Notes and References
- An extremely useful bibliographical survey and initial investigation of eighteenth century chemical historiography is Marco Beretta’s “The historiography of chemistry in the eighteenth century: a preliminary survey and bibliography,” Ambix, 39 (1992), 1–10. Beretta’s essay focuses on two traditions, the French and the German, remarking on the relative paucity of Anglophone material (p. 4). This essay focuses contrastingly on Dutch-English and Scottish material, and would certainly insist upon adding Cullen’s, and also Black’s, histories to the bibliography.
- The Boerhaavian texts referred to below, and especially Peter Shaw’s 1727 translation, mark the effective beginning of eighteenth-century Anglophone chemical history.
- e.g. Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, Cullen MSS, C12.
- This is the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh Cullen MS C 11 “Lectures on Chemistry by Dr. Cullen.” The history is separately bound, and has three titles on the cover: History of Chemistry; History of Pharmaceutical Chemistry: History of Paracelsus and his Innovations. Hereafter, I refer to this document as Cullen, “History of Chemistry.”
- H. Boerhaave, Institutiones et experimenta chemiae (Paris, 1724). For full listing of all Boerhaavian published chemistry texts and their publication details, consult G. Lindeboom, Bibliographia Boerhaaviana (Leiden, 1959), pp. 80–87.
- Boerhaave, Elements of chemistry, tr. Timothy Dallowe, 2 vols. (London, 1735): Dallowe’s sanctioned translation of Boerhaave’s own Elementa chemiae, 2 vols. (Leyden, 1732). Both of these texts may have been in manuscript by 1729. The quotation here is from Dallowe’s 1735 translation of “The Author’s Preface,” vol. 1, p. viii.
- Ibid., pp. vii-viii.
- Ibid., pp. vii-ix.
- [E. Strother], Dr. Boerhaave’s Elements of Chy mis try, faithfully abridged (London, 1732).
- Boerhaave (Dallowe, 1735), op. cit.(6), vol. 1, p. ix.
- Boerhaave, A new method of chemistry, including the theory and practice of that Art, Laid down on Mechanical Principles, and accommodated to the Uses of Life. The whole making a Clear and Rational System of Chemical Philosophy. To which is prefix’d a Critical History of Chemistry and Chemists, from the Origin of the Art to the present Time, tr. P. Shaw and E. Chambers (London, 1727), “Advertisement,” p. iii.
- Boerhaave, A new method of Chemistry, translated from the Elementa Chemiae, tr. P. Shaw (London, 1741). Named “second edition” of the above, op. cit. (11), in fact anew translation of the Elementa.
- Boerhaave, op. cit. (11), p. v.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., p. 3.
- Ibid., p. 5. '
- Ibid., pp. 7–8.
- Ibid., p. 6.
- See, e.g. B. Bensaude-Vincent and I. Stengers, Histoire de la chimie (Paris, 1993), especially their discussion of “l’identité”, pp. 9–15, and “origines”, pp. 54–8.
- For a brief characterization of Borrichius v. Conring, see Beretta, op. cit. (1), p. 1.
- Boerhaave, op. cit. (11), pp. 10–11.
- Ibid., pp. 16–18.
- Ibid., pp. 21–2.
- Ibid., p. 23, p. 29.
- Ibid., p. 29.
- Ibid., p. 28, p. 35.
- Ibid., p. 30.
- Ibid., p. 36.
- Ibid., p. 30.
- Ibid., pp. 46–7.
- Boerhaave, (Dallowe, 1735), op. cit. (6), vol. 1, p. 5.
- Ibid., p. 12.
- Ibid.
- Cullen, “History of Chemistry,” op. cit. (4), p. 4.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., pp. 8–9. Compare Cullen’s ‘imputing thunder to Jupiter’ with Adam Smith’s discussion of primitive polytheism in his “History of Astronomy,” in his Philosophical essays, eds. W. P. D. Wightman et. al., (Oxford, 1980), p. 49. Cullen’s arguments on the slow growth of technical arts is paralleled by Macquer’s a decade later on the slow growth of a science. See Macquer, Dictionnaire de Chymie, 2 vols. (Paris, 1766), quoted by Beretta, op. cit. (1), p. 3.
- Ibid., p. 5. Interestingly, this passage and what follows down to the critique of Boerhaave’s antediluvialism, is crossed out in the MS, as if Cullen, having written it, had second thoughts concerning the advisability of its public delivery. His caution might have related to the prospect of incurring further hostility from Edinburgh Boerhaavian colleagues. Equally, he may have feared clerical hostility towards his scoffing negation of the Biblically-based argument.
- Ibid.
- Ibid., p. 26.
- Ibid., p. 39.
- Ibid., p. 40.
- Ibid., p. 41.
- Ibid., p. 65.
- Ibid., new pagination, lecture VI, p. 3.
- Ibid., p. 7.
- Ibid., p. 8.
- Ibid., p. 9.
- Ibid., p. 10.
- Ibid., p. 12.
- Ibid., p. 10.
- Ibid., p. 23.
- Ibid.
- David Hume, The history of England, from the invasion ofJulius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688, 2 vols. (London, 1754, 1756).
- Hume, History, 6 vols. (London, 1848), vol. IV, p. 287.
- Cullen, “History of Chemistry,” op. cit. (4), p. 20.
- Ibid., p. 25.
- Ibid., p. 26.
- Ibid., pp. 27–8.
- Ibid., p. 30.
- Ibid., (old pagination), lecture I, p. 1.
- For Glasgow University appointments at this time,, and for the political dimensions of Cullen’s appointments and positions at Glasgow, see Roger Emerson, “Medical men, politicians and the medical schools of Glasgow and Edinburgh, 1685-1803,” in A. Doig et al. eds., William Cullen and the eighteenth century medical world (Edinburgh, 1993), pp. 197–202.
- For further elaboration of these aspects of Cullen’s work, see J. Christie, “William Cullen and the practice of chemistry” in Doig et al., op. cit. (61), pp. 102–4; and J. Golinski, Science as public culture: chemistry and Enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 16–18.