254 BOGERT— CARBON COMPOUNDS. [April 20, 



In spite of the great amount of experimental work carried out 

 by the alchemists, and the large number of new facts discovered by 

 them, their writings were so obscured by mysticism, exaggeration 

 and deceit, that little real progress was made toward a more accurate 

 understanding of the nature of chemical compounds which might be 

 utilized in constructing a more satisfactory method of classification. 

 No attempts were made to determine the actual constituents of 

 compounds, for it was assumed that in the formation of a compound 

 the original substances were annihilated and an entirely new sub- 

 stance created. Hence the only classification in vogue was a rough 

 grouping of substances according to their physical properties, or 

 apparent outward resemblance, and many of our common names are 

 reminders of this bygone empirical method. Thus, olive oil and 

 other vegetable and animal oils were grouped with oil of vitriol and 

 oleum tartari (deliquesced potassium carbonate) ; spirit of wine 

 (alcohol) with fuming spirit of Libavius (stannic chloride), spirit 

 of hartshorn (ammonium hydroxide solution) and spirit of nitre 

 (nitric acid) ; butter with butter of antimony (antimony trichloride) 

 and other semi-solid metallic chlorides. Colorless solids, soluble in 

 water and of characteristic well marked taste, were all classed as 

 " salts," and this group thus included sugar. 



The goal toward which the alchemists strove was the philoso- 

 pher's stone, the grand elixir or the magisterium, as it was variously 

 called, whose virtues were such that it could not only transmute 

 baser metals into silver and gold, but could also prolong life indefi- 

 nitely. As the claims concerning the transmutation of metals were 

 increasingly discredited and the trickery and deception of the alchem- 

 ists exposed, more investigators directed their attention toward the 

 second great function of the philosopher's stone, the prolongation of 

 life, and many compounds were discovered of considerable thera- 

 peutic value. Great interest was aroused by these investigations, 

 and Paracelsus finally announced that "the object of chemistry is 

 not to make gold but to prepare medicines." Thus, in the first half 

 of the sixteenth century, chemistry began to develop in a new direc- 

 tion, at first not far removed from alchemy, but gradually diverging 

 from it more and more widely, and approaching closer and closer 



