A Short History of Chemistry (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: darkness. This darkness which came over Europe is to be accounted for by the many political changes which took place in the Western Empire. Revolutions and invasions were frequent, and the capital had to be moved from place to place. There was a general breaking up of the loosely jointed empire, and a foundation of strong priestly orders hostile to all independence of thought. /the Chemical Knowledge Possessed By The Ancients. Although chemistry as a science was unknown to the ancients, they possessed some knowledge of chemical substances, and were by no means ignorant of various manufactures and industries based on chemical processes; and hence they had a sort of practical or technical chemistry. In certain branches of metallurgy, in glass-making, dyeing, and tanning, they attained decided proficiency. Apparatus.?First, as to the apparatus used in the workshops, we derive some information from the Greek papyri. These contain many drawings of alembics and other forms of apparatus, which may of course have been the discovery of later workers if the great age of these papyri is denied. The processes used were those requiring the aid of fire; crucibles, furnaces, etc., therefore abound. Mention has already been made of the treatise of Zosimus, " On Instruments and Fur- naees," in which he claims to describe the various appliances he saw in the temple at Memphis. These different forms of apparatus were made of gold or bronze or clay-ware. The alembic was a crude form of distilling apparatus, and comes from the Alexandrian period. The water-bath, or bain-marie as it is still called by the French, was said to have been invented by Mary the Jewess at a very early period. The blow-pipe and bellows are both figured among these drawings, as well as on very early Egyptian and other ...