The Gases of the Atmosphere. William Ramsay

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      These experiments led him to investigate the action of certain mixtures on ordinary air. Thus a mixture of spirits of hartshorn (or ammonia) with iron filings absorbed 1½ cubic inches of air, and one with copper filings, twice as much. Further, a mixture of iron filings and brimstone absorbed in two days no less than 19 cubic inches of air.

      But it is disappointing to find that, in spite of all the experimental facts which Hales accumulated, he was unable to make use of them. The prejudice in favour of the unity and identity of all these “airs” was too great for him to overcome. True, he sometimes theorises a little, as for example when he remarks (p. 285):—“If fire was a particular kind of body inherent in sulphur (i.e. combustible matter of all kinds), as Mr. Homberg, Mr. Lemery, and some others imagine, then such sulphureous bodies, when ignited, should rarefy and dilute all the circumambient air; whereas it is found by many of the preceding experiments, that acid sulphureous fuel constantly attracts and condenses a considerable part of the circumambient elastick air: an argument that there is no fire endued with peculiar properties inherent in sulphur; and also that the heat of fire consists principally in the brisk vibrating action and re-action between the elastick repelling air and the strongly attracting acid sulphur, which sulphur in its Analysis is found to contain an inflammable oil, an acid salt, a very fix’d earth, and a little metal.”

      Enough has now been said to give a fair idea of Stephen Hales’ researches. It will suffice if his conclusions be stated in his own words (p. 314):—

      “Thus, upon the whole, we see that air abounds in animal, vegetable, and mineral substances; in all which it bears a considerable part; if all the parts of matter were only endued with a strongly attracting power, whole nature would then immediately become one unactive cohering lump; wherefore it was absolutely necessary, in order to the actuating and enlivening this vast mass of attracting matter, that there should be everywhere intermix’d with it a due proportion of strongly repelling elastick particles, which might enliven the whole mass, by the incessant action between them and the attracting particles; and since these elastick particles are continually in great abundance reduced by the power of the strong attracters, from an elastick to a fixt state, it was therefore necessary that these particles should be endued with a property of resuming their elastick state, whenever they were disengaged from that mass in which they were fixt, that thereby this beautiful frame of things might be maintained in a continual round of the production and dissolution of animal and vegetable bodies.

      “The air is very instrumental in the production and growth of animals and vegetables, both by invigorating their several juices while in an elastick active state, and also by greatly contributing in a fix’d state to the union and firm connection of several constituent parts of those bodies, viz. their water, salt, sulphur, and earth. This band of union, in conjunction with the external air, is also a very powerful agent in the dissolution and corruption of the same bodies; for it makes one in every fermenting mixture; the action and re-action of the aerial and sulphureous particles is, in many fermenting mixtures, so great as to excite a burning heat, and in others a sudden flame; and it is, we see, by the like action and re-action of the same principles, in fuel and the ambient air, that common culinary fires are produced and maintained.

      “Tho’ the force of its elasticity is so great as to be able to bear a prodigious pressure, without losing that elasticity, yet we have, from the foregoing Experiments, evident proof that its elasticity is easily, and in great abundance destroyed; and is thereby reduced to a fixt state by the strong attraction of the acid sulphureous particles which arise either from fire or from fermentation; and therefore elasticity is not an essential immutable property of air-particles; but they are, we see, easily changed from an elastick to a fixt state, by the strong attraction of the acid, sulphureous, and saline particles which abound in air. Whence it is reasonable to conclude that our atmosphere is a Chaos, consisting not only of elastick, but also of unelastick air-particles, which in plenty float in it, as well as the sulphureous, saline, watery, and earthy particles, which are no ways capable of being thrown off into a permanently elastick state, like those particles which constitute true permanent air. Since, then, air is found so manifestly to abound in almost all natural bodies; since we find it so operative and active a principle in every chymical operation; since its constituent parts are of so durable a nature, that the most violent action of fire or fermentation cannot induce such an alteration of its texture as thereby to disqualify it from resuming, either by the means of fire or fermentation, its former elastick state; unless in the case of vitrification, when, with the vegetable Salt and Nitre in which it is incorporated, it may, perhaps, some of it, with other chymical principles, be immutably fixt—since then this is the case, may we not with good reason adopt this now fixt, now volatile Proteus among the chymical principles, and that a very active one, as well as acid sulphur; notwithstanding it has hitherto been overlooked and rejected by chymists, as no way intitled to that denomination?”

      This quotation shows us how little Mayow’s shrewd reasoning and well-devised experiments had impressed the thinkers of his age. While Hales quotes frequently from Boyle’s and Newton’s works, his reference to Mayow is meagre; nor does he adopt any one of Mayow’s conclusions. One would have thought that, having prepared so many gases by means of apparatus well adapted to their purpose, and having observed that certain substances introduced into air produced contraction, he would have drawn the conclusion that such “airs” were essentially different kinds of matter. But the “Proteus” was too much for him; and he left the subject practically in the same state of “Chaos” in which he found it.

CHAPTER II

       Table of Contents

      “FIXED AIR” AND “MEPHITIC AIR”—THEIR DISCOVERY BY

       BLACK AND BY RUTHERFORD

      Before relating the history of the discoveries of Black, Rutherford, and Priestley, it will be appropriate to give an account of a theory which professed to explain the phenomena of combustion, and with it the conversion of metals into calces, and the reduction of these calces to the reguline or metallic state. Like other theories, it was slow in developing. Its germ is to be traced to the writings of Johann Baptist van Helmont of Brabant, Seigneur of Merode, Royenboch, Oorshot, and Pellines, who was born in Brussels in 1577. He adopted a fantastical creation of Paracelsus, the archaeus, a kind of demon which, by means of fermentation, draws together all the particles of matter. Believing that water was the true principle and origin of everything (for he had succeeded in producing a willow tree, weighing 164 lbs., from water alone, the earth in which it grew having neither gained nor lost appreciably in weight), he conceived that it was acted on by a ferment or principle pre-existing in the seed developed by it, and exhaling an odour by which the archaeus was attracted. Water undergoing the action of this ferment developed a vapour, to which van Helmont gave the name of “gas.” A “gas” was a substance intermediate between spirit and matter, and the word was probably derived from Geist, the common German word for spirit. Another word introduced by him to denote the life-principle of the stars was Blas, connected probably with blasen, to blow, and our English word blast.

      It is curious to notice how the idea of an archaeus survived down to later times under the name of a “life-principle”—a conception that all organic substances must necessarily owe their origin to life itself, and not to the usual chemical and physical transformations.

      Van Helmont was acquainted with various kinds of gases, as appears from his treatise “De Flatibus.” His gas sylvestre was evolved from fermenting liquors, and he knew that it was formed during the combustion of charcoal, and also that it was present in the Grotto del Cane near Naples. He was likewise acquainted with combustible gases, which he named gas pingue, gas siccum, or gas fuliginosum.

      These СКАЧАТЬ