The Seven Follies of Science Part 7

ADDITIONAL "FOLLIES"

In addition to the seven "Follies," of which an account has been given in the preceding pages, there are a few which deserve to be cla.s.sed with them, although they do not find a place in the usual lists. These are known as

PERPETUAL LAMPS.

THE ALKAHEST OR UNIVERSAL SOLVENT.

PALINGENESY.

THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY.

PERPETUAL OR EVER-BURNING LAMPS

Part of the sepulchral rites of the ancients consisted in placing lighted lamps in the tombs or vaults in which the dead were laid, and, in many cases, these lamps were carefully tended and kept continually burning. Some authors have claimed, however, that these men of old were able to construct lamps which burned perpetually and required no attention. In number 379 of the "Spectator" there is an anecdote of some one having opened the sepulcher of the famous Rosicrucius. There he discovered a lamp burning which a statue of clock-work struck into pieces. Hence, says the writer, the disciples of this visionary claimed that he had made use of this method to show that he had re-invented the ever-burning lamps of the ancients. And Fortunio Liceti wrote a book in which he collected a large number of stories about lamps, said to have been found burning in tombs or vaults. Ozanam fills eight closely printed pages with a discussion of the subject.

Attempts have been made to explain many of the facts upon which is based the claim that the ancients were able to construct perpetual lamps by the suggestion that the light sometimes seen on the opening of ancient tombs may have been due to the phosph.o.r.escence which is well known to arise during the decomposition of animal and vegetable matter. Decaying wood and dead fish are familiar objects which give out a light that is sufficient to render dimly visible the outlines of surrounding objects, and such a light, seen in the vicinity of an old lamp, might give rise to the impression that the lamp had been actually burning and that it had been blown out by sudden exposure to a draft of air.

Another supposition was that the flame, which was supposed to have been seen, may have been caused by the ignition of gases arising from the decomposition of dead bodies, and set on fire by the flambeaux or candles of the investigators, and it is quite possible that the occurrence of each of these phenomena may have given a certain degree of confirmation to preconceived ideas.

After the discovery of phosphorus in 1669, by Brandt and Kunckel, it was employed in the construction of luminous phials which could be carried in the pocket, and which gave out sufficient light to enable the user to see the hands of a watch on a dark night. Directions for making these luminous phials are very simple, and may be found in most of the books of experiments published prior to the introduction of the modern lucifer match. They were also used for obtaining a light by means of the old matches, which were tipped merely with a little sulphur, and which could not be ignited by friction. Such a match, after being dipped into one of these phosphorus bottles, would readily take fire by slight friction, and some persons preferred this contrivance to the old flint and steel, partly, no doubt, because it was a novelty. But these bottles were not in any sense perpetual, the light being due to the slow oxidation of the phosphorus so that, in a comparatively short time, the luminosity of the materials ceased. Nevertheless, it has been suggested that some form of these old luminous phials may have been the original perpetual lamp.

After the discovery of the phosph.o.r.escent qualities of barium sulphate or Bolognian phosphorus, as it was called, it was thought that this might be a re-discovery of the long-lost art of making perpetual lamps.

But it is well known that this substance loses its phosph.o.r.escent power after being kept in the dark for some time, and that occasional exposure to bright sun-light is one of the conditions absolutely essential to its giving out any light at all. This condition does not exist in a dark tomb.

A few years ago phosph.o.r.escent salts of barium and calcium were employed in the manufacture of what was known as luminous paint. These materials s.h.i.+ne in the dark with brilliancy sufficient to enable the observer to read words and numbers traced with them, but regular exposure to the rays of the sun or some other bright light is absolutely necessary to enable them to maintain their efficiency.

More recently it has been suggested that the ancients may have been acquainted with some form of radioactive matter like radium, and that this was the secret of the lamps in question. It is far more likely, however, that the reports of their perpetual lamps were based upon mere errors of observation.

The perpetual lamp is, in chemistry, the counterpart of perpetual motion in mechanics--both violate the fundamental principle of the conservation of energy. And just as suggestions of impossible movements have been numerous in the case of perpetual motion, so impossible devices and constructions have been suggested in regard to perpetual lamps. Prior to the development, or even the suggestion of the law of the conservation of energy, it was believed that it might be possible to find a liquid which would burn without being consumed, and a wick which would feed the liquid to the flame without being itself destroyed. Dr. Plott suggested naphtha for the fluid and asbestos for the wick, but since kerosene oil, naphtha, gasolene, and other liquids of the kind have become common, every housewife knows that as her lamp burns, the oil, of whatever kind it may be, disappears.

Under present conditions the construction of a perpetual lamp is not a severely felt want; for constancy and brilliancy our present means of illumination are sufficient for almost all our requirements. Whether or not it would be possible to gather up those natural currents of electricity, which are suspected to flow through and over the earth, and utilize them for purposes of illumination, however feeble, it might be difficult to decide. But such means of perpetual electric lighting would be similar to a perpetual motion derived from a mountain stream. Such natural means of illumination already exist, and have existed for ages in the fire-giving wells of naphtha which are found on the sh.o.r.es of the Caspian sea, and in other parts of the east, and which have long been objects of adoration to the fire-wors.h.i.+ppers.

As for the outcome of present researches into the properties of radium, polonium, and similar substances, and their possible applications, it is too early to form even a surmise.

THE ALKAHEST OR UNIVERSAL SOLVENT

The production of a universal solvent or alkahest was one of the special problems of the alchemists in their general search for the philosopher's stone and the means of trans.m.u.ting the so-called inferior metals into gold and silver. Their idea of the way in which it would aid them to attain these ends does not seem to be very clearly stated in any work that I have consulted; probably they thought that a universal solvent would wash away all impurities from common materials and leave in absolute purity the higher substance, which const.i.tuted the gold of the adepts. But whatever their particular object may have been, it is well known that much time and labor were expended in the fruitless search.

The futility of such attempts was very well exposed by the cynical sceptic, who asked them what kind of vessel could they provide for holding such a liquid? If its solvent powers are such that it dissolves everything, it is very evident that it would dissolve the very material of the vessel in which it must be placed.

When hydrofluoric acid became a subject of investigation it was thought that its characteristics approached, more nearly than those of any other substance known, to those of the universal solvent, and the very difficulty above suggested, presented itself strongly to the chemists who experimented with it. Not only common metals but gla.s.s and porcelain were acted upon by this wonderfully energetic liquid and when attempts were made to isolate the fluorine, even the platinum electrodes were corroded and destroyed. Vessels of pure silver and of lead served tolerably well, but Davy suggested that the most scientific method of constructing a containing vessel would be to use a compound in which fluorine was already present to the point of saturation. As there is a limit to the amount of fluorine with which any base can combine, such a vessel would be proof against its solvent action. I am not aware, however, that the suggestion was ever carried into actual practice with success.

PALINGENESY

This singular delusion may have been partly due to errors of observation, the instruments and methods of former times having been notably crude and unreliable. This fact, taken in connection with the wild theories upon which the natural sciences of the middle ages were based, is a sufficient explanation of some of the extraordinary statements made by Kircher, Schott, Digby, and others.

By palingenesy these writers meant a certain chemical process by means of which a plant or an animal might be revived from its ashes. In other words a sort of material resurrection. Most of the accounts given by the old authors go no further than to a.s.sert that by proper methods the ashes of plants, when treated with water, produce small forests of ferns and pines. Thus, an English chemist, named c.o.xe, a.s.serts that having extracted and dissolved the essential salts of fern, and then filtered the liquor, he observed, after leaving it at rest for five or six weeks, a vegetation of small ferns adhering to the bottom of the vessel. The same chemist, having mixed northern potash with an equal quant.i.ty of sal ammoniac, saw, some time after, a small forest of pines and other trees, with which he was not acquainted, rising from the bottom of the vessel.

And Kircher tells us in his "Ars Magnetica" that he had a long-necked phial, hermetically sealed, containing the ashes of a plant which he could revive at pleasure by means of heat; and that he showed this wonderful phenomenon to Christina, Queen of Sweden, who was highly delighted with it. Unfortunately he left this valuable curiosity one cold day in his window and it was entirely destroyed by the frost.

Father Schott also a.s.serts that he saw this chemical wonder which, according to his account, was a rose revived from its ashes. And he adds that a certain prince having requested Kircher to make him one of the same kind, he chose rather to give up his own than to repeat the operation.

Even the celebrated Boyle, though not very favorable to palingenesy, relates that having dissolved in water some verdigris, which, as is well known, is produced by combining copper with the acid of vinegar, and having caused this water to congeal, by means of artificial cold, he observed, at the surface of the ice, small figures which had an exact resemblance to vines.

In this connection it is well to bear in mind that in Boyle's time almost all vinegar was really what its name implies--_sour wine_ (_vin aigre_)--and verdigris or copper acetate was generally prepared by exposing copper plates to the action of refuse grapes which had been allowed to ferment and become sour. Therefore to him it might not have seemed so very improbable that the green crystals which appeared on the surface of the ice were, in reality, minute resuscitated grape-vines.

The explanation of these facts given by Father Kircher is worthy of the science of the times. He tells us that the seminal virtue of each mixture is contained in its salts and these salts, unalterable by their nature, when put in motion by heat, rise in the vessel through the liquor in which they are diffused. Being then at liberty to arrange themselves at pleasure, they place themselves in that order in which they would be placed by the effect of vegetation, or the same as they occupied before the body to which they belonged had been decomposed by the fire; in short, they form a plant, or the phantom of a plant, which has a perfect resemblance to the one destroyed.

That the operators have here mistaken for true vegetable growth the fern-like crystals of the salts which exist in the ashes of all plants is very obvious. Their knowledge of plant structure was exceedingly limited and their microscopes were so imperfect that imagination had free scope. As seen under our modern microscopes, there are few prettier sights than the crystallization of such salts as sal ammoniac, pota.s.sic nitrate, barium chloride, etc. The crystals are actually seen to grow and it would not require a very great stretch of the imagination to convince one that the growth is due to a living organism. Indeed, this view has actually been taken in an article which recently appeared in a prominent magazine. The writer of that article sees no difference between the mere aggregation of inorganic particles brought together by voltaic action and the building up of vital structures under the influence of organic forces. This is simply materialism run mad.

Perhaps the finest ill.u.s.tration of such crystallization is to be found in the deposition of silver from a solution of the nitrate as seen under the microscope. A drop of the solution is placed on a gla.s.s slide and while the observer watches it through a low power, a piece of copper wire or, preferably, a minute quant.i.ty of the amalgam of tin and mercury, such as is used for "silvering" cheap looking gla.s.ses, is brought into contact with it. Chemical decomposition at once sets in and then the silver thus deposited forms one element of a very minute voltaic couple and fresh crystals of silver are deposited upon the silver already thrown down. When the illumination of this object under the microscope is properly managed, the appearance, which resembles that shown in Fig. 18, is exceedingly brilliant, and beautiful beyond description.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 18.]

That imagination played strange pranks in the observations of the older microscopists is shown by some of the engravings found in their books. I have now before me a thick, dumpy quarto in which the so-called seminal animalcules are depicted as little men and women, and I have no doubt that, to the eye of this early observer, they had that appearance. But the microscopists of to-day know better.

Sir Kenelm Digby, whose name is a.s.sociated with the Sympathetic Powder, tells us that he took the ashes of burnt crabs, dissolved them in water and, after subjecting the whole to a tedious process, small crabs were produced in the liquor. These were nourished with blood from the ox, and, after a time, left to themselves in some stream where they throve and grew large.

Now, although Evelyn, in his diary, declares that "Sir Kenelm was an errant mountebank," it is quite possible that he was honest in his account of his experiments and that he was merely led astray by the imperfection of his instruments of observation. It is more than likely that the creatures which Digby saw were entomostraca introduced in the form of ova which, unless a good microscope be used, are quite invisible. These would develop rapidly and might easily be mistaken for some species of crab, though, when examined with proper instruments, all resemblance vanishes. When let loose in a running stream it would evidently be impossible to trace their ident.i.ty and follow their growth.

But while some of these stories may have originated in errors of observation this will hardly explain some of the statements made by those who have advocated this strange doctrine. Father Schott, in his "Physica Curiosa," gives an account of the resurrection of a sparrow and actually gives an engraving in which the bird is shown in a bottle revived!

Although the subject, of itself, is not worthy of a moment's consideration, it deserves attention as an ill.u.s.tration of the extraordinary vagaries into which the human mind is liable to fall.

THE POWDER OF SYMPATHY

This curious occult method of curing wounds is indissolubly a.s.sociated with the name of Sir Kenelm Digby (born 1603, died 1665), though it was undoubtedly in use long before his time. He himself tells us that he learned to make and apply the drug from a Carmelite, who had traveled in the east, and whom he met in Florence, in 1622. The descendants of Digby are still prominent in England, and O. W. Holmes, in his "One Hundred Days in Europe," tells us that he had met a Sir Kenelm Digby, a descendant of the famous Sir Kenelm of the seventeenth century, and that he could hardly refrain from asking him if he had any of his ancestor's famous powder in his pocket.

Digby was a student of chemistry, or at least of the chemistry of those days, and wrote books of Recipes and the making of "Methington [metheglin or mead?] Syder, etc." He was, as we have seen in the previous article, a believer in palingenesy and made experiments with a view to substantiate that strange doctrine. Evelyn calls him an "errant quack," and he may have been given to quackery, but then the loose scientific ideas of those days allowed a wide range in drawing conclusions which, though they seem absurd to us, may have appeared to be quite reasonable to the men of that time.

From his book on the subject,[3] we learn that the wound was never to be brought into contact with the powder. A bandage was to be taken from the wound, immersed in the powder, and kept there until the wound healed.

This beats the absent treatment of Christian Science!