The ATOMIC HYPOTHESIS of WILLIAM HIGGINS' EDWARD R. ATKINSON University of New Hampshire, Durham. N e w Hampshire
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N CONCLUDING his formal claim to having been
"Experiments and Observations on the Atomic Theory and Electrical Phenomena."2,s The author is indebted to previous writers on this subject6.' for stimulating ideas; and to Professor Tenney L. Davis of the Massachusetts Institute of Technolo~ifor his help in obtaining certain source material.
the first to apply the concept of atoms to chemical science, some fifteen years before John Dalton, William Higgins said, "The generous age of chemical science is no more. In my early days, it was my fortune to live a t the same time, and to associate with, many of the venerable fathers of our present system. In that auspicious period, the ultimate and ardently expected object of research was truth: not the advancement of an individual's reputation. Philosophers were then eager to attribute the merit of discovery to its rightful owner, not to appropriate it to themselves or others. But now, in the vale of life, I am myself obliged to rescue the labours of my youth from the claims of those, who have adopted them without ceremony, and who have even attempted to force them from me by means of their combined exertions. However, justice will force its way sooner or later against all obstacles and prejudices. The subject is not, now, confined to the decision of a few individuals, hut is laid before a grand tribunal, and it rests with them to give a v e r d i ~ t . " ~ The verdict rendered by the chemists of the last century is not a just one because they have been content to accept the Dalton myth which, as will be shown later, originated with a particularly biased contemporary of Higgins and Dalton. It is the purpose of the present study to show, by citation of original source material, that William Higgins was indeed the first to introduce the atomic hypothesis to chemistry, and that this introduction did not consist merely of "brilliant conceptions, hastily struck off (rather) than the fruits of sober and sustained induction," as Henry has ~ l a i m e d . ~ During this study the author has been fortunate to have for his use copies both of the rare first edition of Higgins' "A Comparative View of the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Theories, with induction^"^ in which the atomic hypothesis is introduced, and of Higgins'
' Presented before the
Division of the History of Chemistry at the ninety-eighth meeting of the A. C. S., Boston, Mass., September 12, 1939. l H ~ ~ "Experiments ~ ~ ~ s , and observations on the atomic theorv and electrical ~henomena." Lonaman. . . Hurst. Rees, 0rm6 and Brown. ~ o n d & . 1814,180 pp. HENRY,"Memoirs of the life and scientific researches of John Dalton," The Cavendish Society, London, 1854. "A comparative view of the phlogistic and antiHHIGGINS, phlagistic theories, with inductions," 1st ed., J. Murray, London, 1789, xiv 316 pp. A second edition appeared in 1791. J
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WILLIAM HIGGWS
William Higgins was born in 1766, in County Sligo, Ireland. He was a nephew of the phlogistian, Dr. 5 These books were kindly loaned by the Chemistry Department, Trinity College, Hartford, Conn. REILLY AND MACSWEENEY, Sci. Proc. Roy. Dublin SOC.,19, 139 (1929). WHITE,Science Progress. 24, 300 (1929).
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which we are acquainted teach that the universe is controlled by or consists of Two Contraries (two contrary principles, forces, deities, or kinds of raw material for the production of substance) by the interaction of which all things in the world are produced. In Mesopotamia these were Baal or Bel, the Father God, the Sun, hot, active, light, the positive principle, and Astarte, Astaroth, or Ishtar (for whom the festival of Easter
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Sulfur
Phlogiston
v Water
Seal of Solomon
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Earth FIGURE2 Considerable good sense went into the designing of the symbols of the Four Elements. Fire goes up, air goes up but is more substantial than fire, water goes down, and earth goes down and is more substantial than water. A comparison of the symbols of fire, sulfur, and phlogiston demonstrates the continuity of a single idea. Some early writers on chemistry treated the Seal of Solomon as a symbol of the unity of matter because it is made up out of the symbols of the Four Elements. Others regarded it as the symbol of Superlative Wisdom. The Three Contraries,* correspondingsto Wisdom, were represented by a single triangle within a circle, the three sides of the triangle representing, respectively. Knowledge, Will, and Power, and the circle representing the mediating Fourth, Intelligent Restraint.
was originally celebrated), the Mother Goddess, the Moon, cold.. ~assive. heaw, * .. the material and nepative ~~~~tthe same were osiris, the sun, principle, Isis, the Moon. The Emerald Table of Hermes Trismegistos' is a sincere and sober exposition of the primitive doctrine, a t once cosmogony and metaphysics. "That which is below is as that which is above, and that which is above is as that which is below, for accomplishing the miracles of a single thing. And as all things were from one,. by the meditation of one, so all things were born from this one thing, by adaptation. The father of it is the Sun, * Concerning the Three Contraries see I d Eng. Chem., 20, 772 (1928). See J. CHEM. EDUC.,3, 863-75 (1926).
the lMother of it the Moon. . . . So the world was created. Hence there will be marvelous adaptations of which this is the mode. And so I am called Hermes Trismegistos, having three parts of the philosophy of the whole world. I t is complete what I have said concerning the operation of the Sun." This is no document of chemistry or alchemy. The chemists took it over, read chemistry into it, and adopted Hermes as their patron saint. The Sun and Moon of the Emerald Table are not identical with the Sol and L u m , gold and silver, of the medizval Latins. They are, however, the same as the two principles, Sulfur and Mercury, of Zosimos, Geber, and the later alchemists and chemists. The identity appears to be fully established by a passage in the Tractatus de metallis et AlchimiaLMWetouch first on these points in a special discussion of the metals, what are the father and mother of the metals? as the alchemists and Hermes Trismegistos say when they speak metaphorically. For sulfur is in effect the father and quicksilver in effect the mother." Just as the Sun and Moon of the Emerald Table produce all things, so the Sulfur and Mercury principles give rise to minerals and metals. The chemical doctrine is set forth clearly in the Speculum Alchemiae (Mirror of Alchemy) of Roger B a ~ o n . "It ~ ought to be noted that the mineral principles in mines are Quicksilver and Sulfur. The complex metals and all other mineral substances, of which the varieties are many and diverse, are procreated. from these. I say that Nature always sets before herself as an object the perfection of gold and strives for it. But various supervening accidents transfo:m the metals, as is set forth p1ainly.i~ many books of the philosophers. For pure and impure metals are generated according to the purity or impurity of the prime two, that is, of the Quicksilver and of the Sulfur." Albertus Magnus, in the treatise de AZ~hemia,~ states that "fetid earth" and "corrupt sulfur" are the causes which prevent the formation of the perfect metal, gold, whenever the two principles enter into combination. I t is to be noted that metals differ among themselves only in their accidental form, not in their essential, and that a spoliation of the accidents in metals is therefore possible. Hence it is possible by art to constitute a new substance, because all classes of metals are generated i n t h e earth from Sulfur and Quicksilver combined, or are generated because of fetid earth. . . . Just so it is among the metals which are corrupted either from corrupt sulfur or from fetid earth. Hence this is the difference of all the metals which differ among themselves. When clean red Sulfur encounters Quicksilver in the earth, thence gold is generated in a short or in a long time by the assiduity or decoction of nature
u. d. ~ e c h n i k . 12. 33 (1929). I n the &anuscript the pas&
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armztum vivum ouasi motrr." But i i seems reasonable to recoani& cimeginus a
