Phosphorus, or its Latin equivalent, Lucifer, was the name given by the
ancient astronomers to the planet Venus when it appeared as a morning
star. When it shone as an evening star they called it Hesperus. Do we
invent such seductive names now, or do they only seem attractive to us
because they are ancient or foreign?
The phosphorescent properties of certain earths had been occasionally
noticed by naturalists, but no observation of the kind has been traced
in ancient writings. The earliest allusion to a “fire-stone” known
occurs in the work of a gossipy French historian named De Thou. In
a history of his own times this writer relates that in 1550, when
Henri II made his state entry into Boulogne on the occasion of its
restoration to France by the English, a stranger in foreign costume
presented the king with a fire-stone which, he said, had been brought
from India. De Thou narrates that this wonderful stone glowed with
inconceivable splendour, was so hot that it could not be touched
without danger, and that if confined in a close space it would spring
with force into the air.
Sometime early in the seventeenth century, a shoemaker of Bologna, one
Vincent Cascariolo, who, in addition to his ordinary business dabbled
in alchemy, discovered a stone in the neighbourhood of his city which
was luminous in the dark. The stone, which is now known to have been
a sulphate of barium, and which the shoemaker calcined, ground, and
formed into little round discs about the size of a shilling, and sold
for a fancy price, was called the sun-stone. The discs, exposed to a
strong light for a few minutes and then withdrawn into a dark room,
gave out the incandescent light which we know so well. The discovery
excited keen interest among scientific men all over Europe.
[Illustration: JOHANN KUNCKEL.
(From the Collection of Etchings in the Royal Gallery at Berlin.)
]
About 1668 two alchemists named Bauduin and Frueben, who lived at
Grossenhayn in Saxony, conceived the idea of extracting by chemical
processes the spirit of the world (Spiritus Mundi). Their notion was
to combine earth, air, fire, and water in their alembic, and to obtain
the essences of all of these in one distillate. They dissolved lime in
nitric acid, evaporated to dryness, exposed the residue to the air,
and let it absorb humidity. They then distilled this substance and
obtained the humidity in a pure form. History does not tell us what
questions they put to their spirit of the world when they had thus
caught it. It appears, however, that the stuff attained a great sale.
It was supplied at 12 groschen the loth, equal to about 1s. 6d. per
ounce, and lords and peasants came after it eagerly. Rain-water would
have been just as good, Kunckel, who tells the story, remarks. But one
day Bauduin broke one of the vessels in which was contained some of the
calcined nitrate of lime, and he observed that this, like the Bologna
stone, was luminous in the dark after exposure to sunlight. Bauduin
appreciated the importance of his discovery, and, taking some of his
earth to Dresden, talked about it there. Kunckel, who was then the
Elector’s pharmacist, and keenly interested in new discoveries, heard
about this curious substance, and was very curious to find out all he
could. He visited Bauduin and tried to draw from him the details of
his process. But Bauduin was very shy of Kunckel, and the latter has
left an amusing account of an evening he spent with his quarry. Kunckel
tried to talk chemistry, but Bauduin would only take interest in music.
At last, however, Kunckel induced Bauduin to go out of the room to
fetch a concave mirror to see if with that the precious phosphorus (for
Bauduin had already appropriated this name to the stuff) would absorb
the light. While Bauduin was gone Kunckel managed to nip a morsel with
his finger-nail. With this, aided by the fragments of information he
had been able to steal from Bauduin’s conversation, he commenced to
experiment by treating chalk with nitric acid, and ultimately succeeded
in producing the coveted luminous earth. He sent a little lump of it to
Bauduin as an acknowledgment of the pleasant musical evening the latter
had given him.
It was now 1669. Kunckel was visiting Hamburg, and there he showed to
a scientific friend a piece of his “phosphorus.” To his surprise the
friend was not at all astonished at it, but told Kunckel that an old
doctor in Hamburg had produced something much more wonderful. Brandt
was the name of the local alchemist. He had been in business, had
failed, and was now practising medicine enough to keep him, but was
devoting his heart and soul and all his spare time to the discovery of
the philosopher’s stone. The two friends visited Brandt, who showed
them the real “phosphor” which he had produced, to which, of course,
the other substances compared as dip candles might to the electric
light, but nothing would induce the old gentleman to disclose any
details of his process. Kunckel wrote to a scientific friend happily
named Krafft at Dresden about the new “phosphor.” Honour seems to have
been cheap among scientific friends at that time, for Krafft posted off
to Hamburg, without saying anything to Kunckel about his intention,
caught Brandt in a different humour, or perhaps specially hard-up, and
bought his secret for 200 thalers.
According to another story, the German chemist Homberg also succeeded
in securing Brandt’s secret by taking to him as a present one of those
weather prognosticators in which a figure of a man and another of a
woman come out of doors or go in when it is going to be wet or fine, as
the case may be; a toy which had just then been invented.
Stimulated perhaps by Brandt’s obstinacy and Krafft’s treachery,
Kunckel set to work and in time succeeded in manufacturing phosphorus.
It may be taken as certain that he had picked old Brandt’s brains a
little, and his own skill and shrewdness enabled him to fill up the
gaps in his knowledge. However he acquired the art, he soon became the
first practical manufacturer of phosphorus.
Brandt discovered phosphorus because he had arrived at the conviction
that the philosopher’s stone was to be got from urine. In the course of
his experiments with that liquid, phosphorus came out unexpectedly from
the process of distilling urine with sand and lime.
The new substance excited great curiosity in scientific circles all
over Europe, but the German chemists who knew anything about it kept
their information secret, and only misleading stories of its origin
were published. Robert Boyle, however, who was travelling on the
Continent when the interest in the discovery was keenest, got a hint
of the method of manufacture, and on his return to England proceeded
to experiment. His operator and assistant in these investigations
was Ambrose Godfrey Hanckwitz, who became the founder of a London
pharmaceutical business which still exists. Ultimately Boyle and
Hanckwitz were completely successful, and for many years the “English
phosphorus” supplied by Hanckwitz from his laboratory in Southampton
Street, Strand, monopolised the European market. According to a
pamphlet published by him, entitled “Historia Phosphori et Fama,” the
continental phosphorus was an “unctuous, dawbing oyliness,” while his
was the “right glacial” kind.
In 1680 Boyle deposited with the Royal Society, of which he was then
president, a sealed packet containing an account of his experiments and
of his process for the production of the “Icy Noctiluca,” as he called
his phosphorus.
It is related in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences of Paris for
1737 that in that year a stranger appeared in Paris and offered for
a stipulated reward to communicate the process of making phosphorus
to the French Government. A committee of the Academy, with Hellot as
its president, was appointed to witness the stranger’s manipulation.
According to the report of this committee, the experiment was
completely successful.
It only remains to add, to complete the history, that in 1769, Gahn, a
Swedish mine owner, discovered phosphorus in bones, and that working
from this observation Scheele in 1775 devised the process for the
manufacture of phosphorus which is still followed.
Such a remarkable substance as phosphorus, extracted as it had been
from the human body, was evidently marked out for medical uses.
Experiments were soon commenced with it. Kunckel’s “luminous pills”
were the first in the field, so far as is known. His report was
published in the “Chemische Anmerkungen” in 1721. He gave it in
three-grain doses, and reported that it had a calmative effect!
Subsequently it was tried in various diseases by continental
practitioners. Mentz commended it in colic, Langensalz in asthenic
fevers, Bonneken in tetanus, Wetkard in apoplexy, and Trampel in gout.
In 1769 Alphonse Leroy, of Paris, reported a curious experience. He was
sent for to a patient apparently on the point of death from phthisis.
Seeing that the case was hopeless, he prepared and administered a
placebo of sugared water. Calling the next day, Leroy found his patient
somewhat revived, and on examining the sugar which he had used for
his solution, he found that some phosphorus had been kept in it for
a long time. The patient was much too far gone to recover, but she
survived for fifteen days, and Leroy attributed this amelioration to
the phosphorised water which he had accidentally given her.
Gahn discovered phosphorus in the bones in 1768, and in 1779 another
German chemist named Hensing ascertained its presence in a fatty matter
which he extracted from the brain. Medical theories were naturally
based on these observations. Couerbe, a French chemist quoted by Dr.
Churchill, wrote thus in 1830:
“The want of phosphorus in the brain would reduce man to
the sad condition of the brute; an excess of this element
irritates the nervous system, excites the individual, and
throws him into that terrible state of disturbance called
madness, or mental alienation; a moderate proportion gives
rise to the sublimest ideas, and produces that admirable
harmony which spiritualists call the soul.”
British practitioners took but very little notice of phosphorus as a
remedy in the first century of its career, although it remained for a
large part of that period an English product.
It is rather curious, too, that neither in this country nor on the
Continent did it get into the hands of the empirics, as mercury,
antimony, and other dangerous drugs did. It may be supposed that it
was not so much the danger that checked them as the pharmaceutical
difficulties in the way of preparing suitable medicines. The earliest
preparations of phosphorus, such as Kunckel’s pills, were a combination
of it in a free state with conserve of roses. This method was gradually
abandoned on account of the difficulty of subdividing the phosphorus
so perfectly that the dose could be measured accurately. But as Dr.
Ashburton Thompson remarks,[3] “although it is not so specifically
mentioned, the uncertainty of action which imperfectly divided
phosphorus exhibits” had something to do with the rejection of the old
formulas. That is putting it very gently. The three-grain doses must
have killed more people than they cured. The author just quoted says
that in the early days “the dose employed seldom fell below 3 grains,
while it occasionally rose as high as 12 grains.” Even Leroy, he adds,
instituted his experiments by taking a bolus of 3 grains, and he did
not seriously suffer from it. The recommended dose has been regularly
declining. In 1855 Dr. Hughes Bennett gave it at one-fortieth to
one-eighth of a grain. The Pharmacopœia now prescribes one-hundredth to
one-twentieth of a grain.