INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
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Vol. 16. No. 4
Some Early Chemical Symbols By Edward H. Smith HIGHSCHOOL, STAMFORD, CONN.
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MONG the more famous of those who practiced the “kingly art” of alchemy was Dr. Michael Maier, physician to Rudolph 11, king of Hungary and Bohemia; and it is largely because of his extensive writings, which have been fairly well preserved, that much is known today of alchemical methods and signs. Dr. Maier says that one of the clearest keys to alchemistic symbols extant is that given in the writings of Heinrich Eschenreuter. These were discovered on the 6th of May, 1403, in the walls of the cloister connected with the church at Schwartzbach by an adept in alchemy who again hid them in the Cloister Marinzell, Thuringia. There they were rediscovered on the 10th of October, 1489. The best modern editions contain a key to the numerous characters found therein; the key is doubtless in the possession of the Imperial Librarian. The symbols in Plates I and I1 were taken from this key.’ In the original manuscript the explanations are in Latin and are written backward. From an examination of these signs, and those in Table VI, we may see that at this time some of the older characters had taken on a wider significance than they had before possessed. The triangle not only stood for fire, but seems also to have been the class symbol for gaseous and more easily combustible materials, the particular substance being indicated by a distinctive mark on t h e triangle. Thus with the 1 Reproduced from Thompson’s “The Mystery and Romance of Alchemy and Pharmacy.”
bar the sign became the symbol for air, with three circles the symbol for essential oil, the cross placed above indicated phosphorus, and sulfur was designated when the cross appeared below. The sign for water, when, modified with distinctiye marks, indicated substances earthy in nature, also those more stable when subjected to heat. The symbol for a fixed alkdli and that for a volatile alkali show how the class idea was further carried out in connection with these signs. The bar, used as we find it in the symbols for earth, air, clay, etc., seemed to indicate permanence in composition of the substance to whose symbol it was attached. Table VI1 shows some of the signs used by Torbern Bergman, professor at Upsala, in Sweden, in the eighteehth century. He used the older signs as far as possible, but reclassified them in the light of new facts concerning chemical affinities that had been discovered. At about the same time Jean Henri Hassenfratz, at one time foreman of Lavoisier’s laboratory, and his associate, Pierre Auguste Adet, a French politician and chemist, published two memoirs, in which was described a rather elaborate system of notation. As shown by Tables I to V, these writers assigned a symbol to every known substance, and constructed symbols for compounds so as to indicate the nature, the number, and relative quantities of their simple components. These symbols, with but slight changes, are those used by Lavoisier.
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PLATE I1
April, 1624
I K D C S T R I A L A N D EATGINEERING CHEMISTRY
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408
INDUSTRIAL A N D ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
