Acidum pingue

The translator, Thomas Henry, notes that Lavoisier undertook to decide the controversy between Black s fixed air and Meyer s acidum pingue ibid., xii. Bucquet discussed the rival views of Meyer and MacBride in his Introduction a VHude des corps naturels tires du regne minhal. 

In vino veritas ( there is truth in wine ) implies that, suitably lubricated, a person may be more likely to confess all. However, the German apothecary Johann Friedrich Meyer (1705-1765) might well have said In colds veritas ( there is truth in chalk ) since it is through calcium carbonate (chalk limestone) that he discovered his acidum pingue—said to be the general principle innate in all bodies, the principle in fire, and the component of all acids (see Figure 178). And... 

TABLE def Affinites du Caufticum ou Acidum pingue avec d erentes fitbjiances. 

FIGURE 178. A table from Johann Friedrich Meyer s 1766 Essais de Chymie. He believed in an acidum pingue ( fatty or oily acid) present in strong ( caustic ) alkali (e.g., KOH) and absent in mild alkali (e.g., K2CO3). Addition of acidum pingue actually corresponded to loss of CO2 much as the addition of phlogiston corresponded to the loss of another invisible gas—oxygen. 

Meyer s theory was essentially the reverse of Black s. Meyer s acidum pingue ( fatty or oily acid ) was said to be a component of all acids. When the mild alkalis (which Black understood to be carbonates) were reacted with acids, the effervescence indicated absorption of the acidum pingue found in all acids. Caustic alkalis were, as noted above, saturated with acidum pingue and thus did not effervesce when reacted with acids. The slippery feeling of caustic alkalies arose from the oily acid saturating them. Figure 178 depicts a table of affinities with acidum pingue. 

Baume never gave up the old views, regarding phlogiston as a compound of vitrefiable earth and fire in very varying proportions il y a necessairement beaucoup de variete dans cette combinaison du feu pur avec la terre. He defended Meyer s theory of acidum pingue but rejected this name, calling it feu pur . He found that mercury is converted by a solution of liver of sulphur or volatile liver of sulphur (ammonium polysulphide) into black sulphide which, slowly in the first case but in three days in the second, was converted... 

A curiosity in the literature is the section Remarques sur I Acidum Pingue in a book of Phylantropos, Citoyen du Monde , which contains a recipe for the ambrosia served at the table of the gods translated from an Anglo-Saxon manuscript in the... 

Wilhelm Heinrich Sebastian Bucholz (Bernburg, 23 September 1734-Weimar, 16 December 1798), the teacher of Trommsdorff, physician and apothecary in Weimar, Hofmedicus and Bergrath, published on Meyer s acidum pingue, the antiseptic properties of fixed air, the blue colour of some animal bones, hydrofluoric acid (Flussspathsaure), and formic ester.He announced in 1788 that he did not accept Lavoisier s theory and that he agreed with Kirwan that inflammable air is phlogiston. 

Chymische Versuche fiber das Meyer sche Acidum Pingue, Weimar, 1771. 

Meyer s theory of the acidum pingue found a warm supporter in Wiegleb... 

Wiegleb relied on the supposed fact that chalk cannot be converted into lime by the heat of a burning glass. Johan Jacob Well and W. H. S. Bucholz showed that caustic lime can be so produced. Wiegleb then modified his view, and assumed that chalk on burning loses fixed air but also takes up the matter of fire (equivalent to acidum pingue). Well was criticised by C. E. 

Johann Christian Wiegieb (Langensalza 21 December 1732-16 January 1800) was a town-councillor and apothecary. He gave practical instruction in his laboratory. He supported Meyer s theory of acidum pingue (see p. 145). He opposed alchemy (IV). Wiegieb was to the end of liis life a supporter of the phlogiston theory (see p. 636). He was a copious author both in journals and books. 

Hahnemann stated that two salts dissolved in water decompose one another by double affinity when one at least of the new salts is less soluble (and hence more coherent) than either of the original compounds, a proposition afterwards developed by Berthollet (see p. 645). Among his homoeopathic remedies was a causticum (Meyer s acidum pingue, see p. 145) prepared by distilling freshly-slaked lime with water and acid potassium sulphate (1830). Hahnemann s book on fuels deals with the proper use of cod, coke, briquettes, etc. He appears to have remained true to the phlogiston theory. 

Christian Friedrich Daniel (1753-98), a physician in Halle, in an anonymous work which is essentially a reply to Erxleben s criticism of J. F. Meyer s theory of acidum pingue, and a defence of Black s theory, gave a confused account of phlogiston which implied that it makes bodies lighter. 

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