The Romance of Modern Chemistry

THE DAWN OF CHEMISTRY It is not easy to say definitely where and when man first began to grope after the knowledge of chemistry. Of all the ancient nations the Egyptians seem to have been the most prominent in this respect; their knowledge, however, was not acquired in any systematic way, but was rather the result of chance observation. By comparison with the store which has been accumulated in the interven- ing centuries, the chemical knowledge of the ancients was a negligible quantity. They stood merely on the threshold of the storehouse, little dreaming of the spacious chambers into which succeeding generations were to find their way. Suppose we consider for a moment what actually was the sort of chemical knowledge possessed by the nations of antiquity. They were acquainted with seven metals, namely, gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, lead, and quick- silver, and although some of these—gold, silver, and copper to a smaller extent—are found as such in nature, the others would have to be extracted from their ores ; the ancients must therefore have been familiar with the metallurgical processes necessary for this purpose. It was not long before these seven metals became associated with the sun, moon, and the then known planets, each metal receiving the name and symbol of one heavenly body as shown below :— Gold . The Sun ø Silver . The Moon D Quicksilver . Mercury • • $ Copper . . Venus . • • ? Tin . . Jupiter . • • V Iron . Mars Lead Saturn . • • h This method of representing the metals by symbols sur- 18