Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
nature. Chemistry like surgery was both hands-on and hands-off, a sci-
ence of the secondary qualities (colors, tastes, and smells), where think-
ing had to be done with fingers, nose, and eyes as well as in the armchair.
It was a part of high culture, making Davy in great demand at salons and
dinner parties; but also promised to be useful, for example in cleaning up
smoky London:
2
O Chemistry,
attractive
maid,
Descend in pity to our aid!
Come with thy all-pervading gasses,
Thy crucibles, retorts, and glasses
Thy fearful energies and wonders,
Thy dazzling lights and mimic thunders!
Let Carbon in thy train be seen,
Dark Azote, and fair Oxygene,
And Woolaston, and Davy guide
The car that bears thee, at thy side.
If any power can any how
Abate these nuisances, 'tis thou.
Audiences, men and women, watched for the most part, as the lecturer
(often very near the front row) did the experiments, which might be
spectacular - as when potassium, and miners' safety lamps, were the
subject. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, in her poem '1811', wrote how, for
American tourists in decayed London, some future antiquarian might
(Barbauld 1995):
Call up sages whose capacious mind
Left in its course a track of light behind;
Point where mute crowds on Davy's lips reposed,
And nature's coyest secrets were disclosed;
Join with their Franklin, Priestley's injured name,
Whom, then, each continent shall proudly claim.
In 1811 the coyest secret was that chlorine was an element, but the sexy
imagery takes up some of Davy's pantheistic rhetoric about Nature.
2
Luttrell 1993, pp. 530-1; 'Woolaston' was William Hyde Wollaston, metallurgist.
