica…Take 4 unces of sulphur, & so much of calcyned alume, bruise them together, put it into an earthen sublimatorie, place it into a coale fier, well lited, let the sulphur ascend through the Alume, and in 8 houres is it prepared…”

Robert Boyle (1627-1691)

• The Sceptical Chymist, available from– Project Gutenberg (transcribed)– Archimedes Project (facsimile)– Annotated version by John Davidson

<http://www.chem.gla.ac.uk/staff/alanc/annotations.pdf>

• Miscellaneous papers, from The Robert Boyle Project, Birkbeck College, University of London (facsimile, indexed)

• “Workdiaries”, from the AHRC Centre for Editing Lives and Letters (facsimile, indexed)

Robert Boyle on barnaclesSource: The Robert Boyle Project

<http://www.bbk.ac.uk/Boyle/>

Boyle’s workdiary No. 19, entries 12-13

Source: AHRC Centre <www.livesandletters.ac.uk/>

Bibliothêque Nationale de France’s Gallica Website

<http://gallica.bnf.fr/>

Gallica search possibilities (en français, bien sûr)

B.I.U.M. A very frustrating Website, but..

B.I.U.M. example:Libavius’ Alchymia

<http://www.bium.univ-paris5.fr/histmed/medica.htm>

Other old book sites:The ECHO Website

<http://echo.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/home>

Other old book sites: The Athena Website

http://un2sg4.unige.ch/athena/

A treasure from the 18th Century: Zedler’s Lexikon

Subscription-only sources for old books

• EEBO (Early English Books Online)

– Over 70 titles– Covers the period 1473-1700– Facsimiles - text not searchable

• ECCO- (Eighteenth Century Collections Online)

– Several hundred works in alchemy and chemistry

– Text searchable

EEBO: Nicolas Lemery’s chymistry textbook

EEBO:

John Wilson’s Cabinet,from EEBO

ECCO: Macquer’s Dictionary (1771)

Lavoisier’s Elements, 4th ed.(1799) From ECCO

ECCO full-text searching

Search on “orpiment”

Old journals

• Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London– Transcription available from JSTOR

(1665-1886) fee-based resource

• advanced search capabilities

– Available for free from:• Gallica (1666-1886); indexes of individual

volumes are keyword searchable• ILEJ (1757-1777); author, title and subject

searchable

Other old journal sources

• Gallica: Annales de Chimie, etc.• GDZ (University of Göttingen Digitization Center

http://gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/en/index.html):– Transactions of the Royal Academy of Sciences (Paris),

1692-1734 (translated into German)– Transactions of the Royal Society of Sciences

(Edinburgh), 1789 (translated into German)– 14 others, similarly obscure

• BBAW (Berlin-Brandenberg Akademie der Wissenschaften http://bibliothek.bbaw.de/)– Proceedings of the Prussian Academy of Sciences, 1700-

1900

Old journals: search aids

• Gallica• The Reuss Repertorium (link via The

Scholarly Societies Project: http://www.scholarly-societies.org/history/reuss.html

– Covers 17th & 18th century journals from scholarly societies only

Catalogue of scientific papers

from Gallica

Reuss Repertorium (1801-1827)

(limited to publications by scholarly societies)

Sources for specific papers

• “Classic Chemistry” site maintained by Carmen Giunta at Le Moyne College http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/index.html

• “ChemTeam” a high school chemistry site (!) maintained by John Park: http://dbhs.wvusd.k12.ca.us/webdocs/Chem-History/Classic-Papers-Menu.html

A Davy paper from the “ChemTeam” Website

What ought to be there:

• Chemisches Zentralblatt*• Berzelius’ Jahresberichte • Nicolson’s Journal

*Late breaking news! FIZ Chemie Berlin to publish e-CZ

Some image sources

• Chemical Heritage Foundation <http://www.chemheritage.org/library/lib-neville.html>

• Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image (SCETI) <http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/collections.cfm>

• University of Illinois Exhibit: “From Alchemy to Chemistry” http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/~mainzv/exhibit/

Image from the Chemical Heritage Foundation collection:

An account of the first aërial voyage in

England

Distillation vesselsFrom Alchemical Compendium of Recipes and Drawings, c. 1467 by Georg Hayniger

(SCETI)

Title Page from Hieronymus Brunschwig (1450-c. 1512) Liber de

arte distillandi (UIUC exhibit)

Chemical utensils from Alchymia, (1606) by Andreas Libavius

(The Alchemy Website)

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to Carmen Giunta of LeMoyne College for his help and for his surpassingly excellent website, “Classic

Chemistry”: <http://web.lemoyne.edu/~giunta/index.html>