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Updated: May 6, 2025
There are to be found in those bodies particular substances, which abound more or less with one of those species of phlogistic matter, but never is the one species of those burning substances to be found naturally, in animal and vegetable bodies, without being associated with the other; and it is all that the chemical art can do to separate them in a great degree upon occasion.
But many of the subsidiary hypotheses which were required to make the theory cover the new facts were contradictory, or at any rate seemed to be contradictory, of the primary assumptions of the theory. The addition of this ancillary machinery burdened the mechanism of the theory, threw it out of order, and finally made it unworkable. The phlogistic theory was destroyed by its own cumbersomeness.
Such, for instance, was one of the mistakes committed in the celebrated phlogistic theory; a doctrine which accounted for combustion by the extrication of a substance called phlogiston, supposed to be contained in all combustible matter.
The convinced upholder of the phlogistic theory had two answers to the argument, that, because the earth-like product of the calcination of a metal weighs more than the metal itself, therefore the metal cannot have lost something in the process; for, if one portion of what is taken away weighs more than the metal from which it has been separated, it is evident that the weight of the two portions into which the metal is said to have been divided must be considerably greater than the weight of the undivided metal.
Boyle published his experiments and opinions concerning the action of fire on different substances in the seventies of the 17th century; Stahl's books, which laid the foundation of the phlogistic theory, and confirmed the alchemical opinion that the action of fire is essentially a simplifying action, were published about forty years later.
That he might bring into one point of view, and compare the various changes effected by the agency of fire, Stahl invented a new Principle, which he named Phlogiston, and constructed an hypothesis which is generally known as the phlogistic theory. He explained, and applied, this hypothesis in various books, especially in one published at Halle in 1717.
An element was now something which could he seen and experimented with; it was no longer a semi-spiritual existence which could not be grasped by the senses. The phlogistic theory regarded the calcination of a metal as the separation of it into two things, unlike the metal, and unlike each other; one of these things was phlogiston, the other was an earth-like residue.
Not only must the aqueous part of those natural phlogistic bodies be evaporated, in order to their becoming coal, but the oily parts must also, by a still increased degree of heat, be evaporated, or separated by distillation from the combustible part.
This marly mountain itself, which had been formed of loose materials gathered together at the bottom of the sea, was first to be filled with pyrites, in various shapes, by means of the phlogistic and the acid of the mountain. Here is proposed to us an operation which is totally unknown, or of which we have no kind of idea.
Whether he thought it sailor-like, or whether his tailor was afraid of putting his lordship to short allowance of cloth, for fear of phlogistic consequences, I know not; but broad as was the beam of his lordship, still broader and more ample in proportion were the folds of this essential part of his drapery, quite enough to have embraced twice the volume of human flesh contained within them, large as it undoubtedly was.
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