HENRY CARRINGTON BOLTON Historian and Bibliographer
of
Chemistry1
C. A. BROWNE Bureau of Agricultural Chemistry and Engineering, United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.
T
HE present paper is a short tribute to a distinguished American chemist of two generations ago, who as a scholar, historian, and bibliographer of chemistry will always hold a high seat of honor among the scientists of the world. He is Henry Carrington Bolton, who is also to be remembered as one of the organizers and founders of the American Chemical Society (1). He was born on January 28, 1843, in the downtown section of New York City a t 58 Greenwich Street near the Battery. His father and maternal grandfather were physicians, and the traits for science and scholarship which Bolton exhibited throughout his life were no doubt inherited from both paternal and maternal lines. His first instruction in chemistry was obtained under Professor C. A. Joy a t Columbia University, from which he graduated in 1862 a t the early age of nineteen. Immediately after graduation he went with his parents to Europe, where he continued his chemical studies in Paris, first under Dumas a t the Sorbonne and then in the laboratory of the &ole de M6decine under Wurtz. In 1863 he ~roceededto Heidelbere in Germany where he worked in the University laboratory under Bunsen and heard the lectures of Kirchhoff and Kopp. It was probably under Kopp, the distinguished German historian of chemistry, that Bolton's interest in this subject was first awakened. He then spent a summer semester a t Gottingen with Wohler, under whom a research was begtin on uranium. This investigation, on Wohler's advice, wasthen continued for several semesters in the private laboratory of Hoffmann a t Berlin. Bolton then returned to Gottingen where in 1866 he took his Ph.D. degree with a thesis, "On the Fluorine Compounds of Uranium." This inaugural dissertation was published a t Berlin in English. I t was through his work on uranium that Bolton prepared an index of the literature of this element, which was published in 1870 in the Annals of the New York Lyceum of Natural History. This was Bolton's first entrance into the field of bibliography in which he was later to win such great distinction. In the vacation periods of his five years of foreign study, ~ ~spentlmuch ttirne in ~ travel ~ and thus laid the foundations of this deep knowledge of the history, folklore, languages, and culture of the &fierent European countries, ~ f t ~his , . return to ~~~~i~~ he con. ducted a private research laboratory in New york for
several years, and then in 1872 accepted a position as assistant in analytical chemistry a t the Columbia College School of Mines. Bolton's first contributions
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L. C. Nlurrll
HENRY CARRINGTON BOLTON
to the history of chemistry date from this period. His paper, "Historical Notes on the Defunct Elements," is theopening article of Vol. I (July,-1870) of Chandler's American Chemist. Among other contributions in this journal is his "Views of the Founders of the Atomic Philosophy" in the issue for March, 1873. His series of "Notes on the Early Literature of Chemistry," published in various issues of the American Chemist between 1873 and 1879, consisted of seven papers and are highly important. The first of these, published in November, 1873, shows that Bolton had already laid the foundations of his future work in the fields of chemical history and bibliography. He remarks in his introduction to the series: "These observations appear to deserve publicity and may, to some extent, prove contributions to the History of Chemistry. References will be fully given and the bibliography of chemistry receive attention."
Bolton's bibliographic plans were outlined more specifically i n the third article of this series in the American Chemist for January, 1874, which contains specimen descriptions of 56 different works, with an' Presented before the Division of the History of Chemistry at notations that are identical with those in his large theninety-ninthmeetingof the A. C. s., cincimati, obio, 1940. bibliography published in 1893. This gigantic work is 457
thus seen to he the result of a t least 20 years of careful preparation. Bolton's early historical studies took a more practical turn in April, 1874, when he puhlished a note in the American Chemist (Vol. IV, p. 362), suggesting that American chemists celebrate the centennial of
ley's scientific letters but a 22-page contribution on "The Likenesses of Priestley in Oil, Ink, Marble and Metal," in which 93 different portraits, medallions, caricatures, busts, statues, etc., of Priestley are described. The volume includes also an interesting account of "The Lunar Society of Birmingham" and an
LABOMTORY WHEEE H. C. BOLTONTAUGHT ~ A N T I T A T I v E A N A L Y S ~ SAT SCHOOLOF M I N E S , NEWYORXCITY, I N 1873
Priestley's discovery of oxygen on the following August 1. The proposal received a most#avorahle response and resulted in a meeting of 77 chemists a t the home of Priestley in Northumherland, Pa. A prominent feature of this meeting was Benjamin Silliman, Jr.'s address on "American Contributions to Chemistry," which marked the beginning of all future work on the history of chemistry in America. An important outgrowth of this Northumherland meeting of chemists was the founding of the American Chemical Society in New York on April 6, 1876, Bolton being among the organizers and charter members. The Northumherland Centennial brought Bolton into close relationships with many of Priestley's descendants, who showed him their collections of ancestral relics. It is from this time that we can date the beginning of Bolton's interest in Priestley. He delved into the study of his life from every angle, .the results of his investigations being privately puhlished in 1892 as a valuable work of 240 pages under the title, "The Scientific Correspondence of Joseph Priestley." This book contains not only a reproduction of 97 of Priest-
THE
C O L U M ~ ICOLLEGE A
inventory of Priestley's apparatus that was destroyed in the Birmingham riots of 1791. During the five years of his instructorship a t the Columbia School of Mines, Bolton puhlished numerous articles in the American Chemist on schemes of qualitative analysis, chemical apparatus and other related suhjects, besides making translations and abstracts of foreign literature. He also puhlished several pieces of original research on the ores and compounds of uranium and a collaborative investigation with President Henry Morton of Stevens Institute of Technology on "Fluorescent and Absorption Spectra of Uranium Salts." In 1875 Bolton resigned his appointment a t Columbia to become professor of chemistry a t the Woman's Medical College of the New York Infirmary, a position which he vacated in 1877 in order to accept the professorship of chemistry a t Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., where he taught for the next ten years. During this period he puhlished his "Students' Guide in Quantitative Analysis" (New York City, 1882), which was extensively used fifty years ago and passed through three editions.
Having ample private means, Bolton withdrew from teaching in 1887 in order to devote the remainder of his life to his favorite pursuit, the history and bibliography of chemistry-subjects in which he had already won distinction as the leading American authority. In his address on "Chemical Literature" a t the Montreal meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1882; Bolton suggested the formation of a committee on indexing chemical pnblications. As chairman of this committee he prepared ten annual reports to the association, and a t the same time finished the compilation of several large volumes of useful scientific works of reference. The first of these was his "Catalogue of Scientific and Technical Periodicals, 1665-1882," published as Vol. XXIX of the Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections in 1885. A second edition of this work with chronological tables and library check list, a book of 1247 pages, was published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1897. The second edition of the catalog covers the period 1665-1892, and includes 8603 entries of periodicals in various languages under 102 different subjects. The library check list attached to this catalog ,was the outcome of an attempt to determine in what American libraries the periodicals listed in the volume could be found. Bolton's famous "Select Bibliography of Chemistry, 1492-1892" was published by the Smithsonian. Institution in 1893. This work, which might be considered as a contribution of American science to the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America, is a volume of 1212 pages, and for convenience of reference is divided into seven sections of publications on (1) bibliography; (2) dictionaries; (3) history; (4) biography; (5) chemistry, pure and applied; (6) alchemy; and (7) periodicals. Some idea of the stupendous labor involved in this work can be formed from the fact that in its preparation Bolton made visits to many large libraries of Europe and that a large staff of linguistic experts were engaged to assist in the work of compilation. A total fiumber of 12,031 works in 25 diierent languages were listed; the proofreading alone occupied a period of twelve months. A first supplement of this Bibliography, with the listing of 5554 additional works, published in 1899, brought the literature down to the close of the year 1897, and a second supplement, published in 1904, continued the compilation to the close of 1902. Included in this Bibliography of Chemistry is another supplementary volume of 534 pages of "Titles of Academic Dissertations" which was published by the Smithsonian in 1901. The "Catalogue of Scientificand Technical Periodicals" and the four volumes of Bibliographies will always stand as an enduring monument of Dr. Bolton's scholarship and industry. As Dr. F. W. Clarke remarked in his obituary of Bolton, "Had he done nothing else, he would still be entitled to the gratitude of chemists for all time." But this does not represent the sum total of Dr. Bolton's contributions to the literature of chemistry and science. A list of all his minor contributions to differ-
ent phases of the history of chemistry and science would exceed the limits of the present contribution. In the Library of Congress are 81 card references to his various publications. Here also are four large scrapbooks of what Bolton terms "Pamphlets and Fugitive Pieces," carefully arranged chronologically in his neat, methodical manner. These consist of reprints and clippings of a multitude of articles which he dashed off from time to time in the intervals of his other work. His pen seems never to have been idle. We have already mentioned several of Bolton's early historical chemical contributions that appeared in 'Chandler's American Chemist. Of other miscellaneous contributions of this character may be mentioned his articles on the "Ebers Papyrus" in the L a d o n Quarterly Journal of Science for 1876; on "Ancient Methods of Filtration" in the Popular Science Monthly for 1879; on the "History of Chemical Notation" (two papers) in the Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1883; on "The Contributions of Alchemy to Numismatics" in the American Journal of Numismatics for 1890; on "The Progress of Chemistry as Depicted in Apparatus and Laboratories" in the Transactions of the New York Academy for 1893; on "Early American Chemical Societies," read before the Washington Chemical Society and published in the Journal uf the American Chemical Society for August, 1897; on "The Revival of Alchemy" read before the New York Section of the American Chemical Society and published in Science for December 10, 1897; on "The Evolution of the Thermometer, 1592-1743," a small illustrated book of 98 pages published a t Easton, Pa., in 1900; and on "Chemical Societies of the Nineteenth Century" in the Miscellaneous 'Publications of the Smithsonian Institution for 1902. The mention of his numerous short notes and fugitive pieces, dealing with Chinese alchemy, sulfur matches, and other subjects, must be passed over. ,, In addition to these works dealing with the history of chemistry, Bolton was the author of a large number of miscellaneous literary and scientific papers on such subjects as "Magic Squares," "Legends of Sepulchral and Perpetual Lamps," "Historical Notes on the Gold Cure," and "Counting-out Rhymes for Children; their Antiquity, Origin and DistFibution." The work on "Counting-out Rhymes," published in 1888, was a study in folklore that won for the author a medal a t the Columbian Historical Exposition of Madrid in 1892. Other contributions in this field, published in the Journal of American Folk-Lore, were his papers on "Some Hawaiian Pastimes" (1891) ; "A Modern Oracle and Its Prototypes'' (1893), which was a study in catoptromancy, or divination with mirrors; and "Fortune Telling in America Today" (1895). For his work in folklore, Bolton in 1893 was elected the first president of the New York City branch of the American Folk-Lore Society. Also related to folklorewas Bolton's paper on the "Language Used in Talking to Domestic Animals," published in the American Anthropologist for 1897.
A unique scientificsubject to which Bolton gave much attention was musical sand, by which is meant the property that the sand of certain beaches and dunes has of emitting a musical note when trodden under foot or otherwise rubbed. In search of sands having this property, he made journeys aggregating 33,000 miles. His contributions (2) on this subject, in conjunction with Dr. A. A. Julien, attracted wide attention. Genealogy was another field in which Bolton delved rather deeply. In 1887 he published a paper on "The Life and Writings of Elisha North, M.D.," who was his maternal grandfather, and in 1895, in association with his cousin, Regina1 Pelham Bolton, he published "The Family of Bolton in England and America, 1100-1894."
In the month previous to his death, Bolton published the nineteenth and final chapter of his "Follies of Science in the Court of Rudolph 11," the successive installments of which had appeared in the monthly issues of the Pharma~euti~al Raieu, extending from April, 1902 to October, 1903. Thesachapters were assembled and published in book form in 1904 by the Pharmaceutical Review Publishing Company of Milwaukee. It is a work of 217 pages, beautifully illustrated with pictures of historic sites and personages, with reproductions of alchemistic paintings and curious emblems, and with attractive initials and tailpieces. In many respects it is the most fascinating book of Bolton's and exemplifies to the fullest degree his encyclopedic knowledge of curious lore and his great charm of presentation. We wonder a t Bolton's power of simultaneously carrying on so many different literary undertakings. The second supplement of his "Bibliography" and his "Follies of Science" appeared in book form almost a t the same time, just after his death a t the early age of 60 years. He was denied the privilege of holding in his hands these last productions of his tireless enerm. W : cannot speak further about Bolton's literary productions, on which much more might be said, but must say a few words in conclusion about his work as a
collector and bibliophile. His collection of rare books on alchemy and chemistry was one of the finest in the United States, and after her husband's death it was given by Mrs. Bolton to the Library of Congress. In his large Bibliography of Chemistry, Bolton marked the books in his private library with an asterisk. These number 606, of which 241 were works on alchemy, 131 on pure and applied chemistry, 129 on the history of chemistry, 87 on biography of chemists; 17 were dictionaries of chemistry, and one was a bibliography. His collection on the history of chemistry extends from the early Latin work of Bomchius on "The Origin and Progress of Chemistry," of the year 1668, down to 1892. Many of the entries are accompanied by valuable explanatory annotations which are indicative of Bolton's great erudition and critical judgment He is particularly severe in his condemnation of the national bias and inaccuracy of many of the French historical writers as Dumas, Bechamp, Cuvier, Gautier, and others. He owned all the historical works of Kopp, whose "History of Chemistry" he characterizes as "a classical work, above praise." In addition to these annotations in the Bibliography, the penned inscriptions of Bolton on the flyleaves of his books, giving facts about his acquisition of particular works and other incidental information, are of great interest. We cannot go into the story of these inscriptions but the accompanying photograph of an annota-
NOTATION BY H. C. BOLTON ON THE FLYLEAE OF VOLUME I OF HIS SET OP GXELIN'S"GESCHICHTE Dsn CAEMIE"
tion on the flyleaf of the first volume of his set of Gmelin's "Geschichte der Chemie" is indicative of their nature and also of Bolton's beautiful handwriting, clear-cut as the impression of a copper plate. Bolton was also a collector of engravings of famous chemists and other scientists. He made a selection of these for making his extra-illustrated set of Poggendorff's "Biographical Dictionaj of Scientists (18631898)," the print of each scientist being inserted opposite the page of his biographical sketch and the various volumes (expanded from three to six) being then rebound. The result was a set of Poggendorff of almost priceless value, of which i t can truly be said there is not a duplicate of it in any part of the world. It now forms a part of the Bolton collection in the Library of Congress. Physically, Dr. Bolton was a man of medium height, of somewhat stocky frame and with light blue eyes. He was quite bald and wore a beard which in early manhood was black but later became tinged with gray. He was a man of amiable disposition and of a deeply religious nature. In October, 1893, Dr. Bplton married Miss Henrietta Irving, a grandniece of Washington Irving, and after a year of travel he and his wife made their home on K Street in Washington, where the large Government libraries afforded unequaled opportunities for bibliographic and historical research. His r e h e d and attractive home became a social center of Washington
scientific circles, and here he labored until his untimely death on November 19, 1903. Bolton was then a t the height of his creative powers and, had his l i e been spared, the literary and historical phases of chemistry would have been still further enriched. Dr. Bolton was a prominent member of many scientific associations, and a t the time of his death was said to belong to more learned societies than any other American. He was an ex-president and patron of the New York Academy of Sciences, a charter member of the American Chemical Society, a vice-president (Section C) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an ex-president of the District of Columbia Library Association, and an ex-president of the Washington Chemical Society, to name only a few of the organizations with which he was connected. In all these societies he made a host of friends, who spoke with admiration of his geniality, culture, and kindly spirit. In the words of his friend, Dr. F. W. Clarke, he was "a man who was universally beloved. Higher praise than this cannot be given to any man." LITERATURE CITED
(1) Sketches of Henry Carrington Bolton are found in the Dictionary of American biography" (2, 4224), in the "Proceedings of the Am. Chem. Soc.," 1904, p. 6, and in the Popuiar Science Monthly, 43, 688-95 (1893). (2) Researches on '.'Musical sand in the Hawaiian Islands" and in California Trans. N. Y . Acad. Sci., Oct. 27, 1890, pp. 28-35.
