Valentin Chirosca's Blog

The Birth of Chemistry by Rodwell, George F.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

About the style of book,modern history cannot divine the past as prophets divined the future, obscure language of divination is the language of poetry. Taine's distinction between the important and the unimportant and his call for the elimination of confusion is from rhetoric. The pact between rhetoric and history is Machiavellian, and infinite for both, caught between the words and reality.{Lombardo 1990} Taine rejection of rationalism was a crucial first step in the elaboration of new forms of liberalism.

Many of the useful arts depend on chemical processes, in the sense in which we use the word "chemical" now. Metallurgy, dyeing, the manufacture of porcelain and glass, were all known in the early ages of the world, and are all chemistry in practice.

We find the name of Chemistry applied to the art of making gold and silver in the fifth century, in the earliest work known in which the word occurs. This work, entitled, A Faithful Description of the Sacred and Divine Art of making Gold and Silvery by Zosimos, the Panapolite, carries back the art to a far distant period, for it attributes it to the sons of God mentioned in the 6th chapter of Genesis, who, it states, were angels allured from heaven by the charms of women, to whom they imparted the secret of making precious metals. Suidas, in his Lexicon, written in the eleventh century, says, under the word chemia " The preparation of silver and gold.

The books on it were sought after by Diocletian, and burnt, on account of the new attempts made by the Egyptians against him.
It is, however, doubtful whether Alchemy can claim such high antiquity as this; for the silence of Latin authors, especially Pliny, on the subject, would lead us to believe that it took its rise among the Greeks at a later date. The earliest works on the subject are Greek, and a long list, comprising eighty works, is given in Boerhaave's Chemistry, 1753.

"Chemical technology is purely Byzantine and Hellenic, but it was altogether divorced from theory, and the "Turba" is never quoted by any writer in the first century and a half of alchemical literature. But though Greek thought had no direct action on Latin writers, it was the ultimate source of Arabic alchemy as regards the theory of metals, the elixir of life being apparently of Chinese origin. No doubt a few Byzantine adepts found their way into the west? Roger Bacon mentions a Greek he had known, and there is the still earlier case of the Jew of Bremen. The story of translation from the Arabic begins with Robert of Chester in 1144, Plato of Tivoli and Hugo Sanctallensis, and goes on to Gerard of Cremona, who before his death in 1187 translated three classics of alchemy? two of them only printed in our own time, by Berthelot and the writer. A number of treatises were translated before the middle of the thirteenth century, as shown by the quotations from them in the "Speculum Naturale" of Vincent of Beauvais (1245), the alchemical writings of Roger Bacon ending 1267, and the writings of Albertus Magnus on minerals and the "Speculum Astronomicum". St. Thomas also accepts the scientific possibility of alchemy"

Raymond Lulli aka Ramon Lull "Doctor Illuminatus", apparently have second hand manuscripts after unknown manuscripts.

Chaptr IX give us an abstract with images from {Giano Lacinio et al. 1894} and in X is born. Paracelsus split Iatrochemy from his own metaphysical world, and at XI {Boerhaave Herman 1727} give inorganic and organic chemistry. {B H 1 1753}, {B H 2 1753}

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The Leiden and Stockholm Papyri by Earle Radcliffe Caley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Clean and professional job. From a chemist point of view.



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The History of Chemistry Vol. 2 by Thomas Thomson

My rating: 0 of 5 stars



Paracelsus legacy. Chemists know how to prepare drugs, physicians know to prescribe drugs and pharmacists know to sel. From this point we have now an pinpoint image of the development status of main powers in Europe.



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Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality by World Health Organization

My rating: 0 of 5 stars



"The UN General Assembly declared the period from 2005 to 2015 as the International Decade for Action,
“Water for Life”.
Most recently, the UN General Assembly declared safe and clean
drinking-water and sanitation a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights. Access to safe drinking-water is important as a health and development issue at national, regional and local levels. In some regions, it has been shown that investments in water supply and sanitation can yield a net economic benefit, as the reductions in adverse health effects and health-care costs outweigh the costs of undertaking the interventions. This is true for investments ranging from major water supply infrastructure through to water treatment in the home. Experience has also shown that interventions in improving access to safe water favour the poor in particular, whether in rural or urban areas, and can be an effective part of poverty alleviation strategies.
The World Health Organization (WHO) published three editions of the Guidelines
for drinking-water quality in 1983–1984, 1993–1997 and 2004, as successors to
previous WHO International standards for drinking water, published in 1958, 1963 and 1971. From 1995, the Guidelines have been kept up to date through a process of rolling revision, which leads to the regular publication of addenda that may add to or supersede information in previous volumes as well as expert reviews on key issues preparatory to the development of the Guidelines.
Leading the process of the development of the fourth edition was the Water, Sanitation..." (XV)
An old tradition here is telling us "some springs make girls beautiful". Enjoy!



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Guidelines for Drinking-Water Quality by World Health Organization

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



History of guideline development
The 1958, 1963 and 1971 WHO International Standards for Drinking-water and the first edition of the Guidelines for Drinking-water Quality, published in 1984, did not refer to chlorine. The 1993 Guidelines established a guideline value of 5mg/liter for free chlorine in drinking-water, but noted that this value is conservative, as no adverse effect level was identified in the study used. It was also noted that most individuals are able to taste chlorine at the guideline value.(pg. 326)
Well, chlorine save more lives than all other drugs discovered after aspirin. Until now, so we have to do more work.
Great and continuous job here.
Think a moment: access at potable water is a fundamental human right.



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The analysis of inorganic bodies by Jöns Jacob Berzelius

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

...to gratify the desire of many of Berzelius acquaintance, and because he was him­self convinced, that a treatise of this kind, short though it be, could not fail to be interesting, coming from a philosopher who has so much contributed to give perfection not only to analysis, but also to chemistry in general; for there are few branches of science that he has not elucidated by his researches, or extended by his labours. And though his countryman Scheel has rendered himself illustrious by showing what genius, combating against fate, could effect with small means, Berzelius has displayed in its full extent, the example of what genius can effect under favourable circumstances.
When none of this s are to be had, lit­tle glass re­torts, which may I self-blown with the least fusible glass, may I used: these lit­tle re­torts can be em­ployed when the ex­am­i­na­tion is made at a mod­er­ate heat, sucff as that from the spirit lamp.

The retort is now balanced, and the substance for analysis is then placed in it, either entire or in powder, according to circumstances, and is weighed. In this way the loss is avoided, which would necessarily take place if the powder were weighed first and then placed in the retort. The neck of the retort is next adapted to the receiver, and a tube of caoutchouc is used for this purpose, without jointure, such as is obtained by cutting the necks of common caoutchouc bottles...

Just remember, a glass in the lab have the name...Berzelius.



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Elements of Agricultural Chemistry by Thomas Anderson

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



World Cat:
The major object of this work is to expose the main principles and fundamentals of agricultural chemistry which will be useful for an ordinary farmer. The book avoids unnecessary technicalities and it is kept as simple as possible for the general reader.
For me: perfect receipt book for organic food. Agri­cul­tural in­quiries are li­able to pe­cu­liar fal­lac­ies due to the per­turb­ing in­flu­ence of cli­mate, sea­son, and many other causes, the in­di­vid­ual ef­fects of which can only be elim­i­nated with dif­fi­culty, and much error has been in­tro­duced, by hastily generalizing from sin­gle ex­per­i­ments, in place of await­ing the re­sults of re­peated tri­als. Hence it is that the progress of sci­en­tific agri­cul­ture must nec­es­sar­ily be slow and grad­ual, and is not likely to be marked by any great or star­tling dis­cov­er­ies. Now that the re­la­tions of sci­ence to prac­tice are bet­ter un­der­stood, the ex­trav­a­gant ex­pec­ta­tions at one time en­ter­tained have been aban­doned, and, as a nec­es­sary con­se­quence, the in­ter­est in agri­cul­tural chem­istry has again in­creased, and the con­vic­tion daily gains ground that no one who wishes to farm with suc­cess, can af­ford to be with­out some knowl­edge of the sci­en­tific prin­ci­ples of his art.



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Researches, Chemical and Philosophical, Chiefly Concerning Nitrous Oxide, or Dephlogisticated Nitrous Air, and Its Respiration. by Sir Humphry Davy

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



In 1798, Humphry Davy was appointed laboratory superintendent of the Pneumatic Institute in Bristol, UK. this was an establishment founded on the belief that the recently discovered gases might have curative applications. Here he set to work on his monumental text on the history, chemistry, physiology and recreational use of nitrous oxide - published in 1800 when he was just 21 years old. Curiously, given the purpose of the Pneumatic Institute, the use of this gas in therapy is barely mentioned: a couple of accounts of its use on paralyzed patients, and that's about the extent. It is at the end of this book that he makes his oft-repeated statement about the possible use of nitrous oxide in surgery: 'As nitrous oxide.appears capable of destroying physical pain, it may probably be used with advantage during surgical operations in which no great effusion of blood takes place.
Spotting medical potential



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Quantum teleportation between atomic ensembles demonstrated for first time:

'via Blog this'

"Teleportation between two photons has been demonstrated earlier (first in 1997)," coauthor Chao-Yang Lu, of the Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and the Department of Modern Physics at the University of Science and Technology of China, told Phys.org. "The problem with the photon is that it always keeps traveling. You have to keep it to do useful quantum information processing tasks (in which case we call it a 'keeper'). Compared to the trapped ion experiment, an advantage of the atomic ensembles is that they have a much higher success rate."
Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-11-quantum-teleportation-atomic-ensembles.html#jCp
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by Valentin Chirosca
If you are not a socialist person, all socialist lessons about chemistry start appealing at scholastic "we know from Leucippus and Democritus that if you cut a pepper in the pieces the last piece is atomos ".

 With the work of Leucippus and Democritus ancient Greek philosophy reaches its zenith when the initial question of Thales after the true nature of matter culminated 180 years later in the subtle concept of atoms, which bears an amazing resemblance to the twentieth century's view of chemistry. For this reason, Leucippus and Democritus have undoubtedly deserved the first price for the best guess in antiquity, as far as natural science is concerned. Unfortunately their contemporaries did not share their views with the same enthusiasm. 

Forget the late invention of paper for European space, where is alchemy? Paracelsus split alchemy on iatrochemistry and magic.

"The familiar medical roots ‘-iatry, -iatrics, iatro-,’ and their variants traditionally have traced their etymology to the Attic Greek word for physician, ‘iatros’. This paper traces the etymology of ‘iatros’ itself. Proceeding stepwise through time, the article demonstrates the evolution and borrowing of the word from its immediate Archaic Greek predecessor, the ‘iatār’, and further back to its earliest Greek form in the Linear B inscriptions. Beyond the Greek, it is then demonstrated how the Linear B was a direct borrowing from the non-Greek Linear A, an earlier language of the Ancient Mediterranean. From there, the article examines the likely cognate forms in the even earlier Hittite, Egyptian, and Akkadian languages to the East. Ultimately the origin of the ‘iatros’, of our English root ‘-iatry’, is traced to the earliest recorded language, Sumerian, and the Sumerian word for physician, the ‘IA.ZU’."
by Elliott B. Martin, MD 

"Iatrochemistry (or chemiatry) is a branch of both chemistry and medicine. Having its roots in alchemy, iatrochemistry seeks to provide chemical solutions to diseasesand medical ailments.This area of science has fallen out of use since the rise of modern medical practices. However, iatrochemistry was popular between 1525 and 1660, especially in Flanders. Its most notable leader was Paracelsus, an important Swiss alchemist of the 16th century. Iatrochemists believed that physical health was dependent on a specific balance of bodily fluids.Alchemists used plant products and arsenic to treat diseases. The medical chemistry of the 16th and 17th centuries gained the name iatrochemistry, coming from the Greek word for physician."WikipediaThe term is coined as Chymistry (1661) – the subject of the material principles of mixed bodies (Boyle)  the "father of modern chemistry".[13] In his book, The Skeptical Chymist, Boyle attacked Paracelsus and the natural philosophy of Aristotle, which was taught at universities. However, Boyle's biographers, in their emphasis that he laid the foundations of modern chemistry, neglect how steadily he clung to the scholastic sciences and to alchemy, in theory, practice and doctrine.[14] The decline of alchemy continued in the 18th century with the birth of modern chemistry, which provided a more precise and reliable framework within a new view of the universe based on rational materialism.
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