Essais chimiques d’eckartshausen

Phosphoric Acid Experiment

If the talciform earth is digested and concentrated with phosphoric acid, it becomes like rubber.

The phosphoric acid strongly attacks the zinc and turns it into a transparent mass similar to gum arabic.

The copper is dissolved by it, and, after this dissolution, a greenish gummy mass remains.

With a gold lime precipitated by an alkali, the phosphoric acid combines to give an auric phosphate which melts into a clear red glass on heat.

If we amalgamate and grind gold leaves with phosphoric acid, and then remove this acid by means of the urine, a beautiful red-purple powder remains. If we work gold leaves with sugar and phosphoric wine (Phosphorwein), dry the powder, then pour ether or alcohol on this powder, the gold sulfur passes into alcohol: gold dissolves; there remains a red, soapy residue and, at the bottom of the vessel, a salt. If the acid from the sugar is separated from this salt by means of nitric acid, the gold acid is obtained, which is in itself acidic, carbonic and phosphoric acid.

Carbonic acid gives the redness, phosphoric acid the blue tone, by which the purple of gold is formed.

If the auric acid is separated from the soapy residue, a coloring earth and talcum earth are obtained.

Metallic lime is reconstituted by the addition of soot, or coal dust, and they resume the metallic appearance. Here is the cause: the phosphoric acid contained in metallic lime has the closest kinship with the combustible matter of coal; the latter immediately reforming the phosphorus or metallic sulfur which contracts the earth similar to talc in metallic lime, thus reforming the metal.

If we take a urine salt dissolved in water and moisten the metallic lime with it, the phosphoric acid is completely removed from them and we can no longer, in any way, reconstitute the metals. .

This experience is even more convincing when it is carried out on zinc flowers. These can no longer be brought back to their metallic form, neither by charcoal powder, nor by soot: but if we add watercress, mustard, or phosphorus, the phosphoric acid contained in these ingredients combines immediately with the igneous principle of charcoal and reveals the metallic form of zinc.

All metallity therefore consists in the combination of phosphoric acid with the carbonic substance by which metallic sulfur is formed.

To become a perfect metal, only this sulfur lacks fixation.

When you place fine powdered charcoal in a porcelain capsule, moisten it with phosphoric acid, then concentrate the solar rays there for a while with a magnifying glass, you get the most beautiful phosphoric gold (Phosphorgold). But its lack of fixity immediately dissolves it in the air, in the form of phosphoric acid41.

It is the talc-like earth which is the fixing medium of metals.

Gold, silver, platinum contain more - zinc contains less.

All the metals are only mixtures of various proportions of coloring earth and talciform with phosphoric acid. The compaction of sulfur depends on the difference in the proportions of this earth, and the varying degrees of its condensation form the different metals: earth analogous to talc is, in the metallic kingdom, what pebbles and sand are in the glass.

Man is the noblest of created beings although he wears the envelope of the animal. In him resides the fire of nature.

This fire, which contains the measure of all nature, the power of all organizations, subsists in the remains of the organized body, the death of which only alters form and action. This organic matter is the most suitable for composing other forms, accepting new combinations, and re-entering the order of living beings.

But this matter is nothing other than the materia universalis and this one is the fire-water of nature: acetum philosophorum.

In the vegetable soil, rich in destroyed organic beings, is found enclosed a great quantity of active forces, as well as small molecules animated by the fire of which animal and vegetable life is composed.

Each kingdom has its own receptacle of the igneous principle. In the animal kingdom, the main organ is the skeleton and the marrow, from which we can extract fire, caloric and luminous substance42.

In the vegetable kingdom, the real fire matter of nature is found in peat. Peat contains solar substance carried by water. When we rot such water, we obtain in deposit -a kind of phosphorus which turns into charcoal if an alkali is poured on it43.

In the mineral kingdom, fire matter is most abundantly found in pyrites.






<sup>41 Do not take “charcoal powder” literally. Compare this experiment to that described in the chapter on the nature of gold and silver. Of that, too, of which he speaks about human blood. I could not be clearer, where the author visibly wants to remain obscure. It takes inspiration from heaven to recognize this maze. But is it not written: “ask, and you will receive”?

42 Seats of nervous energy.

43 Peat is more impure, but easier to work with than anthracite. However, to feed these carbons,</sup>