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177
The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry
·
M. M. Pattison Muir
107
It
was
by
examining
the
part
played
by
the
air
in
processes
of
calcination
and
burning
that
men
at
last
became
able
to
give
approximately
complete
descriptions
of
these
processes.
Boyle
recognised
that
the
air
is
not
a
simple
or
elementary
substance;
he
spoke
of
it
as
"a
confused
aggregate
of
effluviums
from
such
differing
bodies,
that,
though
they
all
agree
in
constituting
by
their
minuteness
and
various
motions
one
great
mass
of
fluid
matter,
yet
perhaps
there
is
scarce
a
more
heterogeneous
body
in
the
world."
Clement
of
Alexandria
who
lived
in
the
end
of
the
2nd,
and
the
early
part
of
the
3rd,
century
A.D.,
seems
to
have
regarded
the
air
as
playing
a
very
important
part
in
combustions;
he
said--"Airs
are
divided
into
two
categories;
an
air
for
the
divine
flame,
which
is
the
soul;
and
a
material
air
which
is
the
nourisher
of
sensible
fire,
and
the
basis
of
combustible
matter."
Sentences
like
that
I
have
just
quoted
are
found
here
and
there
in
the
writings
of
the
earlier
and
later
alchemists;
now
and
again
we
also
find
statements
which
may
be
interpreted,
in
the
light
of
the
fuller
knowledge
we
now
have,
as
indicating
at
least
suspicions
that
the
atmosphere
is
a
mixture
of
different
kinds
of
air,
and
that
only
some
of
these
take
part
in
calcining
and
burning
operations.
Those
suspicions
were
confirmed
by
experiments
on
the
calcination
of
metals
and
other
substances,
conducted
in
the
17th
century
by
Jean
Rey
a
French
physician,
and
by
John
Mayow
of
Oxford.
But
these
observations
and
the
conclusions
founded
on
them,
did
not
bear
much
fruit
until
the
time
of
Lavoisier,
that
is,
towards
the
close
of
the
18th
century.
They
were
overshadowed
and
put
aside
by
the
work
of
Stahl
(1660-1724).
Some
of
the
alchemists
of
the
14th,
15th
and
16th
centuries
taught
that
combustion
and
calcination
are
processes
wherein
the
igneous
principle
is
destroyed,
using
the
word
"destroyed"
in
its
alchemical
meaning.
This
description
of
processes
of
burning
was
much
more
in
keeping
with
the
ideas
of
the
time
than
that
given
by
Boyle,
Rey
and
Mayow.
It
was
adopted
by
Stahl,
and
made
the
basis
of
a
general
theory
of
those
changes
wherein
one
substance
disappears
and
another,
or
others,
very
unlike
it,
are
produced.
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