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.

    73/264 (page 45)
    in de-compound bodies, I will add a not useless one of another kinde. Not only chymists have not been able (for ought is vulgarly known) by fire alone to separate true sulphur from antimony, but though you may finde in their books many plausible processes of extracting it, yet he that shall make as many fruitless trials as I have done to obtain it by, most of them will, I suppose, be easily persuaded, that the productions of such processes are antimonial sulphurs rather in name than nature. But though antimony sublimed by itself is reduced but to a volatile powder, or antimonial flowers, of a compounded nature like the mineral that affords them: yet I remember that some years ago I sublimed out of antimony a sulphur, and that in greater plenty than ever I saw obtained from that mineral, by a method which I shall therefore acquaint you with, because chymists seem not to have taken notice of what importance such experiments may be in the in- dagation of the nature, and especially of the number of the elements. Having then purposely for trial’s sake digested eight ounces of good and well powdered antimony with twelve ounces of oil of vitriol in a well stopt glass vessel for about six or seven weeks; and having caused the mass (grown hard and brittle) to be distilled in a retort placed in sand, with a strong fire; we found the antimony to be so opened, or altered by the menstruum wherewith it had been digested, that whereas crude antimony, forced up by the fire, arises only in flowers, our antimony thus handled afforded us partly in the receiver, and partly in the neck and at the top of the retort, about an ounce of sulphur, yellow and brittle like common brimstone, and of so sulphureous a smell, that upon the unluting the vessels it infected the room with a scarce supportable stink. And this sulphur, besides the colour and smell, had the perfect inflammability of common brimstone, and would imme- diately kindle (at the flame of a candle) and burn blue like it. And though it seemed that the long digestion wherein our antimony and menstruum were detained, did conduce to the better unlocking of the mineral, yet if you have not the leasure to make so long a digestion you may by incorporating with powdered antimony a con-