Earth (historical chemistry) Quotes

“History of science”

“History of chemistry”

“[T]he name vitrifiable earth... may produce false notions of the nature of these stones.”

“Wikipedia: Earth (historical chemistry)”

“There is an alkali hidden in every earth, said some chemists.
An alkali is an earth refined by the presence of acid and combustible matter, said others.”

“The class of bodies called earths by chemists are nine in number; their names are Lime, Magnesia, Barytes, Strontites, Alumine or Argil, Silex, Yttria, Glucine and Zircone. The three last are recently discovered and scarce.”

“It is thus that the nomenclature of chemistry marks the advances made in the science. "What's in a name?" To the historical student of science, almost everything.”

“Lastly, as without fire the whole world would be one mass of solid and immoveable matter, so without earth it would be a confused heap of fogs, vapors, a chaos of incoherent atoms, destitute of that harmony and equilibrium which sustain it.”

“Twenty years ago few substances seemed more likely to retain a permanent place in chemical arrangements, than the solid and refractory earths which compose the crust of the globe.”

“Alkalis, acids, metallic ores, and native metals, were supposed to be of an entirely dissimilar constitution.”

“The latest attempt to decompose the earths is that of Mr. Davy; he seems to have shewn, that some of the earths are analogous to the fixed alkalies, in respect to their properties of forming metals; but these metals, like those of the alkalies, are most probably compounds of hydrogen and the respective earths.”

“To the earth or alkali, as being the foundation on which the salt is built, by the addition of acid, the name of base was given by Rouelle in 1744.”

“[A]n inference seems deducible, that the elements or the simplest substances which we know are essentially only one and the same matter, and only differ from each other in the quantity and in the form of their primary integrant molecules, which... have a greater or less tendency to unite together...”

“[W]e may consider the properties of elementary earth in the purest vitrifiable stones, and... compare them with the properties of the other elements. Since of these elements water is the most capable of our examination, we shall compare it with the purest vitrifiable earth; observing always, that we consider these elements in their state of aggregation; for we have no method by which their primary integrant parts can be known and considered separately.”

“[W]e cannot doubt but that earth chiefly differs from the other elements by the powerful tendency which its parts have to each other, and by the force of their cohesion. For its hardness, fusibility, fixity, and even its gravity, are evidently the necessary consequences of this... the cause of the consistence of all solid bodies.”

“We call that vitrifiable earth, the integrant parts of which when united form masses of matter or stones, absolutely white and colorless, much more transparent and hard than any other natural substances, and which suffers no alteration, or even fusion, by the strongest fire which we can apply to it.”

“Archive.org
• A Dictionary of Chemistry (1777) Vol. 1, Vol. 2, by Pierre-Joseph Macquer.
• A Dictionary of Chemistry and Mineralogy, with Their Applications (1835) by Andrew Ure”

“But we cannot say the same of earth; for a considerable number of substances are called earths, because they possess the principal properties of the terrestrial element: but these substances, when examined more particularly, are always found to differ from each other so much in other respects, and to be so difficultly purifiable from heterogeneous matter, that we have not ascertained whether only one simple and elementary earth, or several ones essentially different, although equally simple, exist.”

“As earth is an element... it deserves an accurate investigation to discover which is the most simple and elementary of all the substances to which the name earth has been applied. ...considering, first, what are the essential properties by which earthy substances differ from other elements, and then by determining that earth to be the most pure and simple, which possesses these properties most eminently and decisively; for ...the more eminently any substance possesses these characteristic properties... the nearer it approaches to this element...”

“But running through every conception which was formed of these substances-acid, alkali, earth, salt-We find a tendency, sometimes forcibly marked, sometimes feebly indicated, but always present, to consider salt as a term of much wider acceptation... An acid and an alkali, or an acid and an earth, combine to form a salt; but the salt could not have been thus produced unless the acid, the alkali and the earth had contained in themselves some properties which, when combined, form the properties of the salt.”