Libavius

Nomenclature is the compilation of descriptions of things and technical terms in a special field of knowledge, the vocabulary ofa technical language. In the history of chemistry, a systematic nomenclature became significant only rather late. In the early times of alchemy, the properties of the substance or its appearance played a major role in giving a compound a name. Libavius was the first person who tried to fix some kind of nomenclature in Alckeinia in 1,597. In essence, he gave names to chemical equipment and processes (methods, names that are often still valid in our times. 

Theophrastos (272—287 Bc) studied the utilisation of acetic acid to make white lead and verdigris [52503-64-7]. Acetic acid was also weU-known to alchemists of the Renaissance. Andreas Libavius (ad 1540—1600) distinguished the properties of vinegar from those of icelike (glacial) acetic acid obtained by dry distillation of copper acetate or similar heavy metal acetates. Numerous attempts to prepare glacial acetic acid by distillation of vinegar proved to be in vain, however. 

Salzgeist, m. (Old Chem.) spirit of salt (hydrochloric acid). — leichter—, light spirit of salt (ethyl chloride). — schwerer —, ver-slisster —, heavy spirit of salt, sweet spirit of salt. — Libavius rauchender —, fuming liquor of Libavius (stannic chloride). Salz-gemisch, n. salt mixture, mixture of salts, -geschmack, m. salty taste,, -gestein, n. rock salt saliferous rock. 

Hannaway, Owen. The chemists and the word the didactic origins of chemistry. Baltimore, London Johns Hopkins Univ P, 1975. xiii, 165 p. ISBN 0-8018-1666-1 Study of Paracelsian chemical philosophy through study of Croll and attacks by Libavius... 

Gillispie, C.C., ed. Dictionary of scientific biography. New York , 1973. S.v. "Libavius (or Libau), Andreas," by Wlodzimierz Hubicki. 

Andreas Libavius versus the Neoparacelsians." In Paracelsus the man and his reputation, ed. Ole Peter Grell, 135-150. Leiden Brill, 1998. 

Newman, William Royall. "Alchemical symbolism and concealment the chemical house of Libavius." In The architecture of science, eds. Peter Galison and Emily Thompson, 59-77. Cambridge (MA) MIT Press, 1999. 

Kent, Andrew and Owen Hannaway. Some new considerations of Beguin and Libavius. Ann Sci 16 (1960) 241-250. 

Chemical mineralogy has a long history in western science, stretching as far back as the observation by Libavius in 1597 that certain salts crystallized during alchemical processes could be identified by their crystal habit (Evans, 1966). Habit is a crystallographic term which refers to the characteristic shape... 

In the late sixteenth century, Andreas Libavius warned a former student not to associate with chemists who were not philosophers. Libavius was the author... 

This distinction between "theoretical" and "practical" chemistry was one observed in textbooks throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A tradition of "philosophical chemistry" answered Libavius s challenge for chemistry to abandon alchemical magic and Paracelsian iatrochemistry in favor of newly philosophic principles in chemistry. Jacob Bamer s seventeenth-century work, Chymiaphilosophica, is an early example later, more famous texts in chemical philosophy are those of John Dalton (1808), Davy (1812), and Dumas (1837). 14 But texts called chemical philosophy were fewer than those in "natural philosophy," and very few texts in chemical philosophy were written after 1840.15 Why was this the case ... 

Joseph Mayer to, 254 disinterest in organic chemistry, 256 Lewis, William McCullagh, 123-125 Libavius, Andreas, 59-60 Libes, Antoine, 39... 

Andreas Libavius was bom at Halle in Germany in 1540, where he studied medicine and practised for a short time as a physician. He accepted the fundamental iatro-chemical doctrines, at the same time, however, criticising certain of the more extravagant views expressed by Paracelsus. He was a firm believer in the transmutation of the metals, but his own activities were chiefly directed to the preparation of new and better medicines. He enriched the science of Chemistry by many valuable discoveries, and tin tetrachloride, which he was the first to prepare, is still known by the name of spiritus fumans Libavii. Libavius was a man possessed of keen powers of observation and his work on Chemistry, which contains a fidl account of the knowledge of the science of his time, may be... 

Sometime around 1300 bce, an unknown alchemist described sulfuric acid. Not much is known about the early use of sulfur or sulfuric acid. In 1579 an alchemist named Andreas Libavius described the progress of alchemy. In his book he described how hydrochloric and sulfuric acids are produced and mentioned the formation of aqua regia, which is a mixture of acids that is strong enough to dissolve gold—the royal metal. 

Libavius, Andreas. Alchymia triumphans de injusta. Erankfort, 1607. 

Robert P. Multhauf, Libavius and Beguin, in Great Chemists, ed. Eduard Farber (New York Interscience Publishers, 1961). See also Multhauf, Origins for a good broad account of this period. 

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