Note 24 — PRINCIPLES OF CHEMISTRY INTRODUCTION

It is true that Stahl was acquainted with a fact which directly disproved his hypothesis. It was already known (from the experiments of Geber, and more especially of Ray, in 1630) that metals increase in weight by oxidation, whilst, according to Stahl's hypothesis, they should decrease in weight, because phlogiston is separated by oxidation. Stahl speaks on this point as follows:—‘I am well aware that metals, in their transformation into earths, increase in weight. But not only does this fact not disprove my theory, but, on the contrary, confirms it, for phlogiston is lighter than air, and, in combining with substances, strives to lift them, and so decreases their weight; consequently, a substance which has lost phlogiston must be heavier.’ This argument, it will be seen, is founded on a misconception of the properties of gases, regarding them as having no weight and as not being attracted by the earth, or else on a confused idea of phlogiston itself, since it was first defined as imponderable. The conception of imponderable phlogiston tallies well with the habit and methods of the last century, when recourse was often had to imponderable fluids for explaining a large number of phenomena. Heat, light, magnetism, and electricity were explained as being peculiar imponderable fluids. In this sense the doctrine of Stahl corresponds entirely with the spirit of his age. If heat be now regarded as motion or energy, then phlogiston also should be considered in this light. In fact, in combustion, of coals for instance, heat and energy are evolved, and not combined in the coal, although the oxygen and coal do combine. Consequently, the doctrine of Stahl contains the essence of a true representation of the evolution of energy, but naturally this evolution is only a consequence of the combination occurring between the coal and oxygen. As regards the history of chemistry prior to Lavoisier, besides Stahl's work (to which reference has been made above), Priestley's Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air, London, 1790, and also Scheele's Opuscula Chimica et Physica, Lips., 1788–89, 2 vols., must be recommended as the two leading works of the English and Scandinavian chemists showing the condition of chemical learning before the propagation of Lavoisier's views, and containing also many important observations which lie at the basis of the chemistry of our times. A most interesting memoir on the history of phlogiston is that of Rodwell, in the Philosophical Magazine, 1868, in which it is shown that the idea of phlogiston dates very far back, that Basil Valentine (1394–1415), in the Cursus Triumphalis Antimonii, Paracelsus (1493–1541), in his work, De Rerum Natura, Glauber (1604–1668), and especially John Joachim Becher (1625–1682), in his Physica Subterranea, all referred to phlogiston, but under different names.