Chemistry Flashcards
Importance of Alchemy to Chemistry
- technique
- processes
- hardware
- analysis
- transformation
Deficiencies of Alchemy
- not quantitative
- no understanding
- mystical, not rationale
- failure
Paracelsus
- said that doctor must be a traveller (knowledge is experience)
- doctor without formal medical degree
- learnt about metallurgy
- publicly burned the works of Galen and Avicenna (thrown out of Basal for months)
What did Paracelsus believe
- medicine should focus on function not form
- iatrochem: life is chemical process and chem should be central to understanding human function and medicine (body has a mystical internal alchemist: archeus)
- illness is the result of defects in body chemistry, there should be a specific chemical therapy for every disease
what is metallurgy
physical and chemical properties of metals
Apothecaries
prepares and sells medicine/drugs
what was Paracelsus choice of drugs partially based on
- astrology (planets, metals, parts of body)
- docterine of signatures (herbs can be used to treat)
Paracelsus therapies
- clean wounds let them heal themselves
- treated syphilis with low doses of mercury
- used different metals: arsenic for skin problems
2 drugs that Paracelsus used
1) Laudanum: Alcohol version of opium. Prescribed to patients of all ages
2) Sweet Vitrol: di-ethyl-ether, used as a surgical anesthetic
What did Paracelsus think like
1) Chemist: precise measurements of starting material
2) Biochemist: realized that some things were fatal in high doses but useful in low doses. Thought that biochemical transformations took place in the body.
3) Mystic: thought that astrology was important when designing drugs
Van Helmont
- iatrochemistry: fav approach
- *understood the conservation of matter (dissolved metal in acid, weight stayed the same)
- believed that everything is made of water
Van Helmont Willow tree
- first experiment in plant physiology
- young tree gain 164 pounds in 5 years
- weight could not come from soil
- concluded that the rain water was absorbed by the surface of the tree
- quantitative experiment
Van Helmont Charcoal Experiment
- burned 62lbs of charcoal
- found that the products are 1 lb of ash and vapours
- doesn’t support the burning of a candle
- vapours with the same property were given off by burning alcohol and fermentation of wine
What did Van Helmont believe were all the same process of fermentation?
- food use by animals
- alcohol fermentation
- burning wood
Franciscus Sylvius
- said there was no archeus in iatrochemistry
- especially interested in acids and alkali’s
- digestion needs both pancreatic secretions and bile
- thought that illness was the result of an imbalance of acids and alkali’s
- invented medicine for kidney problems (distilled grain and juniper berries)
Rene Antoine Reamur
- wanted to know if digestion was a physical or chemical process
- but meat in a cylinder and introduced the stomach of a hawk
- partially digested
what question was phlogiston invented to answer?
why does air enclosed in a small space support combustion at first but not later?
Phlogiston theory of combustion
- phlogiston is connected to wood and the burning of air separates the 2
- this can only occur until the air cannot hold any more phlogiston
Oxidation theory of combustion
combustion occurs when 2 things react until all the materials needed for combustion are used up
Who originated the phlogiston concept
Johann Becher
what did Johann Becher believe to be phlogiston
- terra pinguis
- when wood burns, releases terra pinguis
Who changed terra pinguis’ name to phlogiston
-George Ernst Stahl
What did George Ernst Stahl Believe
- flame is heated air caused by a rush of phlogiston out of a burning material
- rusting is the same but the process is slower and therefore no flame
- air can hold phlogiston but limited capacity
- different materials have different phlogiston
What did Joseph Black discover?
- Fixed air (now known as CO2)
- noted (like others) that burning, fermentation and the activities of animals produced something that was deadly to animals that would distinguish a flame
- wanted to find this substance
Joseph Priestly
- produced new substance from mercuric oxide
- called this dephlogisticated air (oxygen)
Priestly’s Physiology
- veinous blood is loaded with phlogiston absorbed from tissues
- this is released thru respiration
- arterial blood has no phlogiston
- thought plants seem to restore dephlogisticated air
What mechanisms did Ingen Houz propose
- photosynthesis
- green parts of plants can take phlogiston out of air but only in sunlight
Antoine Lavoisier and phlogiston
- abandoned the phlogiston concept
- renamed dephlogisticated air to oxygen
- oxidation theory: concluded that both respiration and combustion consume oxygen and release CO2
- could tell how much heat released/amount of CO2 released via ice calorimeter
Louis-Joseph Proust
Law of Definite Proportions
-elements combine in compound substance by a certain weight
John Dalton
- each given compound consist of a specific # of each kind of atom
- explained proust’s results
What was the first biological material to be made in a test tube?
Urea
Who made urea in a test tube
Friedrich Wohler
Hermann Kobe
- created acetic acid
- allowed biochemists to understand reactions in the body by replicating them in a test tube
