One of the more curious phenomena in the history of eighteenth-century chemistry was the reemergence of the four Aristotelian elements (fire, air, earth, and water) and of the alchemical notion of chemical “menstrua,” and the recasting of these five as “instruments.” These five instruments were defined as tools which the chemist utilized to instigate or prevent specific motions in matter during chemical operations. As such, the instruments and their specific properties occupied a prominent place in many pedagogical presentations of chemistry and were also the subject of theoretical discussion and experimental research. While some eighteenth-century chemists and more modern historians have referred to the “instruments” as “elements” (or “instrumentelements”), they were not elements in the traditional, Aristotelian sense. They did not (as the Aristotelians held) enter into the composition of all bodies, and in fact, the extent to which the instruments, especially “air” and “fire,” combined chemically with any other body was very much a topic for debate. In the seventeenth century, the earliest discussions by Daniel Sennert (c. 1620s) and the early university lectures of Georg Stahl (c. 1680s) clearly placed the instruments within the context of understanding the mechanisms or natural philosophy of chemical operations as distinct from problems of composition. Derived from this context, the instruments in the eighteenth century represented a relatively novel shift in the interests of philosophically-minded chemists towards problems regarding the action and mechanisms of chemical operations.
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References
Notes
On the notion of instrument-elements, see Rosaleen Love, “Herman Boerhaave and the Element-Instrument Concept of Fire,” Annals of Science 31, 1974, 547–59; David Oldroyd, “An Examination of G. E. Stahl’s Philosophical Principles of Universal Chemistry,” Ambix 20, 1973, 36–52.
Cf. Daniel Sennert, De chymicorum cum Aristotelicis et Galenicis consensu ac dissensu liber (Wittenberg, 1629). Stahl’s lectures at the University of Jena from the early 1680s were published by a former student as Georg Ernst Stahl, Fundamenta chymiae dogmaticae et experimentalis (Nuremberg, 1723), and in English as Philosophical Principles of Universal Chemistry, trans. Peter Shaw (London, 1730).
Hermann Boerhaave, Elementa chemiae, 2 vols. (Leiden, 1732). I have used Boerhaave, Elements of Chemistry, ed. Timothy Dallowe, 2 vols. (London, 1735), 1:78–500. On Boerhaave’s interest in fixed alkali see Boerhaave, Elements, 440–62. On elective affinity, see Alistair Duncan, Laws and Order in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
Henry Guerlac, Lavoisier – The Crucial Year: The Background and Origin of His First Experiments on Combustion in 1772 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1961), 20–24 and passim.
On the shaping of chemistry by “physics,” see, for example, Arthur Donovan, Antoine Lavoisier: Science, Administration, and Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993), esp. 45–73; “Lavoisier and the Origins of Modern Chemistry,” Osiris 4, 1988, 214–32; Evan M. Melhado, “Chemistry, Physics, and the Chemical Revolution,” Isis 76, 1985, 195–211; Maurice Crosland, “Chemistry and the Chemical Revolution,” 389–416, on 391 in The Ferment of Knowledge: Studies in the Historiography of Eighteenth-Century Science, eds. G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Henry Guerlac, “Chemistry as a Branch of Physics: Laplace’s Collaboration with Lavoisier,” Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 7, 1975, 193–276. For a brief overview and critique of this interpretation of eighteenth-century chemistry, see Carlton Perrin, “Chemistry as a Peer of Physics: A Response to Donovan and Melhado on Lavoisier,” Isis 81, 1990, 259–70; Frederic Lawrence Holmes, Eighteenth-Century Chemistry as an Investigative Enterprise (Berkeley, CA: Office for the History of Science and Technology, 1989), 103–11.
Robert Siegfried, From Elements to Atoms: A History of Chemical Composition (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002), 129.
Allen G. Debus, “Fire Analysis and the Elements in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Annals of Science 23, 1967, 128–47.
What kind of phenomenon or theoretical framework defined “chemistry” (or “physics”) was a central issue in the eighteenth century. See, for example, on chemistry Christoph Meinel, “Theory or Practice? The Eighteenth-Century Debate on the Scientific Status of Chemistry,” Ambix 30, 1983, 121–32; J. R. R. Christie and J. V. Golinski, “The Spreading of the Word: New Directions in the Historiography of Chemistry,” History of Science 20, 1982, 235–66; J. B. Gough, “Lavoisier and the Fulfillment of the Stahlian Revolution,” in The Chemical Revolution: Essays in Reinterpretation, ed. Arthur Donovan, Osiris 4, 1988, 15–33; Martin Fichman, “French Stahlianism and Chemical Studies of Air, 1750–1770,” Ambix 18, 1971, 94–122. On the fluid context of “physics,” see John L. Heilbron, Elements of Early Modern Physics (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982); Simon Schaffer, “Natural Philosophy,” 55–92 in The Ferment of Knowledge.
Rina Knoeff, Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738): Calvinist Chemist and Physician (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2002), 115–16; Andrew Cunningham, “Medicine to Calm the Mind: Boerhaave’s Medical System and Why It Was Adopted in Edinburgh,” 40–66, on 48 in The Medical Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century, eds. Andrew Cunningham and Roger French (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
Boerhaave, Elements, 52 and 56.
Robert Boyle, Sceptical Chymist (London, 1661); The Producibleness of Chymical Principles (Oxford, 1680); Experiments, Notes, &c. About the Mechanical Origine or Production of Divers Particular Qualities (London, 1675). On Boyle’s Sceptical Chymist and his critique of chymical principles, see Lawrence M. Principe, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 27–62 and Debus, “Fire Analysis.”
C. De Pater, “Experimental Physics,” 309–27 in Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century, eds. T. Th. Lunsingh Scheurleer and G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes (Leiden: Universitaire Pers Leiden/Brill, 1975); Gerhard Wiesenfeldt, Leerer Raum in Minervas Haus: Experimentelle Naturlehre an der Universität Leiden, 1675–1715 (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, 2002); Burchard de Volder, Quaestiones academicae de aëris gravitate (Middelburg, 1681).
Boerhaave, “Commentariolus,” 379–81 in G. A. Lindeboom, Herman Boerhaave: The Man and His Work (London: Metheren, 1968).
On Stam, see G. A. Lindeboom, “David en Nicolaas Stam, apothekers te Leiden,” Pharmaceutisch Weekblad 108, 1973, 153–60.
Giovanni Francesco Vigani, Medulla Chymiae, ed. David Stam (Leiden, 1693). On Vigani, see L. J. M. Coleby, “John Francis Vigani,” Annals of Science 8, 1952, 46–60; Anita Guerrini, “Chemistry Teaching at Oxford and Cambridge, Circa 1700,” 183–99, on 186–88 in Alchemy and Chemistry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century, eds. Piyo Rattansi and Antonio Clericuzio (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994); John R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, 4 vols. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1962), 2:686–87.
Vigani, Medulla, 11–13.
Stam, in Vigani, Medulla, 13–18. Note that Van Helmont’s view of the chymical principles was much more complex and ambivalent than as presented by Stam. Cf. William R. Newman, Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, and American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), 110–14.
Stam, “Proemium” in Vigani, Medulla, 1–9, on 1: “… hoc Naturae vocabulum paulo clarius illustrem.”
On Drélincourt’s and Nuck’s experimentalism, see G. A. Lindeboom, “Frog and Dog: Physiological Experiments at Leiden during the Seventeenth Century,” 179–93, on 289–91 in Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century. On anatomical empiricism, see Andrew Wear, “William Harvey and the ‘Way of the Anatomists,’ ” History of Science 21, 1983, 223–49.
On Nuck’s and Drélincourt’s mechanism, see Antonie M. Luyendijk-Elshout, “Oeconomia Animalis, Pores, and Particles,” 295–307, on 302–03 in Leiden University in the Seventeenth Century; Edward G. Ruestow, “The Rise of the Doctrine of Glandular Secretion in the Netherlands,” Journal of the History of Medicine 35, 1980, 265–87, on 266–67.
On Drélincourt’s critique, see Lindeboom, “Frog and Dog,” 283; Ludowijck Le Vasseur [Drélincourt], De Sylviano humore triumvirali epistola (Paris and The Hague, 1668). On Nuck’s letter, “Advies van de Medische faculteit over privaat-colleges van niet-professoren,” 22 March 1690, in Bronnen tot Gescheidenis der Leidesche Universiteit, ed. P. C. Molhuysen, (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1920), 4:23*.
Herman Boerhaave, “On Commending the Study of Hippocrates,” 74–75 in Boerhaave’s Orations, eds. E. Kegel-Brinksgreve and A. M. Luyendijk-Elshout (Leiden: Brill, 1983).
Boerhaave, “Study of Hippocrates,” 80.
Ibid., 75.
Boerhaave, “On Chemistry Expunging Its Errors,” 207 in Boerhaave’s Orations.
Ibid., 208.
Boerhaave, Elements, 53.
Voenno-Meditinski Akademii (hereafter VMA), St. Petersburg, Russia, Fundamental Library, Fund XIII, MS 3, “Collegium Chemicum,” fol. 24r: “Effecta separationis ad nullas similes partes, neque ad Elementa revocari queunt, neque sine partium immutatione semper producuntur sola separatione.”
Boerhaave, Elements, 46.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Boerhaave, Elements, 168–201. On Boerhaave’s conception of combustion see Love, “Instrument-Element Concept of Fire.”
Boerhaave, Elements, 170–81.
Ibid., 47, 181–82, and 184–86.
Ibid., 186–91; quotation on 191.
For the “Spiritus rector” experiments, see Boerhaave, Elements, 47–49; on Boerhaave’s “Mercury” (the alchemical “mercury” principle), see John C. Powers. “Herman Boerhaave and the Pedagogical Reform of Eighteenth-Century Chemistry,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University, 2001, 121–33.
Boerhaave, Elements, 47.
For his lecture course, see Boerhaave, “Collegium Chemicum,” fols. 1r–93v; for lists of operations presented in Boerhaave’s demonstration course, see fols. 143r–78v.
This dichotomy was exemplified by Boerhaave’s two medical textbooks, his Institutiones medicae, which was based on his theory course in medicine, and his Aphorisms, which presented rules of thumb for treatment based on his praxis medica course; see Boerhaave, Institutiones medicae (Leiden, 1708) and Aphorismi de cognoscendis et curandis morboris (Leiden, 1709).
For example, the tenth edition of Nicolas Lemery’s extremely popular Cours de chymie devoted 68 pages to definitions, principles, and apparatus and 860 pages to operations, Nicolas Lemery, Cours de chymie, 10th ed. (Paris, 1713). On the problems with didactic chemistry in Leiden more generally, see John C. Powers, “Chemistry Enters the University: Herman Boerhaave and the Reform of the Chemical Arts,” History of Universities 21, 2006, 77–116.
Johannes Bohn, Dissertationes chymico-physicae, chemiae finem, instrumenta et operationes frequentiores explicantes (Leipzig, 1685). Note that the dates of the exercises and name of each student defendens were printed at the beginning of each set of theses.
On Bohn, see K. Rothschuch, “Bohn, Johannes,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Gillispie (New York: Scribners, 1973); Francesco Trevisani, “ ‘Ratio’ und ‘Experimentum:’ Johannes Bohn (1640–1718) und die Italienische Experimentale Physiologie,” Clio Medica 17, 1983, 199–206.
Bohn, Dissertationes, “De Corporum Dissolutione,” paragraphs 12–17. Note that each dissertation is unpaginated.
Bohn, Dissertationes, “De Ignis,” paragraph 1.
“Ad chymico-physicas Bohn Observationes” in Boerhaave, “Collegium Chemicum,” fols. 94r–117r.
Bohn, “De Ignis,” paragraphs 19–21. On Mayow’s “aerial-niter,” see Henry Guerlac, “John Mayow and the Aerial Nitre, Studies in the Chemistry of John Mayow – I,” 332–49 in Actes du Septième Congrès International d’Histoire des Sciences (Jerusalem, 1953); Robert G. Frank, Jr., Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists: A Study of Scientific Ideas and Social Interaction (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980), 224–74.
Boerhaave argued that the pressure of the air kept the particles of combustibles in close proximity to one another, allowing fire (the instrument) to work effectively. See Boerhaave, Elements, 185 and 205–07.
Boerhaave, “Collegium chemicum,” fols. 1r–93v.
Walter Ong, Ramus, Method and the Decay of Dialogue (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958); Neal W. Gilbert, Renaissance Concepts of Method (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960); Peter Dear, “Method and the Study of Nature,” 147–77, on 147–50 in The Cambridge History of Seventeenth-Century Philosophy, eds. Daniel Garber and Michael Ayers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
Boerhaave, “Collegium chemicum,” fol 28v.
These lectures are recorded in Boerhaave, “Praelectiones chemiae,” VMA, Fund XIII, MS 7.
Powers, Herman Boerhaave, 162–206.
Boerhaave, “Praelectiones chemiae,” fols. 3r–5r, and Elements, 79–103.
Boerhaave, “Praelectiones chemiae,” fols. 15v–18r, and Elements, 214–22.
Boerhaave, Elements, 222.
Boerhaave, “Praelectiones chemiae,” fol 31r.
Boerhaave, Elements, 308–15, quotations on 314.
Ibid., 291.
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Powers, J.C. (2007). Chemistry without Principles: Herman Boerhaave on Instruments and Elements. In: Principe, L.M. (eds) New Narratives in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry. Archimedes New Studies In The History And Philosophy Of Science and Technology, vol 18. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6278-0_3
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