I9I2.] BOGERT— CARBON COMPOUNDS. 253 



were familiar with this fact and were only introducing into Greece 

 this ancient Indian theory. 



The oldest nations were familiar with the metals and refer to 

 them frequently in their writings, but it should not be forgotten that 

 some of the earliest chemical facts on record have to do with carbon 

 compounds. The only acid known to the ancients was acetic (as 

 vinegar), so that the name of this substance and the idea of acidity 

 were expressed by closely related words ; in the Greek, o^o<; for 

 vinegar, and o|u? for acid ; in the Latin, acetus and acidus. The 

 first reagent of any kind mentioned was the extract of gall nuts, 

 which Pliny says the ancients used to detect the presence of green 

 vitriol in verdigris. The first salts artificially prepared were those 

 obtained by the action of vinegar upon alkalies. The first crude 

 attempts at distillation were with turpentine. The ancients were 

 familiar also with fats, resins, organic coloring matters (like indigo 

 and Tyrian purple), sugar, gums, the preparation of wine from 

 grape juice, of beer from malted grain, of mead from honey, of soap 

 from fats, and many other facts in these and related fields. Organic 

 chemistry, therefore, does not give place in point of age to inorganic. 

 Largely due to the influence of Alchemy, however, the object of 

 which was the transmutation of baser metals into silver and gold, 

 the mineral side of the subject was the first to be extensively 

 developed. 



According to the pseudo-Geber, all metals consisted of sulfur 

 and mercury, in varying amounts and in different degrees of purity. 

 The old Aristotelian " elements " he appears to have regarded as 

 subsidiary constituents, or perhaps as the ultimate components of 

 the sulfur and mercury. To the pseudo-Geber's two elements, Basil 

 Valentine added a third, " salt," not meaning any particular com- 

 pound but the properties characteristic of common sodium chloride, 

 and he assumed these three to be the elementary constituents not 

 only of metallic substances but of organic as well; sulfur endowing 

 the substance with combustibility, or the property of changing in the 

 fire, and also explaining color changes, mercury giving metallic 

 properties and volatility, and salt representing the principle of solidi- 

 fication and of resistance to fire. 



PROC. AMER. PHIL. SOC. , LI. 205 N, PRINTED JULY 24, I9I2. 



