The elementary nature of chlorine / Papers by Humphry Davy (1809-1818).

  • Davy, Humphry, Sir, 1778-1829.
Date:
1902
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Credit: The elementary nature of chlorine / Papers by Humphry Davy (1809-1818). Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by UCL Library Services. The original may be consulted at UCL (University College London)

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    ments in which water is said to be produced by the action of muriatic gas on ammonia: there is, I believe, no enlightened and candid person, who has witnessed the results of processes in which large quantities of muriate of ammonia, made by the combination of the gases in close vessels, have been distilled, without being satisfied, that there is no more moisture present, than the minute quantity which is known to exist in the compound vapours diffused through ammoniacal and muriatic acid gases, which cannot be considered either as essential to the existence of the gases, or as chemically combined with them.* One of the first experiments that I made, with the hope of detecting oxygen in chlorine, was by acting upon it by ammonia, when I found that no water was formed, and that the results were merely muriate of ammonia and azote ;f and the driest muriate of ammonia, I find, when heated with potassium, converts it into muriate of potassa, which result would be impossible on the hypothesis of oxymuriatic gas being a compound of oxygen, for, if there was a separation of water during the formation of the muriate, the same oxygen could not be supposed to be detached in water, and yet likewise to remain so as to form part of a neutral salt. If water had been really formed during the action of chlorine on ammonia, the result would have been a most important one : it would have proved either that chlorine or azote was a compound, and contained oxygen, or that both contained this substance ; but it would not have proved the existence of oxygen in chlorine, till it had * Dr. Henry found it very difficult to free ammonia from the aqueous vapour existing in it by hydrate of potassa, and probably the hydrated muriatic vapour which I have detected in muriatic acid gas, by a freezing mixture, is not decomposable by muriate of lime. t Philosophical Transactions for 1810. [This Reprint, pp. 25-26.]