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.

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    pretty thick stalk, which with the various and ramified roots, which it shot into the water as if it had been earth, presented in its transparent flower-pot a spectacle not unpleasant to behold. The like I tried with sweet marjoram, and I found the experiment succeed also, though somewhat more slowly, with balm and peniroyal, to name now no other plants. And one of these vege- tables, cherished only by water, having obtained a competent growth, I did, for tryals sake, cause to be distilled in a small retort, and thereby obtained some phlegme, a little empyreumaticall spirit, a small quantity of adult oyl, and a caput mortuum; which appearing to be a coal, I concluded it to consist of salt and earth: but the quantity of it was so small, that I forbore to calcine it. The water I used to nourish this plant was not shifted nor renewed; and I chose spring-water rather than rain-water, because the latter is more discernably a kind of 7ravcrwep/Aa, which, though it be granted to be freed from grosser mixtures, seems yet to contain in it, besides the steams of several bodies wandering in the air, which may be supposed to impregnate it, a certain spirituous substance, which may be extracted out of it, and is by some mistaken for the spirit of the world cor- porifyed, upon what grounds, and with what probability, I may elsewhere perchance, but must not now, discourse to you. But perhaps I might have saved a great part of my labour. For I finde that Helmont (an author more considerable for his experiments than many learned men are pleased to think him) having had an opportunity to prosecute an experiment much of the same nature with those I have been now speaking of, for five years together, obtained at the end of that time so notable a quantity of transmuted water, that I should scarce think it fit to have his experiment and mine mentioned together, were it not that the length of time requisite to this may deterr the curiosity of some, and exceed the leasure of others; and partly, that so paradoxical a truth as that which these experiments seem to hold forth, need to be confirmed by more witnesses than one, especially