The use of the blowpipe, in the qualitative and quantitative examination of minerals, ores, furnace products and other metallic combinations / Edited, with emendations, by Dr. Sheridan Muspratt. With a preface by Baron Liebig.

  • Plattner, Carl Friedrich, 1800-1858.
Date:
1850
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The use of the blowpipe, in the qualitative and quantitative examination of minerals, ores, furnace products and other metallic combinations / Edited, with emendations, by Dr. Sheridan Muspratt. With a preface by Baron Liebig. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    1.—THE BLOWPIPE. This instrument was long employed in the arts, before any one conceived the idea of applying it to chemical experiments, performed in what is called the dry way. Bergman tells us, that the first person who so used it was Andrew Swab, a Swedish Metallurgist, and Counsellor of the College of Mines, about the year 1733. He left no work on the subject, and it is unknown to what extent he carried the researches which he made with this instrument. Cronstedt, who laid the foundations of Mineralogy, and whose genius so outstripped the age in which he lived, used the Blowpipe to distinguish mineral sub¬ stances from one another, by means of fusible reagents. From their action such modifications on the objects to which they applied resulted, as might afibrd some conclusions respecting their composition, and served as a basis for the classification he adopted. In his time the intercourse between men of science was by no means so open as at present; the discoveries of one man were seldom communicated to his fellow laborers, and each pursued his researches with no other help than the expe¬ rience of the generation which had passed away, and become in some measure public property. At such a period, Cronstedt carried the use of the Blowpipe to a degree of perfection, that can only result from persevering industry; but, as slight services in the cause of science were not as yet honored with general attention, he who at first was afraid to make himself known as the author of that system of Mineralogy which has perpetuated his memory, still less thought of describing in detail this new application of the Blowpipe, and the processes