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177
The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry
·
M. M. Pattison Muir
141
The
alchemist
would
have
said,
the
properties
of
hydrogen
and
oxygen
are
destroyed
when
these
things
unite
to
form
water,
but
the
essence,
or
substratum,
of
each
remains.
The
chemist
says,
you
cannot
discover
all
the
properties
of
hydrogen
and
oxygen
by
examining
these
substances
apart
from
one
another,
for
one
of
the
most
important
properties
of
either
is
manifested
only
when
the
two
mutually
react:
the
formation
of
water
is
not
the
destruction
of
the
properties
of
hydrogen
and
oxygen
and
the
revelation
of
their
essential
substrata,
it
is
rather
the
manifestation
of
a
property
of
each
which
cannot
be
discovered
except
by
causing
the
union
of
both.
There
was,
then,
a
certain
degree
of
accuracy
in
the
alchemical
description
of
the
processes
we
now
call
chemical
changes,
as
being
the
removal
of
the
outer
properties
of
the
things
which
react,
and
the
manifestation
of
their
essential
substance.
But
there
is
a
vast
difference
between
this
description
and
the
chemical
presentment
of
these
processes
as
reactions
between
definite
and
measurable
quantities
of
elements,
or
compounds,
or
both,
resulting
in
the
re-distribution,
of
the
elements,
or
the
separation
of
the
compounds
into
their
elements,
and
the
formation
of
new
compounds
by
the
re-combination
of
these
elements.
Let
us
contrast
the
two
descriptions
somewhat
more
fully.
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