THE EVOLUTION OF CHEMISTRY. 

 BY R. G. ECCLES, M. D. 



CHEMISTRY has been defined as the science of matter. 

 Though but recently organized as a compact body of re- 

 lated facts, its roots run back into the depths of the prehis- 

 toric past. The first fire kindled, the first food cooked, and 

 the first metal extracted from its ore, constitute the earliest 

 chemical experiments consciously performed by man. The 

 facts accumulated since then are practically numberless, and 

 the explanations advanced as to their meaning have in no 

 wise been meager. By guessing every possible way, men coul d 

 not help occasionally guessing the right way. However 

 whimsical the reasons given by the ancients "for their the- 

 ories of matter, the fact stands prominently forth that 

 sometimes they struck what we now believe to be truth. 

 How could they help it ? One of the ways must be right if 

 every way is tried. Time may vanquish error, but can not 

 demolish truth. From their narrow standpoints of limited 

 data they no doubt reasoned as soundly as we do, so that 

 what to us seems very absurd, to them was not in the least 

 incongruous. When their earliest fetichism gave way to 

 polytheism and monotheism their speculations about matter 

 met a corresponding revision. The Parsee, who saw in fire 

 his god, naturally supposed all things were made by or of 

 fire. The Hindoo looked beyond fire to a hypothetic ether 

 for his gods, and so deemed that the primal substance. 

 Homer's Okeanus, or god of the ocean, was the source of 

 all other gods, and so we find Thales of Miletus teaching 

 the early Greeks that water was the first matter. Anexi- 

 menes at a later date reasoned that as clouds form water 

 and invisible air clouds, air, not water, is the beginning of 

 things. Pherecides evidently had no other theological cos- 

 mogony than his fetich-worshiping predecessors when he 

 called earth primal. Like Topsy, he believed that things 

 " just grew." The building of the' Pantheon diffused a spirit 

 of eclecticism. Acceptance of all the gods meant ac- 

 knowledgment of all their elements. Aristotle presents 

 five. These are ether, fire, air, water, and earth. At a lit- 



