The formation of the German chemical community (1720-1795) 9780520044159, 9780520043183

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THE FORMATION OF THE GERMAN CHEMICAL COMMUNITY

(1720-1795)

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The Formation of the German Chemical Community (1720-1795) Karl Hufbauer

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley « Los Angeles « London

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 1982 by The Regents of the University of California Printed in the United States of America

123 45 67 8 9 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hufbauer, Karl. The formation of the German chemical community. Includes index.

1. Chemistry—Germany—History. I. Title.

QD18.G3H83 540’ .943 81-2988

ISBN 0-520-04318-9 AACR2 ISBN 0-520-04415-0 (pbk.)

CONTENTS Preface / vii

1 INTRODUCTION / 1

2 MORAL SUPPORT / 13 3 MATERIAL SUPPORT / 30 4 MANPOWER SUPPORT / 50

5 LORENZ CRELL: CHEMICAL JOURNALIST / 62

COMMUNITY / 83 |

6 THE FORMATION OF THE GERMAN CHEMICAL

7 THE “FRENCH CHEMISTRY” / 96 8 THE NOTORIOUS REDUCTION EXPERIMENT / 118 9 CONCLUSION / 145 Appendix I BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILES / 153 Appendix II INSTITUTIONAL HISTORIES / 225 Appendix III CRELL’S SUBSCRIBERS (1784-1791) / 271 Subject Index / 301 Person and Place Index / 305

ILLUSTRATIONS

of Learning, 1780 31

Map 1. Salaried Chemical Positions in German Institutions Map 2. Residences of Selected Chemists on the Eve of the

Formation of the German Chemical Community, 1780 52

Figure 1. G. E. Stahl 9 Figure 2. J. C. Wiegleb 27

Figure 3. L. Crell 63

Figure 4. Title page, Chemische Annalen 81

Figure 5. S. F. Hermbstaedt 113

Figure 6. M. H. Klaproth 116 Figure 7. F. A. C. Gren 121 Figure 8. J. F. Westrumb 124

PREFACE In 1964, when I began research on the social history of German chemistry in Hans Rosenberg’s seminar, I planned to use a brief chapter on eighteenthcentury developments as an introduction to a full study of the science’s professionalization in the nineteenth century. Over the next two years, however, I abandoned this plan. I was intrigued by indications that Germany’s chemists coalesced into a national discipline-oriented community during the 1780s and that their new social solidarity affected their reception of Lavoisier’s revolutionary theory during the 1790s. I was also impressed by the multiplicity and richness of materials bearing on the background and early history of the German chemical community. Accordingly, encouraged by Paul Forman, I decided to concentreate on chemistry in eighteenth-century Germany. My investigation resulted first in a dissertation, then in various articles, and finally in the monograph that follows. I can acknowledge here but a few of the many people who have generously

assisted me as my work has progressed. Roger Hahn, Hans Rosenberg, Charles Susskind, Paul Forman, Arnold Thackray, Bob Multhauf, Mary Ellen Bowden, Steve Turner, and Eric Robinson gave my dissertation thoughtful critiques upon its completion, inspiring me to take the project further. Everett Mendelsohn, Jon Jacobson, and Joe Slavin played key roles in assuring the continuation of my academic career, and hence my research. Tom Saine, Mike Johnson, Jon Wiener, Ed Todd, Larry Holmes, and anonymous readers made many substantive suggestions for improving the drafts preceding the present text. Gunter Mende taught me how to read Crell’s handwriting; David Heifetz aided me in assembling data regarding professorial careers; Ted Brunner, Richard Frank, Ray Oliver, and Craig Longuevan guided me through Latin and Italian passages; Cheryl Danieri assisted with the final editing of Appendices I and II; Henry Lowood, Paul Forman, and John Neu helped me locate and obtain the portraits; and Karin Fouts prepared the maps. Sally Hufbauer, Anne Rogers, Ellen Bork, and Jane Hedges have, in turn, served as my instructors in style. And the University of California Press has displayed virtuosity in transforming a complicated manuscript into the ensu-

ing book. ,

Finally, I owe special thanks to those whose steadfast encouragement has enabled me to bring the project to completion—Paul Forman, Sally Hufbauer, Alan and Anne Rogers, Spece Olin, Jon Jacobson, Cathy Smith,

Preface / viii

Georg Harig, Mike Johnson, my children Sarah Beth, Ben, and Ruth Hufbauer, and my parents Clyde and Arabelle Hufbauer.

Irvine, California K. H.

January 1982

Late in the eighteenth century, German chemists came to constitute a community. They began, that is, to regard one another as important peers, as primary arbiters of truth and merit. In Helmstedt in 1790, L. Crell expressed this new sense of community when he wrote across Germany to K. G. Hagen in KOnigsberg that a recent discovery made in Hameln by their countryman J. F. Westrumb provided “a new buttress for our phlogiston which the French want to steal from us.”! The following year in Berlin, F. Wolff voiced this same collective consciousness when he called upon “the most respected chemists of Germany” to serve as terminological “legislators for their German chemical Mit bruder.”? Even before Germany was unified or chemistry was professionalized, German chemists had coalesced into one of the first national discipline-oriented:communities. The formation of the German chemical community, though hitherto unexamined by historians of science, warrants attention for three reasons. First, analyzing how support for chemistry rose to the level that German chemists could form into a scientific community contributes to a more complete understanding of the growth of science in eighteenth-century Germany. One cause of this growth, as contemporaries and historians have often remarked, was the ambition of a few German rulers to enhance their glory by imitating the French crown’s Académie .* Another, as historians of German universities have recently shown, was the readiness of some German administrators and professors to promote university attendance, and revenues, by modernizing curricula and encouraging professorial publication.* Yet another, as historians of German literature have established, was the eagerness of many writers and

readers to reflect on the wonders of God’s creation.> However, it was not 1. A. Hagen, “K. G. Hagen’s Leben und Wirken,” Neue preussische Provinzial-Blatter, 9 (1850), 84. For biographical profiles of Crell, Hagen, and Westrumb, see Appendix I. 2. J. A. Chaptal, Anfangsgriinde der Chemie, trans. F. Wolff, vol. I (K6nigsberg: Nicolovius, 1791), p. 4. 3. J. Ben-David has emphasized the role of French-style academies in supporting science in eighteenth-century Germany. See his The Scientist's Role in Society: A Comparative Study (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), pp. 85, 111. 4. R. S. Turner, “University Reformers and Professorial Scholarship in Germany 17601806,” in The University in Society, ed. L. Stone, vol. II (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 495-531; C. E. McClelland, “The Aristocracy and University Reform in Eighteenth-Century Germany,” in Schooling and Society: Studies in the History of Education, ed. L. Stone (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), pp. 146-173; and J. L. Heilbron, Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study of Early Modern Physics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), pp. 137-140. 5. For orientation to these literary studies, see W. Schatzberg, “Scientific Themes in the Popular Literature and Poetry of the German Enlightenment, 1720—1760,’ German Studies in

Introduction / 2

only to emulate the French, attract students, and worship God that Germans supported science during the century of Enlightenment. As the growth of moral, material, and manpower support for chemistry reveals, Germans also did so because they came to believe that natural knowledge could be used to improve health and increase production.°®

Second, analyzing the way in which German chemists drew upon social support for chemistry to form into a national community illuminates an important phase in the genesis of the social organization of modern science. Since the fifth century B.c., Western intellectuals have divided natural knowledge into various subjects, each encompassing distinctive phenomena, techniques, and goals. Among the newer fields, as O. Hannaway has recently shown, was chemistry, which A. Libavius, in reaction to Paracelsian universalism, defined and delimited around 1600.’ However, before the eighteenth century, the several branches of natural knowledge had more definitional integrity than social reality. While these “disciplines,” as they were sometimes called, were used in book cataloguing and university teaching, they did not correspond, except in a tenuous way, to enduring social networks. For the most part, men of science lacked both incentives for sustained attention to a single discipline and reliable means for identifying and communicating with others, who, at any given time, happened to share their interests. Consequently, they oriented themselves to the “republic of letters” which, from the 1660s onwards, found its most visible manifestations in royal societies and academies and in comprehensive reviewing journals.*® This state of affairs continued until the last third of the eighteenth century when, with the quickening of scientific activity and the appearance of specialized periodicals, the republic of letters began to break up along vernacular and disciplinary lines. Increasingly, men of science clustered into national discipline-oriented communities. In Germany such communities eventually had a significance extending far beyond their constituents. Between the 1790s and the 1840s they played an essential role in transforming the German universities into research centers, thereby making possible the professionalization of the sciences.° America, 12 (1973); and T. P. Saine, “Natural Science and the Ideology of Nature in the German Enlightenment,” Lessing Yearbook, 8 (1976), 61—88. Also see O. Sonntag, “The Motivations of the Scientist: The Self-Image of Albrecht von Haller,” /sis, 65 (1974), 336-351. 6. The importance of eighteenth-century utilitarianism for the emergence of social support for chemistry in France and Britain has been emphasized by H. Guerlac, “Some French Antecedents of the Chemical Revolution,’ Chymia, 5 (1959), 73-112; and A. Donovan, “British Chemistry and the Concept of Science in the Eighteenth Century,” Albion, 7 (1975), 131-144. 7. O. Hannaway, The Chemists and the Word: The Didactic Origins of Chemistry (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975). 8. R. Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666— 1803 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971). 9. J. Ben-David’s provocative analysis of the nineteenth-century development of German universities into scientific centers neglects the role of preexisting discipline-oriented communities in this process. See his The Scientist’s Role in Society, pp. 108-138. R. S. Turner, by contrast, has correctly suggested that these communities began to influence the universities as early as the 1790s and were playing a prominent role in appointments and advancements by the mid-1830s. See his “University Reformers... ,” in The University and Society, Ul: 510-511, 522-525, 531.

Introduction / 3

Hence, the formation of the German chemical community illustrates how scientists in one field, despite residing in a fragmented nation and working at various occupations, achieved sufficient solidarity in the late eighteenth century to transform their science into a profession during the nineteenth century.

Third, examining the response of the newly formed German chemical community to Lavoisier’s antiphlogistic theory corroborates the importance of extrinsic factors in scientific revolutions. As early as the late eighteenth century, Lavoisier—evidently the first self-conscious revolutionary in sci-

ence—noted that his allies tended to be physicists, mathematicians, and younger chemists and his foes, older and German chemists.!° Since Lavoisier’s day, scientists have often remarked that responses to competing theories

have not depended solely on their empirical underpinnings, logical coherence, and heuristic value. An explanation for this seemingly aberrant behavior was offered by T. S. Kuhn in his provocative study of scientific revolutions. Because rival theories, he argued, are ultimately incomparable, or ‘“incommensurable,” theoretical allegiances are open to extraneous influences.!! The late eighteenth-century debate between German phlogistonists and oxygenists both confirms and amplifies Kuhn’s interpretation of scientific

revolutions. The protagonists’ stances and the revolution’s timing, it seems clear, were profoundly influenced by the structure and values of the emergent German chemical community. Evidence bearing on the formation of the German chemical community has proved to be abundant. Much relevant material reposes in the manuscripts and publications of the German chemists and their contemporaries. '? More lies in scores of biographies!? and institutional histories.'4 Still more is 10. I. B. Cohen, “The Eighteenth-Century Origins of the Concept of Scientific Revolution,”

Journal of the History of Ideas, 37 (1976), 257-288. Also see H. Guerlac, “The Chemical Revolution: A Word from Monsieur Fourcroy,” Ambix, 23 (1976), 1—4.

11. T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962). H. G. McCann has recently sought to test Kuhn’s theory with a sociological study of the antiphlogistic revolution in France. See his Chemistry Transformed: The Paradigmatic Shift from Phlogiston to Oxygen (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1978). Though McCann makes an admirable attempt at quantification, his analysis is flawed—see my “A Test of the Kuhnian Theory,” Science, 204 (1979), 744-745. 12. For a fairly comprehensive yet rather slapdash guide to the publications of eighteenthcentury German chemists, see the Chemisch-Pharmazeutisches Bio- und Bibliographikon, ed. F, Ferchl (Mittenwald: Nemayer, 1937). 13. Among the numerous biographies referenced in the chemists’ profiles in Appendix I, I am particularly impressed by B. von Freyberg, “Johann Gottlob Lehmann (1719-1767): Ein Arzt, Chemiker, Metallurg, Bergmann, Mineraloge und grundlegender Geologe,” Erlanger Forschungen: Reihe B: Naturwissenschaften, 1 (1955); G. E. Dann, Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743-1817): Ein deutscher Apotheker und Chemiker: Sein Weg und seine Leistung (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1958); W. Herrmann, “Bergrat Henckel: Ein Wegbereiter der Bergakademie,” Freiberger Forschungshefte: Kultur und Technik, D37 (1962); I. Mieck, “Sigismund Friedrich Hermbstaedt (1760 bis 1833): Chemiker und Technologe in Berlin,” 7Technik-Geschichte, 32 (1965), 325-382; and W. Gotz, “Zu Leben und Werk von Johann Bartholomaus Trommsdorff (1770—1837),” Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Pharmazie, 16 (1977). 14. Among the many studies bearing on chemistry’s place in the schools listed in Appendix

II, the most valuable are H. Lehmann, Das Collegium medico-chirurgicum in Berlin als Lehrstdtte der Botanik und der Pharmacie (Diss., Berlin University; Berlin: Triltsch & Huther, 1936); G.~A. Ganss, Geschichte der pharmazeutischen Chemie an der Universitat Gottingen,

Introduction / 4

scattered through thematic studies dealing with the diffusion of a rationalutilitarian concept of chemistry in Germany,'> the growing activity of German pharmacists in chemical instruction and research,'° the establishment of German periodicals devoted to chemistry and related subjects,!’ and the reception by German chemists of Lavoisier’s theory. !®

Using evidence from these various sources, I propose a cultural-institutional explanation of the formation of the German chemical community and a conflict interpretation of its members’ full realization of their new social solidarity. In Chapters II, III, and IV, I maintain that educated and powerful Germans, as a consequence of their growing approval of the Enlightenment and enlightened governance, provided chemistry with increasing moral, material, and manpower support between 1720 and 1780. In Chapters V and VI, I go on to argue that Crell, by drawing upon chemistry’s Enlightenment audience for support, developed his new chemical journal (founded 1778) into a forum for German chemists and thereby fostered their coalescence into the German chemical community. And in Chapters VII and VIII, I analyze the antiphlogistic revolution in Germany, showing that the new community’s structure and values shaped this theoretical upheaval and suggesting that Gerdargestellt in ihrem Zusammenhang mit der allgemeinen und der medizinischen Chemie (Diss. , G6ttingen University; Marburg: Euker, 1937); G. Kallinich, Das Vermdchtnis Georg Ludwig

Claudius Rousseaus an die Pharmazie: Zweihundert Jahre Pharmazie an der Universitat Ingolstadt-Landshut-Miinchen 1760—1960 (Munich: Govi, 1960); W. Oberhummer, “Die Chemie

an der Universitat Wien in der Zeit von 1749 bis 1848 und die Inhaber des Lehrstuhls fiir Chemie und Botanik,” Studien zur Geschichte der Universitat Wien, 3 (1965), 126~202; E. Mayr, “Die Entwicklung der Chemie und der pharmazeutischen Chemie an der Universitat Leipzig” (Diss., Leipzig University, 1965); A. Hampel, “Die beiden Lehrstihle fir Chemie und fiir Pathologie an der Erfurter Medizinischen Fakultat wahrend der ersten Halfte des 18. Jahrhunderts” (Diss., Erfurt Medizinische Akademie, 1968); and C. Meinel, “Die Chemie an der Universitat Marburg seit Beginn des 19. Jahrhunderts: Ein Beitrag zu ihrer Entwicklung als Hochschulfach,” Academia Marburgensis, 3 (1978). 15. W. Strube, “Die Auswirkung der neuen Auffassung von der Chemie in Deutschland in der Zeit von 1745 bis 1785” (Diss., Leipzig University, 1961); E. Schmauderer, “Chemiatriker, Scheidekiinstler und Chemisten der Barock- und der friihen Aufklarungszeit,” in Der Chemiker

im Wandel der Zeiten, ed. E. Schmauderer (Weinheim: Verlag Chemie, 1973), pp. 101-205; and H. Schimank, “Der Chemiker im Zeitalter der Aufklarung und des Empire (1720-—1820),” in ibid., pp. 207-258. 16. G. E. Dann, “Berlin als ein Zentrum chemischer und pharmazeutischer Forschung im 18. Jahrhundert,’ Pharmazeutische Zeitung, 112 (1967), 189-196; D. Pohl, Zur Geschichte der pharmazeutischen Privatinstitute in Deutschland von 1779 bis 1873 (Diss., Marburg University; Marburg: Mauersberger, 1972); B. H. Gustin, ““The Emergence of the German Chemical Profession 1790-1867” (Diss., University of Chicago, 1975); and E. Hickel, “Der Apothekerberuf als Keimzelle naturwissenschaftlicher Berufe in Deutschland,” Pharmazie in unserer Zeit, 6 (1977), 15-22. 17. H. Harff, Die Entwicklung der deutschen chemischen Fachzeitschrift: Ein Beitrag zur Wesensbestimmung der wissenschaftliche Fachzeitschrift (Berlin: Verlag Chemie, 1941); and D.von Engelhardt, “Die chemischen Zeitschriften des Lorenz von Crell,” in Indices naturwissenschaftlich-medizinischer Periodica bis 1850, ed. A. Geus, vol. II (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1974).

18. G. W. A. Kahlbaum and A. Hoffmann, “Die Einfiihrung der Lavoisier’schen Theorie im besonderen in Deutschland,” Monographieen aus der Geschichte der Chemie, \ (1897); and H. Vopel, “Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem chemischen System Lavoisiers in Deutschland am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts” (Diss., Leipzig University, 1972).

Introduction / 5 man chemists came away from this conflict more fully aware of their collective responsibility and power as custodians of German chemistry. The entire argument presupposes that the formation of the German chemical community was essentially a social process. So far as I can discern, German chemists did not form into a national discipline-oriented community as a result of embracing a common paradigm for investigating and interpreting

chemical phenomena. The views that they came to share during the eighteenth century—confidence in chemistry’s usefulness and profundity, enthusiasm for chemical experimentation, pride in their identity as German chem-

ists—were more akin to an ideology than a Kuhnian paradigm. However, this shared viewpoint, which derived from their shared experiences of trying to promote, advance, and harness chemistry within the context of German culture and institutions, did not in itself engender social solidarity. So long as they lacked a reliable means of communicating with one another, German chemists oriented themselves to local or cosmopolitan audiences. Only after Crell’s journal provided them with a forum did they begin thinking of the collectivity of German chemists as their most important reference group. Notwithstanding its social origins, the newly formed community soon proved capable of influencing the cognitive development of German chemistry by conditioning, perhaps in some instances dictating, its members’ responses to Lavoisier’s chemical system. The community’s formation intensified consensual pressures among German chemists, thereby introducing a significant new factor into the discipline’s development in Germany. Three appendices follow the text. Appendix I presents sixty-five profiles of chemists who were active in Germany during the eighteenth century. Appendix II presents fifty-five institutional histories dealing with chemistry’s place in German schools and academies during the eighteenth century. And Appendix III presents a master list of the subscribers to Crell’s Chemische

Annalen between 1784 and 1791. These appendices are intended to give readers an opportunity to check and, perhaps, to refine or refute my observations about the growth of social support for chemistry in eighteenth-century Germany. They are also intended to provide scholars who wish to look at related scientific, medical, and technological developments in Germany between roughly 1675 and 1825 with useful information and tools for their inquiries.

By way of setting the stage for all that follows, I shall now characterize cultural conditions in early eighteenth-century Germany and delineate the varied aims of self-styled chemists working within that milieu. Around 1700 “Germany” was a quarrelsome congeries of some three hundred principalities and imperial cities linked together not only by a common mother tongue but also by various feudal obligations, military alliances, and commercial dealings. The most pronounced cultural cleavage within this ramshackle nation was still between Catholics and Protestants. In the Catholic territories literacy was low, the lay intelligentsia was inconsequential, and the universities were

Introduction / 6

moribund. In the Protestant lands, by contrast, conditions favored a compar-

atively spirited and open intellectual life. Thanks to the many schools founded during and since the Reformation to promote lay Bible reading, literacy was fairly high, especially in the towns. Thanks to opportunities for employment in towns and some state bureaucracies, the lay intelligentsia was sizable and, in cultural matters, increasingly influential. Thanks to the growing importance attached to religious and secular learning, the universities, especially those in Leipzig, Jena, and Halle, were moderately cosmopolitan and progressive. Extolling the fecundity of this culture, one Leipzig graduate, Hamburg school rector J. H. Hitbner, exclaimed in 1712 that

during the last fifty or so years, there has been such a marked increase in the number of learned sciences that it would be necessary to double the number of university chairs for every discipline to be taught separately. Moreover, so much has been added to each science that the old natural philosophers, mathematicians, and historians, if they could rise again with all their knowledge, would only pass for poor beginners. Furthermore, the population of the empire of learning has increased so greatly that now, wherever one turns, there are swarms of learned people and many lowly sciences which used to be left to mechanics are cultivated by literati. Finally, the

: present century is imbuéd with so much curiosity that everyone wants to know everything, or at least something about everything. Because these eager learners could not reach their goal so long as Latin had a monopoly in all learned matters, the Germans have followed the example of other nations and translated almost all the sciences into their mother tongue. !? To judge from his enthusiasm, Huibner’s Germany—1i.e., Protestant, urban Germany—nmust have been, by the standards of the early eighteenth century, a relatively congenial setting for scholarly inquiry, scientific investigation, and learned charlantry.”° In fact, self-styled chemists were fairly numerous in Protestant Germany. The alchemists, at least the honest ones, were pursuing noble metals, won19. Hubner’s remarks appeared in the foreword to his popular medical-technological-scientific lexicon, the baroque title of which further reveals the interests of progressive Germans of the early eighteenth century. See his Curieuses und Reales Natur-Kunst-Berg-Gewerck- und Handlungs-Lexicon darinnen nicht nur die in der Philosophie, Physic, Medicin, Botanic, Chymie, Anatomie, Chirurgie und Apothecker-Kunst, wie auch in der Mathematic, Astronomie, Mechanic, Birgerlichen und Kriegs-Baukunst, Schifffahrten, etc., Ferner bey den galanten und Ritterlichen Exercitien; bey Bergwercken, Jdgerey, Fischerey, Gdrtnerey; wie auch in der Kauffmannschafft, bey Buchhalten und in Wechsel-Sachen, bey Kiinstlern und Handwerckern gebrduchliche Termini technici oder Kunst-Worter, nach Alphabetischer Ordnung ausfiihrlich beschrieben werden, 3d ed. (Leipzig: Gleditsch, 1717), pp. [iti-iv]. 20. Of course, even in the most progressive towns relatively few of the inhabitants had a taste for reading. See, for instance, R. Engelsing, Analphabetentum und Lektiire: Zur Sozialgeschichte des Lesens in Deutschland zwischen feudaler und industrieller Gesellschaft (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1973).

Introduction / 7

drous panaceas, and transcendent knowledge. They worked in secrecy and, if they reported their endeavors at all, did so in cryptic writings so that un-

worthy adepts could not debase the art. Such precautions were evidently necessary, for one rhymester complained that

Everyone wants to be an alchemist; Young men and old, the village idiots, The soldiers, priests, and merry politicians, Shorn monks, old wives, and broken-down physicians.! Characteristic of the serious alchemist in early eighteenth-century Protestant Germany was the wandering pietistic physician, J. C. Dippel. We find him as a young man, delving into the secrets of metals at a country estate near Darmstadt around 1703 and evaluating Count Cajetano’s gold recipes for Prussia’s Frederick I in 1707. In later years, he was extolling his medicaments in 1728, selling a “particular arcanum chemicum” to Hesse-Darmstadt’s Ernst Ludwig in 1732, and prophesying seventy-five more years of life for himself shortly before dying in 1733.72 More prosaic than the alchemists, the iatrochemists of early eighteenthcentury Protestant Germany regarded chemistry as a handmaiden to medi-

cine. Though some still propounded the bold chemical interpretations of health and sickness advanced in the preceding two centuries, these men were no longer pursuing physiological insights in their laboratories. Instead, they were content to seek novel drugs or cheaper methods of preparing existing remedies. J. H. Jungken, town physician in Frankfurt am Main, was a representative figure. Certain that he, as a physician, knew best how to prepare potent chemical remedies, he engaged in a sideline drug business. He was so successful in selling his products that a Nuremburg barber charged him with

infringing an imperial patent in 1702 and five Frankfurt apothecaries denounced him for dispensing medicines in 1726.?° Shunning the alchemists and iatrochemists, a growing number of chemists

in early eighteenth-century Protestant Germany insisted that chemistry be approached as a rational science with wide-ranging applications. A few, inspired by the mechanical philosophy which prominent French and English chemists had espoused since the 1660s, believed that chemical phenomena could be explained in terms of atomic shapes and motions.** Most, however, 21. For this doggerel, the essence of which was caught for me by Raymond Oliver, see Pantaleon [F. Gassmann], Examen alchymisticum . . . (1676), quoted in Deutsches Theatrum Chemicum, auf welchem der beriihmtesten Philosophen und Alchymisten Schrifften . . . vorgestellet werden, ed. F. Roth-Scholtz, 3 vols. (Nuremberg: Felssecker, 1728-1732), I:290. My brief characterization of alchemy in early eighteenth-century Germany is, for want of adequate secondary studies, based on a wide variety of sources, including Roth-Scholtz’s collection of alchemical writings. 22. For a biographical profile of Dippel, see Appendix I. 23. For a biographical profile of Jiingken, see Appendix I. 24. The chief advocates of a mechanistic approach to chemistry in early eighteenth-century Germany were E. W. von Tschirnhaus, G. W. Leibniz, and F. Hoffmann. In 1700 Tschirnhaus, who had arranged for a German translation of N. Lemery’s text, recommended this work on account of its “methodical” approach. See his Griindliche Anleitung zu niitzlichen Wissenschaf-

Introduction / 8 rejected this reductionist program. Working within the framework established by Libavius, they regarded chemistry as an independent science with its own methods, concepts, and domain.?> Chief among the champions of the antireductionist viewpoint was G. E. Stahl, professor of medicine at Halle University from 1694 to 1714, then Royal Physician in Berlin until his death in

1734 (Figure 1).7¢ In Berlin, he waged such a vigorous campaign for his version of the rational-utilitarian approach to chemistry that J. F. Henckel hailed him as a “clear-sighted Columbus” in 1722 and another disciple credited him with revealing chemistry’s “true essentialness, effectiveness, attractiveness, and usefulness” in 1734.7? Ultimately the approach to chemistry

advocated by Stahl and his disciples became the rallying platform of the German chemical community. Stahlian rhetoric warrants, therefore, a full exposition. According to Stahl, “true chemistry” was “a rational, deliberate, and comprehensible investigation and processing” of natural substances that led to “fundamental knowledge.” The true chemist, consequently, was inspired by a “truly rational enthusiasm for research,’ a desire to find the “true knowledge of the material composition of natural substances,” and an eagerness to illuminate “the truth of natural composition for its own sake.” As he made

his inquiries, he could expect “intellectual pleasure, clear knowledge, and moderate advantages and benefits.’ He could, for example, use “rational chemical processes” to make appropriate changes in the strength of medicines. Or, more importantly, he could use chemistry to understand and improve mineral processing, distilling, brewing, and “many other generally useful things.” 28 ten, facsimile of the 1729 ed. (Stuttgart: Frommann, 1967), p. 52. Leibniz and G. E. Stahl crossed pens over the value of mechanics in medicine and chemistry in 1708. For a general analysis of their exchange, see L. J. Rather and J. B. Frerichs, ‘““The Leibniz-Stahl Controversy,’ Clio Medica, 3 (1968), 21-40; 5 (1970), 56-67. The origins of Hoffmann’s corpuscularianism are illuminated in K. E. Rothschuh, “Studien zu Friedrich Hoffmann (1660-1742), Zweiter Teil: Hoffmann, Descartes und Leibniz,’ Sudhoffs Archiv, 60 (1976), 235-270. Hoffmann’s unflagging loyalty to the mechanical philosophy was manifest in his recommendation of 1738 that medical students use the texts of Lemery and H. Boerhaave to learn chemistry. See his “Medicus Politicus,” in his Opuscula Pathologico-Practica (Venice: Balleon, 1739), p. 278. For a biographical profile of Hoffmann, see Appendix I. 25. The transmission and transformation of Libavius’s view of chemistry in the German universities during the seventeenth century is, I understand, being investigated by Hannaway. Recently A. G. Debus had made a case for the influence of the Paracelsian tradition on eighteenth-century chemists. See his The Chemical Philosophy: Paracelsian Science and Medicine in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, vol. II (New York: Science History, 1977). Stahl’s overt hostility to Paracelsianism (see below) suggests that, in his case at least, such influence was not very strong. 26. For a biographical profile of Stahl, see Appendix I. The best account of Stahl’s life and mature views on chemistry is I. Strube, “Der Beitrag Georg Ernst Stahls (1659-1734) zur Entwicklung der Chemie” (Diss., Leipzig University, 1960). 27. Henckel, Flora Saturnizans, die Verwandschafft des Pflanzen mit dem Mineral-Reich, nach der Natural-Historie und Chymie (Leipzig: Martini, 1722), p. 419; and the anonymous translator’s foreword to Stahl, Zymotechnia fundamentalis, oder Allgemeine grund-erkanntniss der Gahrungs-Kunst (Frankfurt a. M.: Montag, 1734), p. [vii]. 28. For these and subsequent quotations from Stahl, see his Zufdllige Gedancken und niitzliche Bedencken tiber den Streit, von dem so genannten Sulphure, und zwar sowol dem

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Barone eo RO AL ss ee RRR ae Oe i ee gia mtn angen ete Ba Sia ae apes: 210 psec ceri statpeecee Sear aeT By car Booties Raat aomate semanas ee csienies ppt oe LOL DE ea eS eS ne Zaraaiss BRR poerones aici See sae

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ees ee Bao ee ne pe: Sa ee, |2 ee Be ee aeee Be Soo $— ee Se == e osfZ2s ae agee =eeiSsake ee eShea ££ rouge: ee Eeeee: 2= Reviewing the new nomenclature, J. F. Gmelin remarked that “in Germany at least, this system is not yet regarded as proven or firmly grounded, despite the ability of those who have introduced it. Consequently the terminology runs the danger of falling in a heap - with the system.’?¢ J. G. Leonhardi suggested that Lavoisier and his friends denied the existence of phlogiston not “from conviction, but rather from obstinacy and love of novelty.’?’ Gren wrote of “the deceptive and appealing 22. For the availability of Lavoisier’s books and articles in French and German, see D. I. Duveen and H. S. Klickstein, A Bibliography of the Works of Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (Lon-

don: Dawson, 1954). Summaries of Lavoisier’s views were also available by 1788 in A. F. Fourcroy, Handbuch der Naturgeschichte und der Chemie, trans. P. Loos, with notes by J. C. Wiegleb, vols. I-II (Erfurt: Keyser, 1786); and M. van Marum, Beschreibung einen ungemein grossen Elektrisier-Maschine, trans. H. W. C. Eschenbach, 1st continuation (Leipzig: Schwickert,

1788), pp. 47-72. 23. While traveling in England and Holland during 1787/88, Gottling recognized the need for German chemists to become familiar with Lavoisier’s theory. See his “Lavoisier’s Theorie iiber Verbrennung, das Athemholen der Thiere, Entstehung der Sauren, und Verkalkung der Metalle, als kurze Uebersicht zusammengetragen,’ Almanach oder Taschenbuch fiir Scheidekiinstler und Apotheker, 10 (1789), 79-120, which appeared in the fall of 1788. 24. Letter to H6pfner, Magazin fiir die Naturkunde Helvetiens, | (1787), 240-244; reprinted in the Bibliothek der neuesten physisch-chemischen . . . Literatur, 1, no. 2 (1787), 54-55. In reprinting the letter, Hermbstaedt deleted some inaccurate statements about Lavoisier’s theory and the assertion that all theorizing was a waste of time. 25. Hermbstaedt, review of R. Kirwan’s An Essay on Phlogiston (1787), Bibliothek der neuesten physisch-chemischen . . . Literatur, 1, no. 3 (1788), 274. 26. [Gmelin], review of L. B. Guyton de Morveau et al.’s Méthode de Nomenclature Chimique (1787), Gottingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen (5 January 1788), 15-16. 27. P. J. Macquer, Chymisches Worterbuch; oder, Allgemeine Begriffe der Chymie nach alphabetischer Ordnung, ed. and trans. J. G. Leonhardi, 2d German ed. of 2d French ed., vol. II (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1787), p. 287.

The “French Chemistry” / 103 sophistries of the French Chemisten.”?8 And J. C. Wiegleb made light of “the

completely improbable hypotheses of Lavoisier.” *? Kahlbaum and Hoffmann notwithstanding, nationalistic antipathy to French culture certainly conditioned the initial response of the German chemical community to Lavoisier’s system. It made most German chemists averse to learning the theory. And it deterred the few who did so from going on to submit the theory to rigorous testing.

FROM CONSENSUS TO SECTARIANISM (MID-1789 TO MID-1792) Starting in the summer of 1789, more and more German chemists recognized that the antiphlogistic system could not be dismissed. Lavoisier’s publication

of the 7raité made it easy to learn his views. And Lavoisier’s triumph in France and gains in Britain and the Netherlands made it clear that his theory had a possibility of emerging triumphant. As time passed, the new French theory began to make inroads in Germany itself. In the summer of 1791, Crell informed an Italian colleague that, though “the old system does not

want for defenders such as Westrumb, Klaproth, Gren, and Wiegleb, .. . the antiphlogistic theory has found partisans in Hermbstaedt, Girtanner, Link, etc.’°° About the same time Wiegleb decided to compose a lengthy defense of phlogiston, because “Lavoisier’s new chemical system has recently received the approval of several [men] in Germany.”?! And C. Girtanner observed that the controversy had divided “the chemists into two different sects.”3? By the spring of 1792, H. F. Link felt sufficiently confident to crow that

the antiphlogistic theory . . . was originally despised and misunderstood by German chemists. As is only just, it is now getting revenge—the number of its adherents grows daily, many of its most important opponents now give it their approval, and it threatens the old chemistry with a complete overthrow, at least a total transformation. *°

A month later Hermbstaedt proudly announced that M. H. Klaproth favored Lavoisier’s system.*+ The conversion of Germany’s most respected analyst 28. Gren, “Ueber Luft, Brennstoff und Metallkalke,’ in J. F. Westrumb, Kleine physikalisch-chemischen Abhandlungen, III, pt. 1, p. 417. 29. A. F. Fourcroy, Handbuch der Naturgeschichte und der Chemie, p. 393. 30. Crell, letter to L. V. Brugnatelli (28 August 1791), Annali di Chimica, 3 (1791), 47. 31. Wiegleb, “Beweissgriinde des gelauterten Stahlischen Lehrbegrifs vom Phlogiston, und der Grundlosigkeit des neuen chemischen Systems der Franzosen,’ Chemische Annalen, no. 2 1791), 388. 2 'Girtanner , review of W. Higgins’s A Comparative View of the Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Systems (1791), Géttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen (20 October 1791), 1681. 33. A. L. Lavoisier, Physikalisch-chemische Schriften, vol. IV, ed. H. F. Link (Greifswald: Rose, preface 1 March 1792, publ. 1792), p. iii. 34. A. L. Lavoisier, System der antiphlogistische Chemie, trans. S. F. Hermbstaedt, vol. I (Berlin and Stettin: Nicolai, foreword 18 April 1792, publ. 1792), p. [x].

The “French Chemistry” / 104

established that the French theory had real prospects of emerging from the contest with the German chemical community’s allegiance. But why, once they could easily familiarize themselves with Lavoisier’s system, did most German chemists remain phlogistonists? And why did a few German chemists, and several friends of chemistry, decide to become antiphlogistonists? Kahlbaum and Hoffmann demonstrated that such decisions were variously influenced by doubt about the underpinnings of the French theory or by respect for its achievements and promise. But they failed to demonstrate that theoretical allegiances were independent of other influences. Considered in the context of Kuhn’s interpretation of scientific revolutions, this failure is not surprising. If scientists experience rival theories as incommensurable paradigms, their allegiances are likely to be subject to influences that are extrinsic to the theories. This hypothesis is supported by a close look at phlogistic loyalties and antiphlogistic conversions in Germany between mid-1789 and mid-1792. Phlogistic Loyalties Cultural nationalism, which, as we have seen, influenced most German chemists to dismiss Lavoisier’s theory between mid-1785 and mid-1789, con-

tinued to exercise an influence in the ensuing years. In late 1789 Gren claimed that his version of the phlogiston theory had “rescued the German Stahlian theory of phlogiston.”’*> In 1790 Crell was hoping that a defense “for our phlogiston, which the French want to steal from us” would soon be forth-

coming from “a vollgiiltigen deutschen Chemisten.’*® In 1791 Leonhardi maintained that “the whole new French system still rests on very shaky ground.” %’ In early 1792 Wiegleb commented that it was remarkable that “a German chemist” should be “‘a proselyte of the French.”?® And that summer, J. F. Westrumb, who had earlier demeaned “the often lightweight discoveries of our neighbors,” proclaimed that he was a “zealous adherent of the German or Stahlian school.” %?

Besides cultural nationalism, peer pressure within the German chemical community motivated phlogistic loyalties. The chemist who adhered to prevailing opinion could expect that his work would be evaluated according to customary criteria. By contrast, the chemist who failed to conform could anticipate a severe reception to all his endeavors. In 1791 peer pressure compelled the antiphlogistonist Hermbstaedt to concede that it would have been 35. F. A. C. Gren, Systematisches Handbuch der gesammten Chemie, vol. Il, pt. 2 (Halle: Waisenhaus, preface 20 November 1789, publ. 1790), p. 78. 36. Crell, letter to K. G. Hagen, in A. Hagen, “K. G. Hagen’s Leben und Wirken,” Neue preussische Provinzial-Bldtter, 9 (1850), 84; and L. C., review of H. F. Link’s Einige Bemerkungen tiber das Phlogiston (1790), Chemische Annalen, no. 2 (1790), 478. 37. Macquer, Chymisches Worterbuch, vol. VII (1791), p. 33. 38. [Wiegleb], review of Hermbstaedt’s Systematischer Grundriss der allgemeinen Experimentalchemie (1791), Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, 106 (1792), 217-220. 39. Westrumb, letter to Crell (1 October 1790), Chemische Annalen, no. 2 (1790), 522; and

aon pomerkungen, verschiedene Gegenstande der neuen Chemie betreffend,” ibid., no. 2

The “French Chemistry” / 105

“impertinent” to have based his new textbook solely on Lavoisier’s system.*° The following year it induced young J. B. Trommsdorff to declare that “I am no antiphlogistonist” when, for the sake of brevity, he called a new neutral salt discovered by Berthollet “sel oxygéne.”’*! Indeed, the pressure to con-

form was such that most of the community’s ambitious young recruits remained phlogistonists throughout the first phase of the German antiphlogistic revolution.*2

Not only cultural nationalism and peer pressure but also status anxiety inclined some of the German chemical community’s informal leaders to stand by phlogiston. They felt that a threat to doctrines they had been propounding

for years was a threat to their legitimacy as leaders. Of course, they could hardly give direct expression to such feelings. Still in 1791, as the jeopardy became more palpable, they revealed their vested interest in phlogiston. Wie-

gleb, the community’s doyen, urged his colleagues to avoid “discovery mania’ and “excessive partiality for innovations.’*? Crell, the community’s convener, argued against the new terminology on the grounds that young chemists still needed the old terminology to read the indispensable works of their forerunners.*4 And Westrumb, whose recent discovery that powdered metals burn in chlorine gas had reinforced his high stature in the community, assured his fellow chemists that “we need fear no reform of our concepts, no overthrow of our painstakingly built system.’* Thus, those German chemists who decided to remain loyal to phlogiston were not motivated by skepticism alone. They were also influenced by pride in the German origin of the concept of phlogiston, by repugnance for the French origin of the antiphlogistic system, by sensitivity to prevailing opinion among their peers, and by fear of losing hard-earned positions of leadership. 40. Hermbstaedt, Systematischer Grundriss der allgemeinen Experimentalchemie, vol. I (Berlin: Rottmann, foreword 26 April 1791, publ. 1791), p. vi. 41. Trommsdorff, “Ueber das neue Neutralsalz aus dephlogistisirter Salzsaure und Pflanzenalkali,’ Chemische Annalen, no. 1 (1792), 423. 42. Among the younger recruits to chemistry who remained loyal to phlogistic doctrines during the early 1790s were J. B. Richter (b. 1762), G. F. Hildebrandt (b. 1764), F. Wurzer (b. 1765), J. B. Trommsdorff (b. 1770), W. A. E. Lampadius (b. 1772), and C. H. Pfaff (b. 1773). For biographical profiles of these men, all of whom eventually achieved some renown as chemists, see Appendix I. 43. Wiegleb, Geschichte des Wachstums und der Erfindungen in der Chemie in der neuern Zeit, I1:424, 502. His disciple Hermbstaedt complained that if this attitude prevailed, if ““sophistry continued to distort new discoveries . . . as it had during the last decade, chemistry would not attain its proper goal in 1000 years.” See his review of Wiegleb’s book, Bibliothek der neuesten physisch-chemischen . . . Literatur, 4, no. 1 (1792), 121. 44. Crell, “Ueber die Nothwendigkeit einer chemisch-technischen Sprach-Veranderung, und ihre Gesetze,’ Chemische Annalen, no. | (1791), 335. 45. Westrumb, Geschichte der neu entdeckten Metallisirung der einfachen Erden (Hanover: Helwing, preface 5 March 1791, publ. 1791), p. 142. For Westrumb’s discovery that metals burn in chlorine, see his “Neue Bemerkungen tiber einige merkwiirdige Erscheinungen durch die dephlogistisierte Salzsaure,’ Chemische Annalen, no. 1 (1790), 3-21, 109-129. Like Westrumb, Crell believed this discovery provided powerful confirmation for phlogiston. See Crell, letter to G. V. M. Fabbroni (4 March 1790), Library of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia; and Crell, “Vorbericht,’” Chemische Annalen, no. 2 (1790), iii.

The “French Chemistry” / 106

Antiphlogistic Conversions If cultural nationalism, peer pressure, and status concerns helped motivate phlogistic loyalties, we would expect the early German followers of Lavoisier to have been men who were less susceptible than most German chemists to such influences. This expectation is borne out by the pattern of antiphlogistic conversions in Germany.

During the years 1789 and 1790, Lavoisier’s theory received a warmer welcome in Vienna than elsewhere in Germany. In fact, the antiphlogistic revolution passed its turning point there by the summer of 1790 (see Table 20).4° One reason for Lavoisier’s rapid acceptance in Vienna was that cosmopolitanism characterized the cultural life of the polyglot Hapsburg capital.4” Accordingly, I. von Born, N. J. von Jacquin, and J. A. Scherer, initiators of the Hapsburg antiphlogistic movement, were not taken aback by the system’s provenance. If anything, Jacquin, a Dutchman of French ancestry, and Born, a partisan of the French Revolution, may have counted the theory’s French origin as a point in its favor.*® Allied to the initiators’ cosmopolitanism, or Francophilia, was an indifference to prevailing opinion in the German chemical community. Though all three had names as chemists, Jacquin was better known as a botanist and Born as a mineralogist. Though all three probably kept up with Crell’s journal, Jacquin and Scherer were not even among its occasional contributors. Their marginality within the community gave them considerable license. Jacquin, for instance, had been sufficiently independent to question the presence of phlogiston in metals during the 1780s and so isolated as to receive no comment whatsoever from beyond the walls

of Vienna.*? Thus, not only immersed in a cosmopolitan cultural environ-

ment but also unconstrained by loyalty to or pressure from the German 46. J. Haubelt has drawn attention to the early acceptance of Lavoisier’s theory in the Hapsburg Empire. See his “Les Idées de Lavoisier en Europe centrale au xviii® siécle,’ XII* Congrés international d’histoire des sciences, 1968: Résumés des communications, p. 92. In 1793-1794 Viennese chemists were the first in Europe to use the new French nomenclature in an official

pharmacopoeia. See K. Ganzinger, “Die Ubernahme von Lavoisiers neuer chemischer Nomenklatur in das 6sterreichische Arzneibuch von 1794,” Sudhoffs Archiv, 58 (1974), 303-311. 47. For lively descriptions of Vienna, see F. Nicolai, Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz im Jahre 1781, vol. TI (Berlin and Stettin: Nicolai, 1784); H. Sander, Beschreibung seiner Reisen, vol. II (Leipzig: Jacobaer, 1784), pp. 465-519; and R. Townson, Travels in Hungary with a Short Account of Vienna in the Year 1793 (London: Rob-

inson, 1797), pp. 2-31. 48. One indication of their cosmopolitanism was that Born, Jacquin, and Scherer were still publishing much of their work in Latin and French. For Born’s radicalism, see, for instance, R. Townson, Travels in Hungary, pp. 410—421. For profiles of Born and Jacquin, see Appendix I. 49. Jacquin based his argument against the presence of phlogiston in metals primarily on the fact that mercury calx could be reduced without a reducing agent. See his Anfangsegriinde der medicinisch-practischen Chymie (Vienna: Wappler, 1783), pp. 322-329, 335~337. Though he doubted that phlogiston was a component of metals, Jacquin did regard it as a constituent of sulfur and other combustibles (pp. 289-299). The only persons to comment on his views in print were his students N. C. Molitor and Scherer, both of whom adopted his position. See J. Ingen-Housz, Vermischte Schriften physisch-medicinischen Inhalts, trans. N. C. Molitor, 2d ed., vol. II (Vienna: Wappler, 1784), pp. 27-32, 101-103; and J. A. Scherer, Geschichte der Luftgtitepriifungslehre fiir Aerzte und Naturfreunde, vol. I (Vienna: Wappler, 1785), pp. 30— 32, 74-82, 112-113.

The “French Chemistry” / 107

chemical community, Born, Jacquin, and Scherer seem to have found it easy

to recognize the favorable outlook for and scientific merits of Lavoisier’s system. Once they had become antiphlogistonists, lesser figures within their orbits in Vienna, Schemnitz, and Prague seem to have found it even easier to follow their lead.°° Meanwhile, uninfluenced by the Hapsburg antiphlogistonists who made but one indirect effort to spread their views,°! converts were slowly appearing

in Protestant Germany (see Table 21). Like their Hapsburg counterparts, these converts seem not to have been troubled by the French origin of the new theory. Most were living in major intellectual centers which, though far less cosmopolitan than Vienna, were far more receptive to French ideas than the towns inhabited by the majority of German chemists.°? In fact, F. Wolff in Berlin was so receptive to French influences that he exclaimed, “if the new

French discoveries can be completely confirmed, our present system will undergo a revolution just as significant for the chemist and physicist as the French political revolution is for the friend of mankind.”’>? It seems likely, therefore, that attachment to cosmopolitan ideals or enthusiasm for the French Revolution counterpoised whatever sympathies the converts in Protestant Germany may have entertained for the cultural nationalism that was so strong within the German chemical community. More important than the converts’ feelings about the new theory’s French

provenance were their feelings about prevailing opinion among German chemists. Like the Hapsburg antiphlogistonists, several converts in Protestant Germany had no more than peripheral affiliations with the German chemical community. J. T. Mayer, J. F. Blumenbach, C. F. Hindenburg, and G. S. Kliigel were established scientists whose work centered outside chemistry. Link, Wolff, E. W. Martius, A. von Humboldt, and F. Baader were still in the process of defining their interests and making their names. On account

of their marginality, these nine men seem not to have felt beholden to or 50. There is considerable evidence of personal ties among the Hapsburg antiphlogistonists. Jacquin was a former teacher of Born, Mikan, Prochaska, Meidinger, and Scherer. Born was a patron and masonic brother of Ruprecht and Haidinger. Scherer was a former student of Mikan. For further information, see the biographical sources listed in Table 20. 51. Thinking that his friend Ruprecht had reduced the simple earths to metals, Born evidently planned to use Ruprecht’s experiments in support of Lavoisier’s theory once he had gained acceptance for them among German chemists. The stratagem was never implemented, however, because Klaproth and Westrumb demonstrated that Ruprecht’s “new” metals were really compounds of iron (from the crucible) and phosphoric acid (from the bone ash used as a reducing agent). For a fairly complete history of the episode, see Westrumb, Geschichte der neu entdeckten Metallisirung der einfachen Erden. 52. Berlin, Gottingen, Leipzig, and Halle were much more cosmopolitan than such places as Helmstedt (Crell’s residence), Langensalza (Wiegleb’s residence), and Hameln (Westrumb’s residence). Even Freiberg, with its famous mining school, was fairly cosmopolitan. In fact, one of Humboldt’s close friends there was the Spanish antiphlogistonist A. del Rio. See Die Jugendbriefe Alexander von Humboldts 1787-1799, ed. I. Jahn and F. G. Lange (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1973), pp. 161-162, 165. 53. F. L. Schurer, Abhandlung vom Sdurestoff und seiner Verbindung mit andern Ko6rpern, trans. [F. Wolff] (Berlin: Petit, 1790), pp. ix—x. This anonymous translation was inspired by and dedicated to Hermbstaedt, who probably concurred with Wolff’s pro-French sentiments.

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The “French Chemistry” / 112

bound by the chemical community’s prevailing allegiance to phlogiston. Humboldt, for instance, predicted that even though he had become an antiphlogistonist, Gren “will not be very angry—I unfortunately know too little chemistry to make him so.’’** Little was holding them back, therefore, from basing their decisions on their personal impressions of the worth and prospects of Lavoisier’s theory. Much more closely affiliated with the German chemical community than these nine men was the convert Girtanner, a free-lance author of independent means. Prior to enlisting under Lavoisier’s banner, he had made various contributions to Crell’s journal and even squabbled with Westrumb.*> Nonethe-

less, he took such delight in advancing new ideas and challenging popular beliefs that he would have had no qualms about defying prevailing opinion among German chemists, including his former teacher Gmelin. As the physicist G. C. Lichtenberg quipped, “first he wrote about venereal diseases, then [against the French] Revolution and [for] the French chemistry.’ °° In contrast to all these men, the two remaining converts in Protestant Germany——-Hermbstaedt and Klaproth—were leading members of the German chemical community. Both had dedicated themselves to chemistry. Both were among Crell’s most active contributors. Both enjoyed the respect of their fellow German chemists. Yet, both became antiphlogistonists in advance of their community. It was in the summer of 1789 that Hermbstaedt (Figure 5) parted company with his peers, including his former teacher Wiegleb and his friend Klaproth. To judge from his testimony, he did so because he was overwhelmed by the truth of Lavoisier’s theory:

Why is everybody so opposed to a theory that rests on plain facts? Why does everybody try so forcefully to obscure the great truth that lies hidden beneath these facts? Why instead does everybody attempt to preserve a doctrine that is so rarely capable of explaining the physical phenomena as is the theory of phlogiston? I freely confess that until now, when I opposed the theory of the nonexistence of an inflammable principle, yes even when I sought to prove its inadequacy in my lectures, I did so for no other reason than that I did not yet have an exact knowledge of the entire theory. Oh, since the same thing could happen to other Germans as happened to me, I implore my countrymen, I pressingly implore them—study this excellent theory, test it, judge it. And when everyone has done so, I am 54. Humboldt, letter to Gren’s brother-in-law, D. L. G. Karsten, (26 November 1791), in Die Jugendbriefe Alexander von Humboldts 1787-1799, p. 162. 55. Crell once characterized his contributor Girtanner as “an insightful and self-reliant chemist.” See his review of Girtanner’s Dissertatio inauguralis chemica (1782), Die neuesten Entdeckungen in der Chemie, 10 (1783), 148. Girtanner’s quarrel with Westrumb was over the solubility of iron in pure water. See their articles in the Chemische Annalen, no. 1 (1788), 195— 200; no. 2 (1788), 206-218, 300-307. 56. Lichtenberg, letter to A. G. Kastner (25 January 1792), in Lichtenbergs Briefe, ed. A. Leitzmann and G. Schiiddekopf, vol. III (Leipzig: Dieterich, 1904), p. 42.

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The “French Chemistry” / 117

politan centers or their political sympathies, seem to have been less susceptible to German cultural nationalism and more receptive to ideas originating in France. All but three, by virtue of being outside or peripheral to the German chemical community, seem to have been less sensitive to the peer pressure and status concerns that bolstered phlogistic loyalties and, conversely, more responsive to portents of antiphlogistic victory. Once these men perceived merit in Lavoisier’s system, they had little, if any, reason to hesitate about enlisting under his banner. Likewise, despite closer affiliations with the German chemical community, Girtanner was evidently so eager to make a splash and Hermbstaedt so eager to get ahead that neither was about to be deterred by prevailing opinion among German chemists. Hence, as soon as these two sensed that Lavoisier must be correct and victorious, they set themselves up as his German champions. In comparison with all the other early converts, Klaproth was deliberate in his approach to the issue. Even so, he acted with uncharacteristic haste. Responding to pressure from Hermbstaedt, he committed himself before he had ascertained that the theory’s empirical foundations were absolutely solid. Klaproth’s conversion in 1792 ended the first phase of the German antiphlogistic revolution. No longer, as they had done from mid-1785 to mid-1789, could German chemists laugh off Lavoisier. No longer, as they were wont to do after mid-1789, could they presume that phlogistic doctrines would ultimately prevail. The German chemical community had been thrown into a

state of crisis by the conversions of men on its margins, of Girtanner, of Hermbstaedt, and especially of Klaproth. The converts’ independence had undermined the authority of Crell, Westrumb, and Wiegleb. The converts’ arguments had given rise to profound doubts concerning the direction of chemistry in Germany. And the converts’ partisanship, while increasing the German chemists’ awareness of their interdependence, had strained their social solidarity. The stage was set, as we now see, for the decisive conflict in the German antiphlogistic revolution—the debate over the reliability of Lavoisier’s account of the reduction of mercury calx per se.

In the year following Klaproth’s conversion, German chemists came to regard the reduction of mercuric oxide as the crucial experiment for determining the truth or falsity of the entire antiphlogistic system. “The dispute here,” Crell reported to an Italian colleague in October 1793, “is above all over a single experiment; that is to say, whether or not the oxide of mercury prepared by fire naturally yields pure air.”! Crell and other German phlogistonists questioned Lavoisier’s account of the experiment, while German antiphlogistonists staunchly defended its reliability. The present chapter recounts this central episode in the German antiphlogistic revolution.? As the story unfolds, it lends strength to the thesis that German chemists had come to constitute a national discipline-oriented community by the late eighteenth century. In tempo and intensity the debate over the reduction experiment was quite unlike the desultory controversy between the proponents of pinguic acid and fixed air two decades earlier. The phlogistic and antiphlogistic spokesmen oriented themselves neither to local intellectuals, whose confidence was easy to win, nor to foreign chemists, whose shift to Lavoisier was nearing completion, but rather to their fellow German chemists. In sympathy with their peers’ empiricism, they tacitly agreed to focus on the accuracy of Lavoisier’s description of the reduction experiment. This is not to say that the rival spokesmen limited themselves to empirical matters. Too much was at stake. They could not refrain from affirming their own competence, judgment, and impartiality. Nor could they resist raising insidious questions about their rivals’ ability, discernment, and integrity. Before long, the contestants were deeply suspicious of one another. At loggerheads, they enlisted witnesses for their experiments, even requested physicists to carry out independent tests. Though the debate was a struggle for the German chemical 1. Crell, letter to G. V. M. Fabbroni (4 October 1793), Library of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.

2. In contrast to A. N. Scherer, who assigned a decisive role to the dispute over mercuric oxide, G. W. A. Kahlbaum and A. Hoffmann virtually ignored this debate in their history of the German antiphlogistic revolution. See Scherer, “Friedrich Albrecht Carl Gren,” Allge-

meines Journal der Chemie, 2 (1799), 394-395; and Kahlbaum and Hoffmann, “Die Einfiihrung der Lavoisier’schen Theorie im besonderen in Deutschland,” Monographieen aus der Geschichte der Chemie, 1 (1897). H. Vopel describes the dispute over the reduction experiment but, ignoring its social-psychological dimension, fails to recognize its decisive role in the antiphlogistic revolution. See H. Vopel, “Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem chemischen System Lavoisiers in Deutschland am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts” (Diss., Leipzig University, 1972), pp. 108-124.

The Notorious Reduction Experiment / 119

community’s allegiance, it roused such passions that, for a time, the adverSaries were compelled to look to outsiders for arbitration.

LAVOISIER AND MERCURIC OXIDE Prior to the 1770s, the compound that we know as mercuric oxide was regarded as two different substances because there were two methods for preparing it. The direct but tedious method was to simmer mercury in an open vessel. Gradually the oxide formed on the surface as a red powder. So prepared, mercuric oxide was called mercurius praecipitatus per se, mercury calx per se, and other similar names, because the mercury seemed to be making the transformation by itself. The second method, though indirect, required much less effort. One dissolved mercury in nitric acid, evaporated the liquid to obtain mercuric nitrate, and then decomposed this nitrate by heating to obtain mercuric oxide. When prepared in this way, it was called mercurius praecipitatus ruber, red precipitate of mercury, and other such names.° During the 1770s and 1780s, chemists began thinking of mercury calx per se and the red precipitate of mercury as one and the same substance. French chemists led the way. P. Bayen and Lavoisier observed that, when reduced by heat alone, both the calx and the precipitate evolved gas as they turned into mercury. In suggesting that the substances were identical, Bayen pointed out that they yielded the same quantity of gas; Lavoisier, that they yielded the same kind of gas.+ The identity of mercury calx per se and the red precipitate of mercury was not the only conclusion drawn from the reduction experiment. After all, here was a calx, a metal supposedly bereft of its phlogiston, that could be returned to its metallic form simply by heating. Success did not depend on the presence of charcoal or any other source of phlogiston. In the years 1775 and 1776, Bayen and Lavoisier concluded that phlogiston did not participate in the reduction of mercury calx.> In the ensuing years Lavoisier went further. 3. For the history of mercuric oxide before the 1770s, see Gmelins Handbuch der anorganische Chemie, 8th ed., system no. 34, pt. A, issue 1 (Weinheim/Bergstrasse: Verlag Chemie, 1960), pp. 41-46; and C. E. Perrin, “Prelude to Lavoisier’s Theory of Calcination: Some Observations on Mercurius calcinatus per se,’ Ambix, 16 (1969), 140-141. 4. For P. Bayen’s argument that the calx per se and red precipitate are essentially the same, see his “Essais Chymiques ou expériences faites sur quelques précipités de Mercure, dans la

: vue de découvrir leur nature,’ Observations sur la physique, 5 (1775), 156. Lavoisier did not say that the two substances were identical in 1776, but he implied as much. See his “Mémoire sur l’existance de |’air dans l’acide nitreux, & sur les moyens de décomposer & de recomposer cet acide,” Académie des Sciences, Paris: Mémoires (1776, publ. 1779), 671-680. By 1790 the identity of calx per se and red precipitate was widely accepted. In Germany, for instance, “Wiegleb, Bucholtz, Westendorff, and others” regarded them as identical substances. See P. J. Macquer, Chymisches Worterbuch; oder, Allgemeine Begriffe der Chymie nach alphabetischer Ordnung, ed. and trans. J. G. Leonhardi, 2d German ed. of 2d French ed., vol. IV (Leipzig: Weidmann, 1789), p. 365. I stress the point because the identity of these calces subsequently became an issue in the German debate over mercuric oxide. 5. Bayen, “Essais chymiques.. . ,” Observations sur la physique, 5 (1775), 154, 157; and Lavoisier, “Mémoire sur l|’existance de |’air dans l’acide nitreux ... ,” Académie des Sci-

The Notorious Reduction Experiment / 120

He used experiments with mercury calx to argue that all metallic calces, rather than being simple substances, contained what he later called “oxygen.” He used them to show that oxygen was a component of nitric acid. And he used them to establish that atmospheric air consisted of two gases with different chemical properties.° In short, Lavoisier gave experiments with the red oxide of mercury, as mercuric oxide was called in the new nomenclature, a prominent place in his arguments.

THE PHLOGISTIC CHALLENGE (1790-—JULY 1792) The first German chemist to question Lavoisier’s account of the reduction of mercury calx was young Gren (Figure 7). In early 1790 he informed Crell that the most important and novel thing I have to tell you is that I have discovered that the red calx of mercury, if it has been calcinated in open vessels, does not give off any dephlogisticated air [oxygen] when reduced in closed vessels; that consequently this mainstay of Lavoisier’s system 1s abolished; that no fresh metal calx contains air; that embodied air is actually a chimera. . . . The antiphlogistonists in France will probably not be able to save their system no matter how heatedly they defend it. Besides publishing in the Chemische Annalen, Gren issued his challenge in two other places. In the first issue of his new Journal der Physik, he promised that he would soon show that [the reduction] experiment, upon which the antiphlogistonists’ theory is chiefly built, is false if the mercury calx is completely fresh or has previously been glowing in an open vessel, but [that it] is probably true if the precipitate has absorbed moisture from the air. Hence the artificial theory that de la Métherie proposes [to explain away the reduction experiment] is not needed to rescue the Stahlian phlogiston. And in his chemistry text, he maintained that dephlogisticated air could not be obtained from mercury calx that was still hot from its preparation. Those chemists who had reported obtaining the gas must, Gren thought, have used

calx that had absorbed water, either during prolonged storage or during preparation by the nitric-acid method. As evidence of their negligence, he ences, Paris: Mémoires (1776, publ. 1779), 680. Also see C. E. Perrin, “Prelude to Lavoisier’s Theory of Calcination. . . ,’ Ambix, 16 (1969), 146-151. 6. Lavoisier, “Mémoire sur la nature du Principe qui se combine avec les Métaux pendant leur calcination, & qui en augmente le poids,” Académie des Sciences, Paris: Mémoires (1775, publ. 1778), 520-526; “Mémoire sur l’existance de l’air dans |’acide nitreux ... ,” ibid. (1776, publ. 1779), 671-680; and “Expériences sur la Respiration des Animaux, & sur les changements qui arrive a lair en passant par leur poumon,” ibid. (1777, publ. 1780), 185-194.

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