Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 82.djvu/339

Rh experimented with divining rods for the location of minerals and water below the surface, and developed a theory of siderism that for a time enjoyed considerable notoriety. His writings continued to exert an influence over Goethe, and their effect is traceable in the latter's novel "Die Wahlverwandschaften."

But the most notable of all Goethe's chemical helpers was the young Bavarian, Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner. The son of poor parents, this young man secured education enough to become a pharmacist's assistant, and even came so far at one time as to own a small establishment of his own. But the fates seemed working against him. Although he had published a number of monographs which had made him nationally known, it seemed for a time as if he would be unable to gain even the most meager living for himself and his family. In 1810 he was penniless and unable to secure the humblest position as an apothecary's assistant, when Duke Karl August and Goethe, whose attention had been attracted to him by his publications and who were confident that he would be competent and useful in spite of his irregular education, called him to Jena to replace the deceased Göttling.

This was the beginning of a long and useful period of forty years at Jena, ending only with his death, although in the course of his activity there he received at least five more favorable offers from other institutions. His was a faithful, affectionate nature, and he felt such gratitude to his Weimar patrons for having come to his assistance at the time of his greatest need that he refused to leave on any terms. He showed his idealistic turn of mind very strikingly at other points. Although he is responsible for several inventions which have great industrial value, he always refused—and in this matter Goethe was heartily at one with him—to impose any restrictions on their use, but threw them open to the world and allowed others to reap the profits. He was always ready to give free advice to industrials, and made large fortunes for others, while he himself was struggling along on the utterly inadequate salary which was all his little university was able to spare him.

Döbereiner did useful work in stoichiometry and atomic measurements; as Gay-Lussac had established the laws of proportion in inorganic chemical compounds of gases, so the young German was able to develop the proportions for organic compounds. His discussions "On Pneumatic Chemistry" were valuable additions to the chemistry of gases in general. His measurements of the amount of carbonic acid gas which escapes in the alcoholic fermentation of sugar and the publications which he based on the data thus obtained, extended knowledge of a process which Lavoisier had already established in a general and partially only theoretical fashion. In 1829 appeared his "Attempt at a Grouping of the Elements according to their Analogy." Here occurred for the first time the celebrated arrangement into triads—chlorine, bromine, iodine,