THE ALUMNI JOURNAL 21 



condenser was heated with experiment, it was discoveries that dis- 

 tilled over. Hark, how the midnight was startled by the bubbling 

 of Scheele's alembic! 



There came a time when physics no longer ministered to the ail- 

 ing body of the apothecary of Koping. Purges were tried but with- 

 out avail, balsams and liniments helped not, and he went to the land 

 where all good druggists go, and bad ones, too. Yes, he died, 

 leaving a drug store and a widow, and Scheele wanted both of them. 

 He bought the former and hoped to acquire the latter when circum- 

 stances permitted. (To-day his statue stands at Stockholm, but in 

 those days he couldn't pay his bills.) Business was bad, and it was 

 only several years later that they married. And such a marriage — 

 with Death for the priest ! 



Science seemed jealous that this man should take another mis- 

 tress, and two days later he died. He had no children, so all chem- 

 ists could call him father. Perhaps it is better so. Like so many 

 other great men, he might have become the sire of pigmies. Intel- 

 lectual giant that he was, from his loins might have sprung a race 

 of dwarfs. Aurelius was noble, his son was a monster; Cromwell 

 was mighty, his child was a weakling; Goethe was everything, his 

 offspring was nothing. Heredity is a humbug — often. 



Scheele's fate might have been similarly sad. Yet in another re- 

 spect, such a man cannot be called childless. He was wedded to 

 science, and she is ever fertile Let her lover only be in earnest, 

 and she is no barren spouse. Come, I will show you his children, a 

 far-famed progeny — Berzelius, Chevreul, Liebig, Bunsen, Thenard, 

 Kelvin, Ramsay, Kopp, Becquerel, Curie, Marie Slodowska, Baeyer, 

 Squibb and Charles Rice. 



In estimating Scheele's work we must bear in mind that in his 

 day chemistry had just thrown off the fantastic garb of the alchem- 

 ists, and was hardly accustomed to the scientific clothes which it 

 had so lately donned. 



It is true that among his contemporaries were great-brained work- 

 ers like Black, Bergmann, Cavendish, Priestley, Rutherford and 

 Lavoisier; that "the subtill science of holy alkimy" was dead among 

 enlightened men ; that the Universal Solvent was forgotten, and the 

 Philosopher's Stone unsought for; that he was never asked to com- 

 pound the following prescription : "Calcine vitriol until it becomes 



