The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7179 p911-936
22-29 December 2001

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Christmas miscellany summary

Allured by chemistry — what Charles II, Casanova and Elgar had in common

Chemistry has played an important part in human affairs from earliest times. From our remote ancestors we inherited the art and science of extracting metals from native ores, producing beverages of varying potency by fermentation and distillation, processing foods to render them more palatable or less perishable, adding colour to garments and, not least, concocting nasty poisons which could be used against our pests or against our neighbours. Chemistry so far intruded as to persuade us to talk of the "chemistry" of interpersonal relationships.

The association of chemistry with the doubtful subject of alchemy, its ability to show us how to produce spectacular bangs and flashes, and its capacity to manufacture toxic products with which to disarm our rivals, real or fancied, made the study appeal to many intellectually glittering individuals who had previously specialised in other daily pursuits. Children, we know, find the experiments which are open to them when they receive their first chemistry set from Santa Claus fascinating beyond belief.

Not all intellectuals look kindly on chemistry. In his cynical fashion, George Bernard Shaw comments in his 'Man and superman' (1902): "In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine." This is, possibly, a reflection on technology and politics rather than on chemistry itself. And many of those originally working in other spheres who have succumbed throughout history to its powerful lure have been blinded by the ancient beliefs in alchemical transmutation, the elixir of life, the universal solvent and the philosopher's stone. Even today, the lure of alchemy has been given impetus with the arrival on the scene of a certain Harry Potter!

It was left to Antoine François de Fourcroy to provide a succinct definition of what chemistry really was. In his 'Elements de chimie' (1791) Fourcroy wrote: "La chimie est une science dont l'objet est de reconnaître la nature et les propriétés de tous les corps par leur analyses et leurs combinaisons." Fourcroy himself had started life as a physician in 1780, but took up a professorship at the Jardin de Plantes and studied chemistry with both Lavoisier and Vauquelin. He was greatly admired by Napoleon, who appointed him minister of public instruction.

Fourcroy's contemporary Antoine Laurent Lavoisier had originally followed in his father's footsteps and become a lawyer. He apparently turned to science through the influence of Nicolas de la Caille, an astronomer, Jean Guettard, a mineralogist, and G. F. Rouelle, a chemist. Rouelle was demonstrator in chemistry at the famous Jardin des Plantes du Roi, where so many scientists at this period of French history influenced one another, and was responsible for the definition of a salt as a compound of acid with base. Combustion and the role of oxygen was Lavoisier's main interest. Between 1766 and 1785 he established his theory of combustion of organic bodies in air, and insisted on discipline in chemical experiments. In 1785 he clarified his ideas in his 'Traité elementaire de chimie', first published in 1789. His wife Marie Anne, who helped him at the bench, was a practical chemist, and engraved plates to illustrate her husband's publications.

Another of Lavoisier's contemporaries, Claude Louis Berthollet, studied medicine in Turin. Moving to Paris he attended chemistry lectures and was persuaded to undertake research. In 1785 he published a paper in which he demonstrated that ammonia was a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen. In association with Lavoisier in the Paris Academy, he helped to revise the rules of chemical nomenclature. In the previous year he had been asked to direct the Paris dyeworks, and then published papers dealing with dyestuffs and bleaching with chlorine. The government persuaded him to help in the production of gunpowder. He set up a private laboratory in Arcueil, where he was assisted by a recent graduate, Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac, whose father was a judge and intended him for the bar, Young Gay-Lussac, however, took to chemistry and studied the quantitative reactions of gases. Fourcroy enrolled him as a demonstrator. And when an Edinburgh medical graduate, Thomas Beddoes, came to Paris and met Lavoisier, he became so keen on adopting chemistry in preference to medicine that he accepted a post as chemistry lecturer in Oxford in 1788. Beddoes then founded the Medical Pneumatic Institute in Bristol, where he persuaded young Humphry Davy to help him in research.

The atmosphere in Bristol at this time seems to have gone to the heads of several individuals who were literateurs and not chemists. Samuel Taylor Coleridge had breakfast with Davy on Christmas Day 1801 and a few days later wrote to him: "As soon as I have disembrangled my affairs by a couple of months' industry, I shall attack chemistry like a shark." Coleridge attended a course given by Davy at the Royal Institution in 1802 and was particularly interested in lectures which dealt with the relation between chemistry and the arts. He filled notebooks with details of reactions of zinc and iron with acids, and of nitric acid with leather. His main interest seems to have been in the production of glass, soaps, pottery and other useful materials. Coleridge is reported to have commented: "I attend Davy's lectures to increase my stock of metaphors." Another convert to chemistry through the influence of Davy was Michael Faraday, who had no formal education but was a bookseller and stationer's errand-boy and later an apprentice bookbinder. Having heard Davy lecture at the Royal Institution he was fired with enthusiasm and became his assistant in 1813. For two years he accompanied Davy on his continental tours. At 34 he became director of the Royal Institution laboratory, then part-time lecturer at the Woolwich Military Academy. In 1833, Faraday was appointed professor at the Royal Institution and became scientific adviser to Trinity House. He was keen on analysing natural products and steel alloys. In his laboratory he liquefied chlorine and later sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, nitrous oxide, ammonia, cyanogen and chlorine dioxide, and studied catalysis and electrolysis.

Fascination of literary figures

Literary figures other than Coleridge have yielded to the fascination of chemistry, among them Samuel Johnson. "Doctor Johnson," wrote Hester Lynch Piozzi in her 'Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson' 1786), "was always exceedingly fond of chemistry, and we made up a sort of laboratory at Streatham one summer, and diverted ourselves with drawing essences and colouring liquors. But the danger Mr Thrale found his friend in one day when I was driven to London, and he had got the children and servants round him to see some experiments performed, put an end to all our entertainment; so well was the master of the house persuaded that his short sight would have been his destruction in a moment, by bringing him close to a fierce and violent flame. . . . Further experiments in chemistry however were too dangerous, and Mr Thrale insisted that we should do no more towards finding the philosophers' stone." Before this episode, James Boswell in his "London Journal" under the date 15 July 1763 recorded his visit to Johnson in his London garret, commenting: "I was much pleased to be in the library of this great man, where I saw a number of good books, but very dusty and confusedly placed. I saw, too, an apparatus for chemical experiments, of which it appears Mr Johnson was fond." And Johnson's friend Murphy, when paying him a visit, "found our friend all covered with soot like a chimney-sweeper, in a little room with an intolerable heat and strange smell, as if he had been acting Lungs in the Alchymist, making aether." Johnson, indeed, had been distilling alcohol with sulphuric acid — not a safe procedure at the best of times.

So fascinated was Johnson with chemistry that, we are told by Boswell, on a drive to Luton Hoo in 1781, "he talked little to us in the carriage, being chiefly occupied in reading Dr Watson's second volume of Chemical Essays, which he liked very well, and his own Prince of Abyssinia, on which he seems to be intensely fixed."

This episode illustrates that even the ordained clergy were not immune to the powerful lure of chemistry. Indeed, back in the 13th century Roger Bacon, who studied at Oxford and Paris, and had been received into the Franciscan Order, became noted for his unconventional approach to philosophy, magic and alchemy. On returning from Paris to Oxford, Bacon is reputed to have experimented with various formulations of gunpowder. He wrote in his essay "De erroribus": "Neither the voice of authority nor the weight of reason and argument are as significant as experiment, for thence comes quiet to the mind." It is strange to think that a laboratory may be the haven of peace which we all need from time to time.

The Dr Watson whose essays so entranced Johnson was a strange character, like Bacon bent on a career in the church. Richard Watson was born in Westmoreland in 1737, his father being in charge of the grammar school in Heversham. He was intended for the ministry, was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1754 and graduated BA in 1759 and MA in 1762. He was elected to fellowship in 1760.

On the death of the Cambridge professor of chemistry, John Hadley, in 1764 Watson was elected in his place, despite his admission that such was his ignorance of that science that "he had never read a syllable on the subject , nor seen a single experiment". He claimed to have become tired of natural philosophy and mathematics, and sought a new study. On his appointment, Watson sent to Paris for an assistant, Hoffman, and took to the laboratory for 14 months, during which he produced one disastrous explosion. His course of chemistry lectures proved popular, since he provided practical demonstrations which were spectacular. Watson wrote his "Chemical Essays" as a textbook for his students; it was first published in 1771. On the strength of a memoir entitled "Experiments and observations on various phenomena attending the solution of salts" he was elected to the Royal Society. Meanwhile he studied anatomy and dissection, but when the Regius chair of divinity fell vacant he took it and subsequently undertook various clerical duties, becoming Bishop of Llandaff in 1782. Exactly what prompted Watson to pursue chemistry is far from clear.

Royal interest

Individuals following a political career have not been backward when the call of chemistry reached them. Elizabeth I, Louis XIV and Charles II all took an interest. During his time of exile in Holland, Charles occupied much of his leisure with chemical experiments. On the restoration of the monarchy he was attracted to Robert Boyle, who became known as "the father of chemistry''. Charles engaged a laboratory assistant and himself worked at the bench, collaborating with Robert Talbot, a quack physician, in the extraction of quinine from cinchona bark.

When Charles suffered a recurrence of malaria which had attacked him in his youth, this knowledge of quinine was of assistance. His experiments with mercury were less profitable and may have hastened his end. He developed leg sores and a tendency to uraemic convulsions, probably induced by careless exposure to mercury. His habit of turning and talking to courtiers while performing an experiment was one which, laboratory chemists know carries hazards. Naturally, royal interest in the science led some individuals into chemistry on their own account. Curiously enough, the Royal Society, which Charles founded, did not rank chemistry high in comparison with physics and biology.

A character who featured in John Dryden's satire "Absalom and Achitophel" (1681) as Zimri was based on the notorious George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, an outstanding wit at the court of Charles II. Of him Dryden commented:

"Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts and nothing long;
But in the course of one revolving moon
WAS chemist, fiddler, statesman and buffoon."

He was dismissed from office in 1674 and spent four periods of imprisonment in the Tower of London, where Charles allowed him to set up a private chemical laboratory. Charles hoped that Buckingham would discover the philosophers' stone which would turn base metal to gold and enrich the treasury. Previously, the Duke had performed experiments at his mansion in Wallingford, with a resident chemist to run his furnaces and stills and investigate dyeing and glass manufacture. Indeed, he had helped to establish a glassworks in Lambeth.

Contemporaneous with Buckingham were two other doubtful characters who turned to chemistry for devious purposes. Christophle Glaser, a native of Basle, graduate in medicine and was appointed chemistry demonstrator at the Jardin du Rois in Paris. In 1658 he set up a laboratory where, among others, he taught Nicholas Lemery, a chemistry student from Rouen. Glaser's "Traité de la chimie" first published in 1663, ran to 40 editions. He had aristocratic clients, but some shady individuals like Gaudin de Sainte-Croix sought his guidance. This man had served an imprisonment with an Italian exile, Exili, in 1663 and had learned some of the secrets of the Borgia poisons. Gaudin set up a private laboratory where, under the guise of alchemy, he manufactured preparations of mercury, arsenic, antimony and opium. In pursuing the perfect poison he met a mysterious end at his bench, apparently attributable to toxic fumes when his respirator fell away. Glaser fled and was not heard of again.

When Sainte-Croix was discovered, examination of his laboratory revealed a casket packed with poisons, together with letters from another malefactor, Marie Madeleine d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers, who was trying to hasten a rich inheritance. The poisons supplied by Sainte-Croix had been tested by the Marquise on paupers in the Paris infirmary known as L' Hôtel Dieu, where she visited in the name of charity. In 1676, on the strength of the correspondence and a string of poisonings, Marie was tried, beheaded and burned.

Another would-be chemist of doubtful morals was Giovanni Jacopo Casanova, born in Venice in 1725. He persuaded a rich Greek merchant that he could convert mercury into silver, and one of his friends, Madame d'Urfé, offered him the use of her well-equipped laboratory for the purpose. She had a furnace which had been kept at constant temperature for no less than 15 years. Here Casanova invented a medicine which, when taken by Madame, killed her. He was nevertheless encouraged by the French authorities to undertake research on improved gunpowder, pigments, bleaching materials and glass. His own interest was in artists' pigments. Count Waldstein eventually invited Casanova to be his librarian and instructor in alchemy in Bohemia. Here he wrote his scandalous memoirs which achieved much greater fame than his chemical researches.

Musical urges

Not only literary figures but prominent musicians have felt the urge to become chemists. Alexander Porphyrevich Borodin, born in 1833, found himself unable to resist the temptation. He had an extraordinary musical talent and was composing at the age of nine. However, he was sent to St Petersburg to study medicine and became MD in 1858. One of his professors, Zinin, who had studied under Liebig, urged him to abandon medicine in favour of chemistry because he was wasting too much time on music. Borodin was sent to the laboratory of Erlenmayer, where he studied together with Mendeleef. He devised a method for detecting organic nitrogen by means of a sodium hypobromide reaction, and worked on fluorine compounds. He received a doctorate for a dissertation on similarities between arsenical and phosphoric acids and became chemistry professor in St Petersburg in 1864. He continued research into aldehydes and their condensation reactions, and assays of urea.

It may be significant that Borodin, during his childhood, had experimented freely with fireworks.

Edward Elgar is an outstanding example of an artist allured by the charms of chemistry. He was the son of an organist and music dealer, but was sent for a short period to serve in a solicitor's office. When his family moved from Malvern to Plas Gwyn in Hereford, Edward felt the call of chemistry and may have performed his first experiments in the house cellar. In 1908 he converted a garden shed into a laboratory, calling it his "Ark" In that year he wrote to his friend Ivor Atkins: "I have invented a glass machine for making H2S and it is to be manufactured and brought out called the 'Elgar Sulp. Hy. Apparatus designed by Sir Edward Elgar'."

In December 1908 he demonstrated this piece of equipment to the Atkins family. It was made for the composer by the firm of Philip Harris and comprised an outer glass container whose base was drilled with 15 small holes, into which fitted a hollow cone communicating by a small aperture with the outer vessel and terminating in the nozzle for the discharge of the gas. Atkins recorded that this was standard equipment in school laboratories, in regular use in Hereford and Worcester.

Elgar's music did not totally escape the touch of chemistry. He talked at one time of transposing phrases from the "ous" to the "ic" state. In 1906 he set up a dark room for photography at Plas Gwyn. He possessed three microscopes and prepared slides of natural specimens, including fossils and rocks.

It is apparent from these histories that chemistry possesses a strange quality which spurs individuals to indulge in chemical experiments and even more extended programmes of research, even when they have not previously studied the discipline. Those who have succumbed to the temptation have been drawn from many different social and professional groups. Some have indulged from ulterior, sometimes criminal motives, but for most the lure of chemistry has been a desire to penetrate an aspect of the mystery of the universe and its natural laws.