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Alchemical books abound in quotations from the writings of Geber. Five hundred treatises were attributed to this man during the middle ages, yet we have no certain knowledge of his name, or of the time or place of his birth. Hoefer says he probably lived in the middle of the 8th century, was a native of Mesopotamia, and was named Djabar Al-Konfi. Waite calls him Abou Moussah Djafar al-Sofi.
As Hoefer remarks, this is perhaps one of the earliest accounts of the gas discovered by Priestley and studied by Lavoisier, the gas we now call oxygen, and recognise as of paramount importance in chemical reactions.
From time to time a few adventurous families would take up their residence near Monte Cerboli, and bring a few fields into cultivation, leaving, however, more than nine-tenths of the land fallow. About the middle of the last century, Hoefer, who is described as apothecary to the Grand Duke, first detected the presence of boracic acid in the lagoon Orcherio, near Monte Botardo.
He examined the air of mines, and suggested practical methods for determining whether the air in a mine was respirable. Hoefer draws attention to a remarkable observation recorded by this alchemist.
Hoefer says, in his Histoire de la Chimie, "If it is true that simplicity is the distinctive character of verity, never was a theory so true as that of Stahl." The phlogistic theory did more than serve as a means for bringing together many apparently disconnected facts.
On his death in 1575, Jacques Andreas, one of his friends, admitted that, taken altogether, his Illyricus was the devil's Illyricus, and that, in the opinion of Andreas, he was then "supping with devils."* * Hoefer, Nouvelle Biogaphie Generale, Art, Flach-Franconitz Matthias.
The Portuguese poet Camoens is said by some authorities to have been born in 1517, and by others in 1525; a discrepancy of eight years. Chateaubriand is declared by the English Cyclopaedia to have been born September 4th, 1768; September 14th, 1768, by the Nouvelle Biographie générale of Dr. Hoefer; and September 4th, 1769, by the Conversations-Lexicon.
Many of my honored critics have censured these scenes; others, among whom are some whose opinion I specially value, have lavished the kindest praise upon them. Among these gentlemen I will mention A. Stahr, C. V. Holtei, M. Hartmann, E. Hoefer, W. Wolfsohn, C. Leemans, Professor Veth of Amsterdam, etc.
"The revolution brought about by Lavoisier in science," says Hoefer, "coincides by a singular act of destiny with another revolution, much greater indeed, going on then in the political and social world. Both happened on the same soil, at the same epoch, among the same people; and both marked the commencement of a new era in their respective spheres."
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