We are trying to re-enact certain chemical experiments that had first been performed in the 1730s.
What did chemists typically wear in those days?
Who can help with references as to their attire, tools?
FYI, it’s generally not acceptable around here to request help with homework assignments, and this sounds like one.
Two famous chemists, apparently in their laboratory, but 50 years after the time period sought. (I found it in the Wikipedia article on the History of Chemistry.)
Thanks a lot! The portrait does not seem to show a chemist “at work”, though. Still looking …
You may have better luck searching for images of alchemist during this time period.
Thanks very much, one of the pictures showing an alchemist’s lab is quite useful. Maybe some written accounts of an alchemist / chemist at work can be found.
Maybe a little more specificity?
If they didn’t expect it to be particularly dangerous, normal clothes. If they expected it to be dangerous, they might wear a blacksmith’s apron and leather gloves.
Maybe in the 1630s (and earlier), but proper chemistry is getting going by the 1730s. For instance, Stephen Hales, a protégé of Isaac Newton, was pioneering gas chemistry at about this time (Wikipedia presents him more as a physiologist, but really he is more important to the history of chemistry.)
As Nava says, they would mostly have worn their regular clothes in the lab at this time, regular 18th century gentleman getup.
Apparently in 1734 and probably before that as well the Prussian Court Apothecary Caspar Neumann performed an experiment before members of the Prussian Academy of Science and - most likely on a different occasion - before the King, i.e. Frederick William I., with which he tried to ridicule the blood miracle of Naples, according to which the coagulated blood of a certain saint liquidified on certain occasions.
In addition to re-enacting this experiment in the context of an exhibition / show we would like to find out HOW exactly Neumann liquidified the blood or the substance that looked like coagulated blood.
A lot of sources report on the experiment, in some it is said that a “machine” was used to stir the substance, in others mention is made of a mere “shaking” of the substance. Nowhere, however, it is put down what exactly he used.
So far, the best suggestion was that he used iron III chloride, egg shells and water but that is just conjecture. All substances were “known” but not necessarily reported to have been used in this combination and for this purpose.
Maybe this should be a new thread, let’s see.
sudo -h specify
The English name of the saint appears to be Januarius; the liquefaction still takes place most years in the first saturday of May and on September 19th. All it took to get this info was a search on “Napoli blood”.
For a court presentation, Neumann would have worn one of his good suits. If he wanted to emphasize his own importance, he might have donned protective apparel (as if it was the robes of a priest of reason); if he wanted to emphasize the simplicity of the task, he probably would have not (and might even have gasp removed his jacket!). For a presentation to the Academy, no theatrics.
Seriously, if it was in the 18th century, they probably wore just normal clothes (for that time.)
I’m a chemist, and I don’t know for certain. But I’m thinking back to a great Nova episode I watched a year or two ago about Absolute Zero. One of the recurring statements about experiments in the 18th century was that the grad students (or whatever they called them those days) were often missing an eye, because they didn’t wear any PPE, and nobody thought twice about it. And of course when you’re pushing lab glassware to temperature extremes, somethings gonna shatter sooner or later.
They were called Igor. Or was that in the 19th?
I knew about the saint and the circumstances of the Naples miracle. But HOW did Neumann do it?? Unfortunately the important sources are not in English, either French or German or Latin. Neumann was interested in “Blood Miracles”, even wrote a short treatise on one in Pomerania, where the waters of a swamp turned red (De Prodigio Sanguinis in Pomerania …).
How could you undo the coagulation without much ado in the 1730s?
I think that was probably the 19th century. 18th century chemistry was still mostly a hobby for gentleman amateurs. In the 19th century, though, you start getting proper professional research laboratories that might even have grad students in them, especially in the German universities. I dare say it is true that it took a while before proper safely precautions became routine.
“Took a while” is an enormous understatement. Several of my older university teachers in the US broke safety routinely, c. 1995; one of my Spanish teachers had a pitted face from this one time that, as an undergrad (but one who already had two degrees and was an ordained priest) he’d tried to distill ether beyond what his TAs considered safe - this incident took place c. 1960 and he used it to try and motivate us to be careful about safety. He wasn’t blind thanks to having had his goggles on when the apparatus exploded spectacularly, and was the only person hurt because the TAs had evacuated the room before letting him risk his bacon (they were waiting just outside the door with the box of emergency supplies).