A century of medicine and chemistry : a lecture introductory to the course of lectures to the medical class in Yale college...Sept. 14, 1871.

  • Silliman, Benjamin, 1816-1885.
Date:
1871
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A century of medicine and chemistry : a lecture introductory to the course of lectures to the medical class in Yale college...Sept. 14, 1871. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    Lavoisierian methods in Chemistry. It is too obvious to require comment that until we knew the composition of the atmosphere, the functions of respiration and the aeration of the blood were without a rational explana- tion. The remarkable researches of Black on fixed air, or carbonic acid, and on the alkalis, preceded, it is true, the discovery of oxygen by several years, and offer a fine example of logical method and analytic power in dealing with facts observed for an end. This was the first research which demonstrated the cardinal impor- tance of quantitative determinations in the interpretation of chemical phenomena. Black in fact led the way in these investigations, as also in those ideas of chemical combination and decomposition as connected with the addition or subtraction of a ponderable substance, which Lavoisier afterwards extended to the whole range of chemical phenomena. The year 1774 was also made remarkable by Scheele's discovery of chlorine in the course of a research, having for its object the determination of the properties of oxide of manganese. He regarded this wonderful ele- ment it is true as muriatic acid deprived of phlogiston. Hence his name for it, dephlogisticated muriatic acid. By phlogiston Scheele meant in this case, hydrogen gas. In other words, as we now know his theoretical view of the new substance was correct and precisely what Davy in 1810 proved to be true when he gave the new ele- ment the name chlorine. The discovery of iodine by Courtois in 1811 and of bromine by Ballard in 1826 filled out, with the addition of fluorine, the remarkable group of which chlorine is the type, and supplied to the materia medica and the resources of the healing art, agents of wonderful efficacy and varied ap-