HISTORY 



of the Royal Society and Member of the 

 Society of Antiquaries of London, was pub- 

 lished. Baker stated the following, under the 

 chapter heading, '"Of Salts in. Mineral Wa- 

 ters": 



"The Microscope may be of great Service 

 to determine by ocular Examination, what 

 kind of Salts our medicinal Springs are 

 charged with, whence to form a Judgment in 

 what Cases their Waters may be drank to 

 Advantage." Five kinds of "fossile salts" 

 were then enumerated. 



Marggraf, in 1747, first published his re- 

 search, which proved the presence of a true 

 sugar in the beet, and thus laid the founda- 

 tion of the German sugar industry. Despite 

 his early date, he called himself and may 

 truly be called a chemist (then "chymist"), 

 and he used the microscope as a matter of 

 course, as an aid in this research, remarking 

 that little white crystals, looking like those 

 of sugar, could be seen sprinkled over dried 

 slices of the root, as a preliminary indication 

 of the presence of sugar. 



Another book by Baker, "Employment for 

 the Microscope", was published in 1753. This 

 work had two parts, of wiiich Part I, con- 

 tainmg 232 pages out of 442 for the book, 

 had the title: "An Examination of Salts and 

 Saline Substances, their Amazing Configura- 

 tions and Crystals, as formed undex* the Eye 

 of the Observer." His method was to pre- 

 pare a saturated solution of a salt and then 

 observe the formation of the crystals as a 

 drop, spread out on a slide, began to dry 

 up. There were 55 short chapters on dif- 

 ferent kinds of salts, and 9 plates out of 17 

 for the book illustrated their crystals. Not 

 much was yet knowai about chemical com- 

 position, and Baker did not use reagents in 

 his procedure. He was primarily a micros- 

 copist and such chemistry as he had was 

 about as crude as it could be ; but it may be 

 pointed out that he preceded Raspail, often 

 cited as having been "the first" or "earliest" 

 in microchemistry, microscopical chemistry, 

 or chemical microscopy, by 80 years; also he 



preceded Emich, who still is often consid- 

 ered a pioneer, by over 150 years. 



Chemistry became fully scientific in the 

 late 1700's and in the early 1800's micro- 

 scopic chemistry was still basically an obser- 

 vational science. Chemists examined rocks, 

 sections of plants, any and all kinds of things 

 under the microscope, as a means of learning 

 something about their chemical constitution. 

 By this time, they tried reagents on the 

 things seen, to observe w^hich parts or par- 

 ticles reacted and how. The reagents might 

 be of any kind and in fact color reactions 

 were perhaps most used. Crystals, certainly, 

 were observed, as they had been by Baker 

 and Marggraf, but they were still usually 

 natural crystals, or crystals of common 

 chemicals, or of substances isolated by some 

 chemical process; as yet they w'ere very sel- 

 dom crystals formed in tests intended to 

 produce them for diagnostic purposes. This 

 microscopical chemistry, which was the 

 original "microchemistry", was the chemis- 

 try of substances observed through the mi- 

 croscope. 



Eminent chemists of this transitional time 

 who used microscopic methods in some of 

 their chemical researches included WoUaston 

 in England and Dobereiner in Germany. 

 Other chemists also used the microscope on 

 occasion, chiefly to look at their material to 

 be worked on; and they included some mi- 

 croscopically observed data in their writings. 

 Thus Hehvig notes that Hiinefeld had in- 

 cluded mention of the crystal forms of the 

 alkaloids then known in a book of 1823. 



Most emphatic of the early chemists in 

 recommending the microscope for the uses 

 just described, and indeed throughout chem- 

 istry, was F. V. Raspail, whose "Xouveau 

 Systeme de Chimie Organique, Fonde sur 

 des Methodes Nouvelles d 'Observation", 

 w^as first published in Paris in 1833. Organic 

 chemistry then and for some time still was 

 the chemistry of living things, their constit- 

 uents and products; Raspail may be called 

 a biochemist in modern terms. 



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