Milestones of Science Books

STAHL, Ernst Georg.

Opusculum chymico-physico-medicum, seu schediasmatum a pluribus annis variis occasionibus in publicum emissorum. .

Halle: typis & impensis Orphantrophei, 1715.

1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Item #002589

4to (210 x 160 mm). [6], 856 [i.e. 852], [40] pp., including final blank 5V4, index and errata. Title printed in red and black, with the engraved portrait frontispiece. Signatures: [-]³, A-4Q⁴, 4R², 4S-5V⁴. Bifolium 4R1/2 probably a cancel with double page-numberings pp. 681 to 688. Contemporary vellum, plain spine lettered in gilt (bumping and wear to corners, small worm holes). Text somewhat browned and brown-spotted throughout, faint small dampstain to top margin of final leaves, ink annotations in old hand to p.608, shelf-mark in ink to title-leaf verso. A fine unsophisticated copy in original binding. ----

Bolton I, p.847; Duveen, p.559-60; DSB XII, p.604-5. RARE FIRST EDITION. This work includes the 'Zymotechnia Fundamentalis,' (first published 1697) in which is to be found the first statement of the phlogiston theory and also Stahl's theory of fermentation. (Duveen). "Stahl was the originator of the phlogiston theory, which dominated chemistry until the end of the 18th century. Stahl took the structure of his theory from Becher, who had stated air, water and earth to be the three elementary principles with water and earth the basis of all material things, and who had further subdivided the principle of earth into the three principles of substantiality, combustibility and weight/ductility/volatility. Stahl elaborated from Becher's 'second earth' a new chemical principle, phlogiston, a substance representing the principle of combustibility that combined with other chemical substances to form compounds. Experimental evidence for the existence of phlogiston came largely from metals and minerals, particularly from the reversible relationship of metals and their calces: when a metal was heated intensely, its phlogiston was driven off and a calx appeared, but when phlogiston was reintroduced to the calx (by heating it with carbon, oil, pitch or other phlogiston-rich materials), the metal reappeared. Air did not combine with phlogiston but received it when it was liberated during combustion; air could absorb only a limited amount of phlogiston, and when that limit was reached, combustion could not longer take place. The flaws in the phlogiston theory are obvious, and it did not survive the 18th century; however, it served as an important link between the older chemical concepts and the new, an attempt to modify the existing intellectual framework in order to account for new experimental observations" (Norman 2005).

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