SCHEELE  AND  HIS  DISCOVERIES. 
57 
reason  the  intermediate  steps  of  his  reasoning  are  seldom  given 
in  his  writings.  Nothing  could  be  more  bare  and  unpromising 
than  his  apparatus :  a  common  furnace,  a  still,  a  sand-bath,  a 
crucible,  sundry  phials,  drinking-glasses,  and  bladders  to  re- 
ceive his  gases,  constituted  the  whole  wealth  of  his  laboratory. 
With  these  simple  elements  he  recognized  acids,  gases,  metals, 
and  elementary  bodies,  and  worked  at  transcendental  Chemistry 
in  a  back  shop,  with  a  few  bottles  and  a  retort. 
Scheele,  to  his  own  great  personal  hindrance,  had  never  re- 
ceived a  single  lesson  or  followed  an  academical  course,  and  be- 
ing also  little  familiar  with  any  other  language  than  his  own — 
the  German — he  often  was  laboriously  engaged  in  preliminary 
details  which  a  knowledge  of  contemporary  literature  would  have 
spared  him,  and  he  not  unfrequently  repeated  experiments  that 
had  already  been  successfully  attempted.  He  was  thus  forced 
to  be  profoundly  original. 
M.  Dumas,  no  mean  authority,  declares  : — "  Whenever  it  is  a 
question  of  facts,  Scheele  is  infallible.  Scheele  rose  to  the  high- 
est rank  he  could  attain  by  work,  experience,  and  thought,  with- 
out the  aid  of  any  scientific  education.  Whether  he  could  have 
risen  higher,  I  know  not ;  still,  when  it  is  commonly  said  that 
in  order  to  work  for  the  advance  of  Science,  it  is  necessary  to 
live  in  the  grand  University  centres  and  not  in  the  atmosphere 
of  provincial  life,  we  cannot  help  turning  our  thoughts  on  Scheele 
and  Keeping."  Still,  it  must  be  allowed,  that  Pharmacy  came 
somewhat  to  his  aid.  Had  he  not  been  a  pharmaceutist  his 
mind  would  not  naturally  have  been  led  to  the  consideration  of 
many  subjects  that  came  prominently  under  his  notice.  Thus, 
Cream  of  Tartar  suggested  his  first  essay  on  Tartaric  Acid,  and 
no  sooner  had  he  devised  a  method  by  which  he  could  isolate  this 
principle,  than  he  applied  it  to  the  investigation  of  a  great  num- 
ber of  other  acids  and  principles  analogous.  Once  on  the  right 
track  of  analysis,  he  studied  Benzoin,  Gall-nut,  Rhubarb,  Orris, 
Asclepias,  Turmeric,  Ether,  Milk,  the  fatty  bodies,  Salt  of  Sor- 
rel, the  Salts  of  Mercury,  and  many  objects  of  Materia  Medica, 
Indeed,  he  was  led  to  his  various  discoveries  by  the  exigencies 
of  his  daily  life ;  his  Pharmacy  was  the  guide  to  his  abstract 
Science. 
The  personal  history  of  this  great  experimenter  is  almost 
