The sceptical chymist / by the Hon. Robert Boyle.

  • Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.
Date:
[between 1900 and 1999]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The sceptical chymist / by the Hon. Robert Boyle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    114/264 (page 86)
    to make them up, do each of them retain its own peculiar nature; and by the spagyrists fires may be more easily extricated and recovered, than altered, either by a change of texture in the parts of the same ingredient, or by an association with some parts of another ingredient more strict than was that of the parts of this or that miscibilc among themselves. At these words Eleu. having pressed him to do what he proposed, and promised to do what he desired; I consider then (resumes Carneades) that, not to mention those improper kinds of mistion, wherein homogeneous bodies are joyned, as when water is mingled with water, or two vessels full of the same kind of wine with one another, the mistion I am now to discourse of seems, generally speaking, to be but an union per minima of any two or more bodies of differing denominations; as when ashes and sand are colliquated into glass; or antimony and iron into regulus martis; or wine and water are mingled, and sugar is dissolved in the mixture. Now in this general notion of mistion it does not appear clearly comprehended, that the miscihilia or ingredients do in their small parts so retain their nature and remain distinct in the compound, that they may thence by the fire be again taken asunder: for though I deny not that in some mistions of certain permanent bodies this recovery of the same ingredients may be made; yet I am not convinced that it will hold in all or even in most, or that it is neces- sarily deducible from chymicall experiments, and the true notion of mistion. To explain this a little, I assume, that bodies may be mingled, and that very durably, that are not elementary, nor ha ve been resplved into elements or principles, that they may be mingled; as is evident in the regulus of colliquated antimony, and iron newly mentioned; and in gold coyne, which lasts so many ages; wherein generally the gold is alloyed by the mixture of a quantity, greater or lesser, (in our mints they use about a 12th part) of either silver, or copper, or both. Next, I consider, that there being but one universal matter of things, as ’tis known that the Aristotelians themselves acknowledge, who call it materia prima (about which