THE ALUMNI JOURNAL 49 



SCHEELE, THE CHEMIST. 



By Victor Robinson. 

 {Continued from February Issue.) 



After Copernicus there was no more excuse for astrology ; after 

 Darwin there was no more reason for immutability; and after 

 Lavoisier there was no further justification for phlogiston. But the 

 roots of pre-concei\'ed notions are long and strong, and take gen- 

 erations to uproot. Only one chemist of that age accepted the new 

 truth. Sole among contemporary scientists, Joseph lUack — forever 

 illustrious as the discoverer of latent and specific heat — announced 

 himself an adherent of the Lavoiserian doctrine of combustion. 



Priestley, Cavendish and Scheele remained firm believers in the 

 phlogistic theory which their researches had done so much to upset. 



So Scheele was wrong; what of it? When such a man makes an 

 occasional error, we are not displeased. His mistake brings him 

 nearer to ourselves. We are so faulty, we are hardly attracted by 

 absolute perfection. 



Without hesitation let us acknowledge Scheele's limitations, and 

 assert that he found chemistry an eyeless infant, and left her a 

 keen-visioned adult. He outranks Octavius who found a Rome of 

 brick and left a Rome of marble. 



-;< :!; * * * * 



Science has a sorrowful list of wondrous youngsters who disap- 

 peared from life wdien the brain was still eager and the spirit ardent. 

 Scheele was one of these. In his forty-fourth year he was added 

 to the roll of short-lived geniuses. Yet though the days of his life 

 were few, he labored long and lovingly, for he was in the service 

 of science, and some of the benefits he rendered her are here re- 

 corded: 



In 1769, while still in his twenties, he experimented with Cream 

 of Tartar (KHC^H^Og), from which compound he was the first to 

 isolate Tartaric Acid (HX.H.OJ. He sent a record of his experi- 

 ments to Torbern Bergmann, the foremost Swedish chemist. The 

 professor was a generous friend, Init at this time must have been 

 absorbed in his own work, for he failed to convey the paper to the 

 Academy of Sciences at Stockholm, which, however, was later done 

 by Anders Retzius. 



As far back as 1669 the alchemist Brandt of Hamburg, while 

 searching for the "philosopher's stone" that converts lead to silver 



