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constructed had been put in operation, and with its aid the
brilliant young experimenter was expected almost to perform
miracles. And indeed he scarcely disappointed the expectation,
for with the aid of his battery he transformed so familiar a
substance as common potash into a metal which was not only so
light that it floated on water, but possessed the seemingly
miraculous property of bursting into flames as soon as it came in
contact with that fire-quenching liquid. If this were not a
miracle, it had for the popular eye all the appearance of the
miraculous.
What Davy really had done was to decompose the potash, which
hitherto had been supposed to be elementary, liberating its
oxygen, and thus isolating its metallic base, which he named
potassium. The same thing was done with soda, and the closely
similar metal sodium was discovered—metals of a unique type,
possessed of a strange avidity for oxygen, and capable of seizing
on it even when it is bound up in the molecules of water.
Considered as mere curiosities, these discoveries were
interesting, but aside from that they were of great theoretical
importance, because they showed the compound nature of some
familiar chemicals that had been regarded as elements. Several
other elementary earths met the same fate when subjected to the
electrical influence; the metals barium, calcium, and strontium
being thus discovered. Thereafter Davy always referred to the
supposed elementary substances (including oxygen, hydrogen, and
the rest) as “unde-compounded” bodies. These resist all present
efforts to decompose them, but how can one know what might not
happen were they subjected to an influence, perhaps some day to
be discovered, which exceeds the battery in power as the battery
exceeds the blowpipe?
Another and even more important theoretical result that flowed
from Davy’s experiments during this first decade of the century
was the proof that no elementary substances other than hydrogen
and oxygen are produced when pure water is decomposed by the
electric current. It was early noticed by Davy and others that
when a strong current is passed through water, alkalies appear at
one pole of the battery and acids at the other, and this though
the water used were absolutely pure. This seemingly told of the
creation of elements—a transmutation but one step removed from
the creation of matter itself—under the influence of the new
“force.” It was one of Davy’s greatest triumphs to prove, in the
series of experiments recorded in his famous Bakerian lecture of
1806, that the alleged creation of elements did not take place,
the substances found at the poles of the battery having been
dissolved from the walls of the vessels in which the water
experimented upon had been placed. Thus the same implement which
had served to give a certain philosophical warrant to the fading
dreams of alchemy banished those dreams peremptorily from the
domain of present science.
“As early as 1800,” writes Davy, “I had found that when separate
portions of distilled water, filling two glass tubes, connected
by moist bladders, or any moist animal or vegetable substances,
were submitted to the electrical action of the pile of Volta by
means of gold wires, a nitro-muriatic solution of gold appeared
in the tube containing the positive wire, or the wire
transmitting the electricity, and a solution of soda in the
opposite tube; but I soon ascertained that the muriatic acid owed
its existence to the animal or vegetable matters employed; for
when the same fibres of cotton were made use of in successive
experiments, and washed after every process in a weak solution of
nitric acid, the water in the apparatus containing them, though
acted on for a great length of time with a very strong power, at
last produced no effects upon nitrate of silver.
“In cases when I had procured much soda, the glass at its point
of contact with the wire seemed considerably corroded; and I was
confirmed in my idea of referring the production of the alkali
principally to this source, by finding that no fixed saline
matter could be obtained by electrifying distilled water in a
single agate cup from two points of platina with the Voltaic
battery.
“Mr. Sylvester, however, in a paper published in Mr. Nicholson’s
journal for last August, states that though no fixed alkali or
muriatic acid appears when a single vessel is employed, yet that
they are both formed when two vessels are used. And to do away
with all objections with regard to vegetable substances or glass,
he conducted his process in a vessel made of baked tobacco-pipe
clay inserted in a crucible of platina. I have no doubt of the
correctness of his results; but the conclusion appears
objectionable. He conceives, that he obtained fixed alkali,
because the fluid after being heated and evaporated left a matter
that tinged turmeric brown, which would have happened had it been
lime, a substance that exists in considerable quantities in all
pipe-clay; and even allowing the presence of fixed alkali, the
materials employed for the manufacture of tobacco-pipes are not
at all such as to exclude the combinations of this substance.
“I resumed the inquiry; I procured small cylindrical cups of
agate of the capacity of about one-quarter of a cubic inch each.
They were boiled for some hours in distilled water, and a piece
of very white and transparent amianthus that had been treated in
the same way was made then to connect together; they were filled
with distilled water and exposed by means of two platina wires to
a current of electricity, from one hundred and fifty pairs of
plates of copper and zinc four inches square, made active by
means of solution of alum. After forty-eight hours the process
was examined: Paper tinged with litmus plunged into the tube
containing the transmitting or positive wire was immediately
strongly reddened. Paper colored by turmeric introduced into the
other tube had its color much deepened; the acid matter gave a
very slight degree of turgidness to solution of nitrate of soda.
The fluid that affected turmeric retained this property after
being strongly boiled; and it appeared more vivid as the quantity
became reduced by evaporation; carbonate of ammonia was mixed
with it, and the whole dried and exposed to a strong heat; a
minute quantity of white matter remained, which, as far as my
examinations could go, had the properties of carbonate of soda. I
compared it with similar minute portions of the pure carbonates
of potash, and similar minute portions of the pure carbonates of
potash and soda. It was not so deliquescent as the former of
these bodies, and it formed a salt with nitric acid, which, like
nitrate of soda, soon attracted moisture from a damp atmosphere
and became fluid.
“This result was unexpected, but it was far from convincing me
that the substances which were obtained were generated. In a
similar process with glass tubes, carried on under exactly the
same circumstances and for the same time, I obtained a quantity
of alkali which must have been more than twenty times greater,
but no traces of muriatic acid. There was much probability that
the agate contained some minute portion of saline matter, not
easily detected by chemical analysis, either in combination or
intimate cohesion in its pores. To determine this, I repeated
this a second, a third, and a fourth time. In the second
experiment turbidness was still produced by a solution of nitrate
of silver in the tube containing the acid, but it was less
distinct; in the third process it was barely perceptible; and in
the fourth process the two fluids remained perfectly clear after
the mixture. The quantity of alkaline matter diminished in every
operation; and in the last process, though the battery had been
kept in great activity for three days, the fluid possessed, in a
very slight degree, only the power of acting on paper tinged with
turmeric; but its alkaline property was very sensible to litmus
paper slightly reddened, which is a much more delicate test; and
after evaporation and the process by carbonate of ammonia, a
barely perceptible quantity of fixed alkali was still left. The
acid matter in the other tube was abundant; its taste was sour;
it smelled like water over which large quantities of nitrous gas
have been long kept; it did not effect solution of muriate of
barytes; and a drop of it placed upon a polished plate of silver
left, after evaporation, a black stain, precisely similar to that
produced by extremely diluted nitrous acid.
“After these results I could no longer doubt that some saline
matter existing in the agate tubes had been the source of the
acid matter capable of precipitating nitrate of silver and much
of the alkali. Four additional repetitions of the process,
however, convinced me that there was likewise some other cause
for the presence of this last substance; for it continued to
appear to the last in quantities sufficiently distinguishable,
and apparently equal in every case. I had used every precaution,
I had included the tube in glass vessels out of the reach of the
circulating air; all the acting materials had been repeatedly
washed with distilled water; and no part of them in contact with
the fluid had been touched by the fingers.
“The only substance that I could now conceive as furnishing the
fixed alkali was the water itself. This water appeared pure by
the tests of nitrate of silver and muriate of barytes; but potash
of soda, as is well known, rises in small quantities in rapid
distillation; and the New River water which I made use of
contains animal and vegetable impurities, which it was easy to
conceive might furnish neutral salts capable of being carried
over in vivid ebullition.”[1] Further experiment proved the
correctness of this inference, and the last doubt as to the
origin of the puzzling chemical was dispelled.
Though the presence of the alkalies and acids in the water was
explained, however, their respective migrations to the negative
and positive poles of the battery remained to be accounted for.
Davy’s classical explanation assumed that different elements
differ among themselves as to their electrical properties, some
being positively, others negatively, electrified. Electricity
and “chemical affinity,” he said, apparently are manifestations
of the same force, acting in the one case on masses, in the other
on particles. Electro-positive particles unite with
electro-negative particles to form chemical compounds, in virtue
of the familiar principle that opposite electricities attract one
another. When compounds are decomposed by the battery, this
mutual attraction is overcome by the stronger attraction of the
poles of the battery itself.
This theory of binary composition of all chemical compounds,
through the union of electro-positive and electro-negative atoms
or molecules, was extended by Berzelius, and made the basis of
his famous system of theoretical chemistry. This theory held
that all inorganic compounds, however complex their composition,
are essentially composed of such binary combinations. For many
years this view enjoyed almost undisputed sway. It received what
seemed strong confirmation when Faraday showed the definite
connection between the amount of electricity employed and the
amount of decomposition produced in the so-called electrolyte.
But its claims were really much too comprehensive, as subsequent
discoveries proved.
ORGANIC CHEMISTRY AND THE IDEA OF THE MOLECULE
When Berzelius first promulgated his binary theory he was careful
to restrict its unmodified application to the compounds of the
inorganic world. At that time, and for a long time thereafter,
it was supposed that substances of organic nature had some
properties that kept them aloof from the domain of inorganic
chemistry. It was little doubted that a so-called “vital force”
operated here, replacing or modifying the action of ordinary
“chemical affinity.” It was, indeed, admitted that organic
compounds are composed of familiar elements—chiefly carbon,
oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen; but these elements were supposed
to be united in ways
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