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Rh delighted with this and later flights which he witnessed in Cassel, seems to have finally reached the point of performing the feat himself. He worked also with Buchholz at the analysis of water and its purification by the use of powdered charcoal; and the pharmacist remained until his death, which occurred in 1798, an active and honored member of Goethe's celebrated "Freitaggesellschaft."

A brother of Goethe's friend Friedrich Hildebrand von Einsiedel had studied mining and metallurgy, secured the title of Bergrat (counsellor of mines) and established a laboratory in Weimar. Goethe appears to have visited him frequently, but we learn of nothing in the way of genuine additions to the world's knowledge that developed from his labors. Current references to him indicate that he occupied himself largely with marvelous chemical exhibitions for lady visitors; and Wilhelm Bode describes him as a man of natural gifts, who, "although he knew more about chemistry, geology, even of the history of countries and races, than all the masters, doctors, scribes and priests," nevertheless accomplished nothing of serious importance. In 1785 he was sent to North Africa by the French government to study mining conditions there, and Goethe mentions the enterprise several times in his letters; not, however, so much for its scientific importance as because of the fact that he took with him one of the most prominent lady members of Weimar Court society, after she had succeeded in spreading the report of her death and had had a dummy buried in her place. On his return, he gave up his scientific investigations, and Goethe purchased his apparatus for his fosterling, the University of Jena; so that in spite of his lack of energy, August von Einseidel played a very essential part in the scientific activity of the Duchy of Weimar, after all.

One of the assistants of the talented apothecary Buchholz was a young Saxon, Friedrich August Göttling, who was destined to surpass his master. The son of a poor minister, beginning life as an apothecary's assistant, he published in 1778 an "Introduction to Pharmaceutical Chemistry," and so interested Goethe that the latter made it possible for him to study at Göttingen from 1784 till 1787, and to travel and observe industrial conditions in Holland and England. Shortly after his return his powerful patron secured his appointment to a professorship at Jena, where he was very profitably active for many years. Göttling will be remembered longest for his part in the phlogiston discussion. It was about 1700 that Stahl promulgated his theory that combustion involved a loss of substance. Although Lavoisier (1743-1794) proved conclusively that burning is oxidation, i. e., an addition instead of a subtraction, German chemists of Göttling's time, partly perhaps for patriotic reasons, still clung to the exploded theory, and Göttling, who published between 1794 and 1798 a "Contribution toward the Justification of Antiphlogistic Chemistry," stood almost alone among