FEBRUARY, 1938 CHEMISTRY AND THE POEMS OF ERASMUS DARWIN GEORGE W. ECKERT University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri
ERASMUS DARWIN (1731-1802), naturalist, poet, and one of the greatest English physicians of his day contributed much to the interest in chemistry a t a time when it was undergoing drastic changes. He formed the Lunar Society, which influenced the progress of chemistry both directly and indirectly, and included such members as James Watt, Matthew Boulton, William Murdock, James Kier, and Joseph Priestley. His poems of book length, The Temple of Nature and The Botanic Garden, contained many lines of chemistry and were accompanied by abundant notes explaining chemical principles. Several selections show his style of describing chemical action and theory in poetic form.
in foreign editions. In this way, the popularization of chemistry, as well as other sciences, was effected to some extent by Erasmus Darwin during the period about the beginning of the nineteenth century.
"Nymphs! you disjoin, unite, condense, expand, And give new wonders to the Chemist's hand; On tepid clouds of rising steam aspire. Or fix in sulphur all its solid fire; With boundless spring elastic airs unfold, Or fill the fine vacuities of gold; Or mark with shining letters KUNKEL'S name I n the pale Phosphor's self-consuming flame." "Or mark how Oxygen, with Azate-Gas, Plays round the globe in one aerial mass; Or fused with Hydrogen, in ceaseless flow, Forms the wide waves which foam and roll below."
"You taught mysterious Bacon to explore Metallic veins, and part the dross from ore; With sylvan coal in whirling mills combine The aystal'd nitre, and the sulphurous mine; Through wiry nets the black diffusion strain, And close an airy ocean in a grain."
Darwin's works, which were written both to amuse and instruct, were very widely read and were also printed
ERASllllS DARWIN
