Aerial niter

Debus, Allen George. The [concept of the] aerial niter in the 16th and 17th... 

Allen G. Debus, The Paracelsian Aerial Niter, Isis 55,1964,43-61 Robert G. Frank Jr., Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists (University of California Press, 1980), 117-128 A. Rupert Hall, Isaac Newton and the Aerial Nitre, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 52, 1998, 51-61. 

Debus, Allen G. The Paracelsian Aerial Niter. Isis 55, 1964, 43-61. 

Bohn, De Ignis, paragraphs 19-21. On Mayow s aerial-niter, see Henry Guerlac, John Mayow and the Aerial Nitres Studies in the Chemistry of John Mayow -1, 332-49 in A clcs du Septieme Congres International d Histoire des Sciences (Jerusalem, 1953) Robert G. Frank, Jr., Haney and the Oxford Physiologists A Study of Scientific Ideas and Social Interaction (Berkeley, CA University of California Press, 1980), 224-74. 

Cf. H. Guerlac, John Mayow and the Aerial Niter , Actes du Vile Congres International d Histoire des Sciences (Paris, 1954), pp. 332-49 and R.G. Frank Jr., Harvey and the Oxford Physiologists (n. 3), pp. 115-39 221-45. 

In fact, the next phase was the most lethal of all and had always marked the end of our alchemical adventure. Whereas the distillation is a delicate stage of the process, the next requires the addition of volatile saltpeter to the mixture, and this causes an explosion that results at worst in the sudden death of the alchemist and at best an end to all his hopes. Mayow says the combination of fixed salt with nitro-aerial particles causes niter to fly off like smoke. And Sir Thomas Browne says the explosion of gunpowder is due to the generation of a large bulk of air by the antipathetic reaction of saltpeter to sulfur. 

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