801J Johann Joachim Becher. (1635-1682)

Actorum laboratorii chymici monacensis, seu Physicæ subterraneæ libri duo, quorum prior profundam subterraneorum genesis, nec non admirandam globi terr-aque-aërei super & subterranei fabricam, posterior specialem subterraneorum naturam, resolutionem in partes partiumq́; proprietates exponit, accesserunt sub finem mille hypotheses seu mixtiones chymicæ ante hãc nunquam visæ, omnia, plusquam mille experimentis stabilita…

Francofurti, imp. J.D. Zunneri 1669 Price $SOLD

Octavo 16.7 x 10cm. Signatures First Edition , The book begins with a delightful frontispiece (first image), with one of the first allegorical representations of Mother Earth, cooking up subterranean metals and minerals in her womb.

In his Physica subterranea of 1669, he proposed the existence of three new chemical principles or “earths”. Terra fluida or mercurial Earth giving material the characteristics, fluidity, fineness, fugacity, metallic appearance. Terra pinguis or fatty Earth giving material the characteristics oily, sulphurous and flammable. Terra lapidea glassy Earth, giving material the characteristic fusibility . “Terra pinguis, was thought to be a substance present in inflammable materials and given off during combustion.[ Becher had explained the calcinations of metals on the supposition that they consisted of an earth and a something of which they became deprived on ignition. The burning of brimstone was, in like manner, though to be its resolution into an acid and true sulphur, or that combustible part which was dispelled by heat. Becher is identifying the progression of ideas that led to modern thermodynamics.] In the early 18th century, terra pinguis was renamed phlogiston (Greek for combustible) and made the basis for a complete theory of combustion and oxidation. It was a very powerful theory, with a great deal of explanatory power, allowing chemists to understand nearly any chemical reaction in which heat was taken on or given off.   “An important work, which contains Becher’s theory of matter, later adopted by his pupil Stahl, and therefore the basis of the phlogiston theory”–Duveen./” Becher tell us in this quotation from this book:

… chemists are a strange class of mortals, impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasure among smoke and vapor, soot and flame, poisons and poverty, yet among all these evils I seem to live so sweetly, that [I’d die before I’d] change places with the Persian King. ” — Johann Joachim Becher. Physica subterranea (1667).

Britanica says “During his youth, study was difficult because he had to support his mother and brothers, but at 19 he began an extraordinary career that alternated learned publication with colonization and trade enterprises. His ideas and experiments on the nature of minerals and other substances were set forth in Subterranean Physics (1669). At Munich he suggested that the elector ofBavaria establish SouthAmerican Colonies and a cloth-trade monopoly, but angry merchants forced him to flee. At Vienna he proposed a Rhine–Danube canal and was also employed in experiments to transmute Danube sand into gold. He fell into disgrace and fled the country.”

In 1669, he published his Physica subterranea; the same year, he was engaged with the count of Hanau in a scheme to acquire Dutch colonization of Guiana from the Dutch West India Company. Meanwhile, he had been appointed physician to the elector of Bavaria; but in 1670 he was again in Vienna advising on the establishment of a silk factory and propounding schemes for a great company to trade with the Low Countries and for a canal to unite the Rhine and Danube. In 1678, he crossed to England. He travelled to Scotland where he visited the mines at the request of Prince Rupert. He afterwards travelled for the same purpose to Cornwall, and spent a year there. At the beginning of 1680, he presented a paper to the Royal Society in which he attempted to deprive Christiaan Huygens of the honour of applying the pendulum to the measurement of time. In 1682, he returned to London, where he wrote Närrische Weisheit und weise Narrheit (in which, according to Otto Mayr he made extensive references to temperature regulated furnaces)

Duveen, D. I. Alchemica et chemica (R1965), p. 56.; Ferguson Vol I p88; ( same as )Young, J. Bibliotheca chemica, I, 88; Brüning,; v. F. Bibliographie der alchemistischen Literatur 2185; Dünnhaupt; (2. Aufl.), S. 438, Nr. 16.I.1; VD17 23:242428D. “Becher, Johann Joachim.” Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 2008. The Phlogiston Theory – Wonderfully wrong but fantastically fruitful, The Renaissance Mathematicus, October 23, 2015.