John Rudolph Glauber, who was born at Carlstadt, in Germany, in 1603,
contributed largely to pharmaceutical knowledge, and deserves to be
remembered by his many investigations, and perhaps even more for the
clear common sense which he brought to bear on his chemical work. For
though he retained a confident belief in the dreams of alchemy, he does
not appear to have let that belief interfere with his practical labour;
and some of his processes were so well devised that they have hardly
been altered from his day to ours.
Not much is known of his history except what he himself wrote or what
was related of him by his contemporaries. According to his own account
he took to chemistry when as a young man he got cured of a troublesome
stomach complaint by drinking some mineral waters. Eager to discover
what was the essential chemical in those waters to which he owed his
health he set to work on his experiments. The result was the discovery
of sulphate of soda, which he called “Sal mirabile,” but which all
subsequent generations have known as Glauber’s Salts. This, it happens,
was the one of his discoveries of which he was not particularly
vain, for he supposed that he had only obtained from another source
Paracelsus’s sal enixon, which was in fact sulphate of potash. His own
account of this discovery is necessarily of pharmaceutical interest. He
gives it in his work _De Natura Salium_, as follows:--
In the course of my youthful travels I was attacked at Vienna
with a violent fever known there as the Hungarian disease, to
which strangers are especially liable. My enfeebled stomach
rejected all food. On the advice of several friends I dragged
myself to a certain spring situated about a league from
Newstadt. I had brought with me a loaf of bread, but with no
hope of being able to eat it. Arrived at the spring I took the
loaf from my pocket and made a hole in it so that I could use
it as a cup. As I drank the water my appetite returned, and I
ended by eating the improvised cup in its turn. I made several
visits to the spring and was soon miraculously cured of my
illness. I asked what was the nature of the water and was told
it was “salpeter-wasser.”
Glauber was twenty-one at that time, and knew nothing of chemistry.
Later he analysed the water and got from it, after evaporation, long
crystals, which, he says, a superficial observer might confuse with
saltpetre; but he soon satisfied himself that it was something quite
different. Subsequently he obtained an identical salt from the residue
in his retort after distilling marine salt and vitriol to obtain spirit
of salt. As already stated, he believed he had produced the “sal
enixon” of Paracelsus. But in memory of the benefit he had himself
experienced from its use he gave it the title of “sal mirabile.”
[Illustration:
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the sign of
“Glauber’s Head” appears to have been used in this country by
some chemical manufacturers. The picture annexed is from one
of these signs which was used more than a hundred years ago
by Slinger and Son, of York, and is now in the possession of
Messrs. Raimes and Co., of that city, who have kindly given me
a photograph of it. It is a wooden bust which was once gilded,
and presumably presents the traditional likeness of the famous
German chemist.
]
This distillation of sulphuric acid with sea-salt, which yielded
spirit of salt, or as it is now called hydrochloric acid, was probably
Glauber’s principal contribution to the development of chemistry.
He observed the gas given off from the salt, and it is a wonder
that with his acuteness he did not isolate and describe the element
chlorine. He called it the spirit of rectified salt, and described it
as a spirit of the colour of fire, which passed into the receiver,
and which would dissolve metals and most minerals. He noted that if
digested with dephlegmated (concentrated) spirit of wine his spirit
of salt formed a layer of oily substance, which was the oil of wine,
“an excellent cordial and very agreeable.” He distilled ammonia from
bones, and showed how to make sal ammoniac by the addition of sea
salt. His sulphate of ammonia, now so largely used as a fertiliser and
in the production of other ammonia salts, was known for a long time
as “Sal ammoniacum secretum Glauberi.” He made sulphate of copper,
and his investigation of the acetum lignorum, now called pyroligneous
acid, though he did not claim to have discovered this substance, was
of the greatest value. He produced artificial gems, made chlorides of
arsenic and zinc, and added considerably to the chemistry of wine and
spirit-making.
Glauber worked at many subjects for manufacturers, and sold his secrets
in many cases. His enemies asserted that he sold the same secret
several times, and that he not unfrequently sold secrets which would
not work. It is impossible now to test the truth of these accusations.
Probably some of the allegations made against him were due to the fact
that those who bought his processes were not as skilful as he was.
One secret which he claimed to have discovered he would neither sell
nor publish. It was that of the Alkahest, or universal solvent. To
make this known might, he feared, “encourage the luxury, pride, and
godlessness of poor humanity.”
Oliver Cromwell wrote in an old volume of Glauber’s Alchemy: “This
Glauber is an errant knave. I doe bethinke me he speaketh of wonders
which cannot be accomplished; but it is lawful for man too the
endeavour.”
Glauber complained that he was not appreciated, which was probably
true. “I grieve over the ignorance of my contemporaries,” he wrote,
“and the ingratitude of men. Men are always envious, wicked,
ungrateful. For myself, faithful to the maxim, _Ora et Labora_, I
fulfil my career, do what I can, and await my reward.” Elsewhere he
writes, “If I have not done all the good in the world that I should
have desired, it has been the perversity of men that has hindered me.”
His employees, he says, were unfaithful. Having learned his processes,
they became inflated with pride, and left him. Apparently there was a
good business to be done in chemical secrets at that time. But Glauber
did not give away all he knew, and he found it best to do all his
important work himself. “I have learnt by expensive experience,” he
wrote, “the truth of the proverb, ‘Wer seine Sachen will gethan haben
recht, Muss selbsten seyn Herr und Knecht.’”
Although all Glauber’s books appeared with Latin titles they were
written in German.