Elementa Chemiae

Barchusen, Johann Conrad. Elementa chemiae quibus subjuncta est confectura la-pidis philosophici imaginibus repraesentata. Leiden, the Netherlands Theodo-rum Haak, 1718. 

This strictly pictorial kinship was first recognized by Arturo Schwarz, but he had only illustrated the print as it appeared in its initial publication, in J. C. Barckhausen s Elementa Chemiae (Leyden, 1718), which Francis Naumann curtly dismissed as some obscure eighteenth-century alchemical treatise. In short, neither author recognized that the source for Duchamp s figure of L Enfant Enferme dans I Oeuf was precisely as Barckhausen s motif had been reprinted in 1891 by Albert Poisson, that is, in a modern publication correctly described by Jean Suquet as rep-resenting the Bible for Alchemists around 1900 (Naumann and Suquet, as quoted in Duve, Definitively Unfinished MD, 73-74). 

Boerhaave, A New Method of Chemistry, etc., trans. Peter Shaw, London, 1753, Vol. I, pp. 189-191. The quoted passage corresponds to the Latin of Vol. I, pp. 99-101, of the first edition of Boerhaave s Elementa Chemiae, Leiden, 1732. 

Barchusen was one of the last chemists to exhibit an interest in alchemy, and worked from a laboratory set up in the city walls of Utrecht. His book Elementa Chemiae is full of alchemical illustrations. 

Hermannus Boerhaave (1668-1738) De menstruis dictis in chemia, in Elementa Chemiae (1733) [1, 2]. 

A pirate version of his chemical lectures titled Institutiones et Experimenta Chemiae was published in 1724, possibly in Leyden, although the title page bears Paris as the place of publication. This prompted Boerhaave to publish an authenticated Latin version Elementa Chemiae (Leyden, 1732) English translation Elements of Chemistry (London printed for J. and J. Pemberton, 1735). A French translation appeared only in segments until the full translation of his theory in 1748 see Tenney L. Davis, The Vicissitudes of Boerhaave s Textbook of Chemistry, Isis 10, 1928, 33-46 F. W. Gibbs, Boerhaave s Chemical Writings, Ambix 6, 1958, 117-135. 

Boerhaave, Herman. Institutiones et experimenta chemiae, 2 vols. (Paris, 1724). Boerhaave, Herman. Elementa chemiae, 2 vols. (Leyden, 1732). 

The difference between the early and the late Boerhaave is best visible when comparing the Institutiones medicinae of 1708 and the Elementa chemiae of 1732. The former presents a mechanistic medicine partly based on Cartesian ideas of matter and motion and the mechanics of Newton s Principia. Boerhaa-... 

Boerhaave. (1741). M Neiv Method-, i, 173. The original Latin reads Ilia compositum sua in simplicia resolvit, mox seorsum perspecta haec certo artificio adunat ea spe, ut videat, quaenam oritura sit inde rerum nova facies, quae potestas Boerhaave. (1732). Elementa chemiae-. i, 79. 

IX, 9 (Q259). Experimenta chemica (1720-1732). According to Schulte the experiments are partly published in the Elementa Chemiae. 

Despite this seeming rejection of the chemical elements, Boerhaave found that he could not remove all the hypothetical principles that shaped earlier, chymical explanations of phenomena central to chymical practice. The Theory section of the Elementa chemiae was full of entities that he referred to as principles or elements. In fact, Boerhaave presented a list of chemists s elements immediately following his general critique of those same elements. Included on the list were four of the instruments - fire, air, water, and earth - and three others the Alcohol of wine, Mercury (of metals), and the Spiritus Rector of every body. 31 But Boerhaave... 

This distinction is a modern one - we cannot speak about molecules as such when speaking about the eighteenth century - yet it is still a useful definition for clarifying Boerhaave s understanding of chemistry and mechanics. Boerhaave likewise argued that chemistry is concerned with the individual powers of particles of matter, while mechanics or physics is more concerned with general theory. In the Elementa chemiae, Boerhaave maintained that... 

In 1782, Wiegleb also published a new, abridged translation of Herman Boerhaave s Elementa chemiae (1732), which concentrated on the practical part of the book. 

In the end he was forced to write his own version and this is how his famous textbook Elementa Chemiae ( Elements of Chemistry ) came to be published in 1732. He laid great weight on exact methods and experimental work rather than fanciful theories and introduced the use of thermometers and precision balances in chemical work. At the same time, he did not completely reject the claim by the alchemists to have transformed base metals into gold. His own extensive experiments with mercury, however, had not produced any gold even if they yielded mercury preparations of high purity as a spin-off. Boerhaave s wariness of indulging in speculative chemical theories could explain why in his textbook he does not even mention Stahl s celebrated phlogiston theory. 

A246. Engraving from Barchusen Elementa chemiae Leiden, 1718... 

FIGURE 91. Emblems 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 (left to right in each row, starting from the top) from Johann Conrad Barchusen s, Elementa Chemiae (Leiden, 1718). 

H. Boerhaave, Elementa Chemiae, translated by T.L. Davis, Chemistry in War An 18th-Century Viewpoint , Army Ordnance, 5 (30), (1925), 783. This appears to be Davis translation. 

Boerhaave, Elementa Chemiae, 1732, ii, 173, classed egg-albumin as a ferment. 

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