54Q 



NATURE 



\_April%, 1880 



he had been invited to Berlin and promised a salary of 

 1,200 rixdollars specie, and attempts were made to induce 

 him to go to England by a promise of ^300 a year, which 

 foreign offers Scheele however declined, with the saying 

 which indicates his modest requirements as to his mode of 

 life, " I cannot do more than eat my meat ; if I can do that 

 at Koping, I need not seek it elsewhere." He was soon 

 freed from the trouble of choosing, by the townsmen of 

 Koping and the gentry of the neighbourhood declaring that 

 the town would not have any one else than Scheele as 

 apothecary, and offering in case of need to obtain privileges 

 and build a new apothecary's shop for him. The matter 

 was thus settled to Scheele's advantage. He was allowed to 

 retain his place as manager of the apothecary's shop at 

 Koping till his death, which happened on the 21st May, 

 1 786, after some months' illness, probably brought on by 

 constant work in cold laboratories with substances 

 poisonous and injurious to health. Three days before 

 his death he married the widow of the former apothecary. 

 Fru Sonneman. 



In the town house at Koping is preserved the inventory 

 taken at the death of the great departed chemist. 1 It 

 gives us indeed an insight into the modest circum- 

 stances in which he lived, but it indicates economy and 

 the possesion of some means, and shows that the glory of 

 poverty, with which some biographers have sought to 

 surround Scheele's memory, by no means corresponds 

 with the actual facts. As indicating the scantiness of the 

 literary assistance within Scheele's reach, it deserves to be 

 noted that at his death, after a stay of more than ten years 

 at Koping, he only possessed a collection of books con- 

 sisting of twelve works on medicine and chemistry, with 

 several other Swedish, German, and French books, 

 valued at 6 spec. (26*.) 



Scheele was described as a man of moderate height 

 and of a powerful frame. His modest manners and his 

 genuine worth speedily won for him the friendship and 

 affection of all with whom he came in contact. He appears 

 to have prospered most at Koping, whose inhabitants 

 entertained for him great regard, mingled with admiration 

 at the experiments and researches, to which he devoted 

 all the time he could spare. The memory of the dis- 

 tinguished man is still preserved in the town. There 

 they tell you that the stone lion, which forms the sign of 

 the apothecary's shop, had been gilt by Scheele so well 

 as never to require renewal, that Scheele made a vane to 

 the steeple, a sun, with rays pointing in many directions, 

 which protects it from lightning without any lightning 

 conductor ; that Scheele tried to make gold, and with that 

 end in view worked much with Spanish green, which 

 brought about his death, &c. 2 



When Scheele died he had not completed his forty- 

 fourth year. A great part, perhaps the greater part, of his 

 short life-path had been constantly occupied with earning 

 a living, and for a complete exhibition of the influence 

 he exerted it would not be enough to go leaf by leaf 

 through the field of chemical research. We must also 

 take note of the development of chemical physiology, of 

 pharmacy, and above all of the whole of the industrial 

 arts of recent origin, for on all these branches of human 

 knowledge his genius has impressed an ineffaceable 

 stamp. Here we can only give a short sketch of his 

 most important discoveries. 



Scheele's first work of which we have any knowledge, 

 " Chemical Experiments with Sal Acetoselte," was given 

 in to the Swedish Academy on the 17th of August, 1768. 



' The inventory sh,ws :— Assets, gold and silver, 61 spec. ; tin, 10 spec ; 

 gbss and porcelain, n spec; other movables, 187 spec; apothecary's 

 shop, 667 spec ; goods in apothecary's shop, 175 spec. ; real property, 500 

 spec. ; open accounts, 100 spec: total r.711 spec, (about 376/A Agairtsl 

 this sum there are indeed debts amounting to 630 spec, but if 1 

 tton be given to the ec .nomical state of Sweden at that tune, S 

 nave been considered by his contemporaries a man in comfortable circum- 

 stances. 



A_ story which probably originated from the manufacture of a large 

 quantity of " Scheele's green." 



It was read to the Academy, but not printed. Two 

 years after we find for the first time Scheele's name in 

 the Transactions of the Academy, in a paper bv Anders 

 Johan Retzius, in which he states that Scheele, a Pharmacie 

 Stiuliosus, of good abilities and eager to learn, had suc- 

 ceeded in producing from tartar, by means of chalk and 

 sulphuric acid, a clear and pure acid. To judge by the 

 title and some remarks of Gahn's, it appears that the 

 first-named work contained a fundamental discovery in 

 organic chemistry, viz. that of oxalic acid. The discovery 

 of tartaric acid formed a further important step forward 

 within the same branch of knowledge, and was besides of 

 epoch-making significance through the new method which 

 Scheele here for the first time employed in producing 

 the acid. The same method is still used in similar 

 operations, and in Scheele's skilful hand formed the means 

 by which he separated and ascertained the properties of 

 a number of other organic acids occurring in animal 

 and vegetable juices, as citric, malic, and lactic acids, all 

 substances before unknown, or of whose true nature the 

 knowledge was very obscure and erroneous. By other 

 experiments and researches, which were always simple and 

 went straight to the mark, Scheele enriched the chemistry 

 of animals and plants with the discoveries of uric acid, 

 gallic acid, and glycerine. It lies beyond the scope of 

 this paper to give an account of the great importance of 

 these discoveries, not only for theoretical chemistry, for 

 medicine, and animal and vegetable physiology, but also 

 in a purely technical point of view. Only as an instance, 

 we give here some notes of the technical history of 

 glycerine. 



While engaged in some pharmaceutical work, Scheele 

 found that by heating oils and animal fats with oxide of 

 lead it is possible to extract from them an uncrystallisable 

 substance with a sweet taste, which, like common sugar, 

 when treated with nitric acid yields oxalic acid. On this 

 account he named the new substance oil-sugar — a name 

 afterwards changed to glycerine. As usual Scheele 

 carefully ascertained the chemical properties of the new 

 substance, yet without carrying out the research by 

 investigating the nature of the ingredient of the fatty 

 matter which combines with the oxide of lead. This 

 was not done till about thirty years afterwards, when 

 Scheele's research was resumed by Chevreul, who, starting 

 from Scheele's observations, after twelve years' hard work, 

 cleared up the true nature of the animal fats and showed 

 that they contain, along with glycerine, various fatty acids 

 which with alkalies form soap, and one of which, under 

 the name of stearins, has since been extensively used as 

 light-yielding material. It is on this research that the 

 modern soap industry and the manufacture of stearine 

 candles, &c, are grounded. Glycerine, too long neglected 

 as a useless by-product, has obtained a manifold prac- 

 tical application, not least in Sweden, where, as is well 

 known, it now forms the raw material of one of our most 

 important explosives, a main constituent of aseptine, 

 &c. 



By these researches in a field of investigation in which 

 Scheele had scarcely any predecessor, he was the true 

 founder of our chemical knowledge regarding the pro- 

 ductions of organic nature, for the further development of 

 which hundreds of professorships have been established, 

 and which has long since become of incalculable import- 

 ance for the intellectual progress and economical advan- 

 tage of the human race. This field of inquiry he further 

 enriched by the examination of a number of ethers, and 

 above all by his " Research on the Colouring Matter of 

 Berlin Blue." A brief historical sketch may perhaps 

 here also be of interest. 



In the beginning of the eighteenth century Diesbach, a 

 German dyer, along with the alchemist Dippel, 1 accidentally 

 discovered the beautiful blue colour which is known under 

 the name of Berlin blue. The discovery, which supplied a 



1 German alchemist and mystic, died r734. 



