i2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



civilized world became stimulated to new thoughts and to new enter- 

 prises, one might almost say it became intoxicated with great ideas 

 and great ventures. 



Natural science was the last field of thought to feel the new im- 

 pulse, and in chemistry there was little evidence of progress until the 

 sixteenth century. The representative chemical authors known to the 

 fifteenth century were Arnald of Villanova, the unknown writers who 

 wrote under the name of Eaimundus Lullus (or Lully) and unknown 

 writers who wrote chemistry under the name of Gheber, or of Albertus 

 Magnus. All these writings were obscure in style and contributed little 

 to the knowledge of chemistry or to clear thinking. The chemists of 

 the period might be classified into two groups — artisans who were not 

 generally of university education, working by traditional methods in 

 their respective arts and not addicted to writing or philosophizing; and 

 the learned class, usually physicians, sometimes clericals. Some in- 

 terest in chemistry existed but was mainly confined to the efforts to dis- 

 cover the transmutation of metals or the elixir of life. Chemical facts 

 were at times developed by their efforts, but disappointments and disil- 

 lusions had brought the chemical theories of the ancients and alchemists 

 into general stagnation and disrepute. Cornelius Agrippa, writing about 

 1530, quotes a proverb of the time — " An alchymist is either a physician 

 or a soap boiler." 



Four men notably mark the beginning of a new era in chemical 

 activity, Theophrastus von Hohenheim (called Paracelsus), Georg 

 Bauer (called Agricola), Vannuccio Biringuccio and Bernard Palissy. 



Paracelsus was born in Switzerland in 1493; Agricola in Saxony 

 in 1494; Biringuccio of Siena, Italy, probably about the same time; 

 while Palissy was born in France and his birth year is variously given 

 as 1499 and 1510. 



We can better appreciate the stimulating intellectual atmosphere of 

 the period in which these men lived if we recall that the span of their 

 lives touched the life times of Michelangelo, Macchiavelli, Leonardo da 

 "Vinci, Ariosto, Eafael, Eabelais, Copernicus, Vesalius, Thomas More, 

 Columbus, Cortez, Cardanus, Martin Luther, Erasmus and Savonarola. 



Three of the four chemists mentioned — Agricola, Biringuccio and 

 Palissy — may be said, each in his own line and country, to have laid the 

 foundations of modern chemical technology. Each of them wrote an 

 almost epoch-making work in a particular field of applied chemistry 

 and exerted a powerful impetus toward raising the profession of 

 technical chemist above the rank of Agrippa's "soap-boiler." 



Biringuccio's work was published in 1540 in Italian under the title 

 of " Pirotechnia." It treats of the metals, the semi-metals, their ores 

 and minerals, and of some salts; of the alloys of the metals, their 

 manufacture and uses. It contains also recipes for the use of the 

 goldsmiths, the potters and other artisans. It is important as an 



