One thousand experiments in chemistry : with illustrations of natural phenomena ; and practical observations on the manufacturing and chemical processes at present pursued in the successful cultivation of the useful arts / by Colin Mackenzie.

Date:
1821
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: One thousand experiments in chemistry : with illustrations of natural phenomena ; and practical observations on the manufacturing and chemical processes at present pursued in the successful cultivation of the useful arts / by Colin Mackenzie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    began, every where, to be systematically treated, and more generally understood. Soon after the death of Paracelsus, which happened in the year 1541, the arts of mining and fluxing metals, re- ceived great illustration from the works of Georgius Agricola, a German physician. Lazarus Erckern (assay-master-general of the empire of Germany) followed Agricola in the same pursuit. His works were first published at Prague, in 1574, and an Eng- lish translation of them by Sir John Pettus, came out at London, in 1683. Several others have been published, chiefly in Germany, upon the same subject, since their time. Germany, indeed, has for a long time been the great school of metallurgy for the rest of Europe; and the British owe the present flourishing condition of their mines, to the wise policy of Queen Elizabeth, in granting great privileges to Daniel Houghsetter, Christopher Schutz, and other Germans, whom she had invited into England, in order to instruct her subjects in the art of metallurgy. It was not, however, till towards the middle of the last century, that chemistry began to be cultivated in a philoso- phical manner. So early as the year 1645, several ingeni- ous persons in London, had formed themselves into a society, and held weekly meetings, in which they treated of the new, or experimental philosophy. These meetings were continued till the establishment of the Royal Society, in 1662; and before that time, similar meetings were held in Oxford, and those studies brought into repute in that university. Boyle was a principal person in the Oxford meetings; he published at that place, his Sceptical Chemist, in 1664, and by his va- rious writings and experiments, greatly contributed to in- troduce into England a taste for rational chemistry. Next to Boyle, or perhaps before him, as a chemist, stands his contemporary, the unfortunate Beecher, whose Physica Subterranea, justly entitled, opus sine pari, was first pub- lished in 1669. He resided some time before his death in Cornwall, which he calls the mineral school, owning that, from a teacher, he was there become a learner. He was the author of many improvements in the manner (of working mines, and of fluxing metals; in particular, he introduced into Cornwall, the method of fluxing Tin by the flame of pit-coal, instead of wood or charcoal. This great man was invited to Vienna, where he contributed to the establish-