Chemistry / by George Wilson.

  • George Wilson
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Chemistry / by George Wilson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    still more to explain regarding’ it; but the chemist would have nothing to proclaim in reference to such a globe. For all the sensible characters of a mass of lead, considered alone, fall under the notice of the philosophers previously referred to, who would leave nothing undescribed for the chemist to record. His characteristic office is to investigate the differ- ences which subsist between unlike kinds of matter; but if there were but one kind—namely, lead—in existence, there could be nothing different to admit of comparison with it; so that in a globe of but one element, there could be no work for the chemist to do. Two elements as constituents of a world —lead, for example, and sulphur—would permit our science to come into action ; and its range would widen as the number of'elements increased. Our existent Chemistry is the expo- sition of the differences which subsist between sixty elements, and the record of all the properties and material relations of each of these elements, and of all its compounds. *** The word Chemistry is derived from the Greek iu.ua (chemeia), which occurs for the first time in certain works of the eleventh cen- tury, and is used by their writers to signify the art of making gold arti- ficially, so that it originally denoted what we now generally indicate by the word Alchymy—namely, the supposed art of transmuting the common metals into gold. The root of the word is exceedingly doubt- ful. Some derive it from Ham, the son of Noah, one of whose imme- diate descendants is said to have been the first chemist; others from Chemia, one of the ancient names of Egypt, in which chemistry is said to have originated; some deduce it from the Coptic root chems, obscure or secret; and others from the Greek chymos, a liquid or juice —dhe aqua-regia of the alchemists being the liquid par excellence. Several other derivations have been proposed; but all are very uncer- tain, and none of them throw any light on the modern meaning of the word.
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