Essays of Jean Rey, doctor of medicine, on an enquiry into the cause wherefore tin and lead increase in weight on calcination. (1630) / Jean Rey.

  • Jean Rey
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Essays of Jean Rey, doctor of medicine, on an enquiry into the cause wherefore tin and lead increase in weight on calcination. (1630) / Jean Rey. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    I a 1 h,s light, and likewise all his heat, which has not Itself increased although its action is increased on account of the condensation of its object: for the more subtle parts of the air being elevated little by little, the others are found more frequently here below and are gathered more together in one place. And from this greater con- centration comes the greater action. This can be explained by considermg the elementary fire, which although it is hot to an extreme degree does not yet burn on account of the extreme rarefaction : but heated iron burns violently not because it is hotter (for how could it be hotter than the extreme heat?) but because it is denser, containing more particles in an equal space. So much then for touch: let us proceed to the other sense. When this morning the sun commenced to irradiate the horizon, the air by its subtlety was entirely hidden from your eyes : but now, can you not see how it quivers above these furrows? It is because it has become denser, and acquired more corpulence, that it is rendered at all visible. So, I think I have acquitted myself sufficiently of what I promised, and now it is time to proceed further and say that if the simple heat of the Sun thus renders our lower air dense and heavy, driving aloft its more subtle, and keeping below its stouter and more solid parts, what will not the vehement heat do, which the throat of a furnace heated by a glowing brasier disgorges for a great space of time? A quantity of aqua vitcs placed upon it within a vessel will promptly vanish. Common water and all manner of liquors will be exhaled in a few hours. Air nevertheless will subsist in it (there being no other body to fill its place), but it will be an air dense and heavy as possible; an air I would almost say which is no longer air, but an altered and unnatural air, its subtle fluidity being changed to a viscid grossness. For the violence of the fire subtilizing as much air as
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