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Light and Its Phenomena: Weusel

All compound bodies, even the smallest portions of them, are composed of the same constituents, united in fixed proportions. This discovery was made by Higgins, Bergman, Kirwan, and Weusel; and perfected by Richter, Berthollet, Wollaston, and Dalton. Gay Lussac also showed that one volume of any gas always combines with one, two, or three of another gas. Weusel, in 1777; Higgins, in 1789; and Richter, in 1792; announced the fact with full details, that atoms of different bodies unite only in definite proportions, or in even multiples of those proportions. In 1804, Dalton adopted the view of Weusel, Higgins, and Richter, and Thomson, Berzelius, and Wollaston, gave them currency. Compounded bodies, whose elements are gaseous, consists either of equal volumes of those elements, or, if one exceed the other, the excess is some multiple of the volume 1 13 16

This subservience to arithmetic proves that the whole is mechanical, and at no time is there any resultant of powers, per se, or sui generis. It was for ages well known to every apothecary's apprentice, that solutions took and take place only in known definite ratios, and it had been published in many books that 2/2½ lbs. of water would dissolve 1 lb. of common salt, or 1 lb. of water 6 oz. of salt. A lb. of water was then put into a long necked bottle, and marked with a file where it was 1 inch wide, tapering upward to. Then 220 grains of salt raised the water half an inch; then 72 grains of sugar raised the half inch to ; and afterwards 24 grains of alum raised it to a full inch; and an additional 24 grains raised the water to 1 inch. In rendering these relations numerical, some body is taken as a standard, that which combines in the smallest proportions, and this being hydrogen, it is made the integer or I. The next is carbon, 6; the next is oxygen, 8; and the next nitrogen, 14:

Whether two substances combine by weights or volumes, the proportions are the same ; the numbers, therefore, for the gases are the same as their base. Wollaston's scale greatly simplifies this Atomic Theory. It gives the best determination of numbers, and multiplies the constituents at sight. Some chemists consider the numbers as the weight of single atoms of the bodies, the ratios holding for any number. The weight of an atom of hydrogen is 0.132, but it is taken, on Wollaston's scale, as one-eighth of an atom of oxygen at 1, or as 0.125; or oxygen being taken as 8, hydrogen of course is I.

An atom of carbon is 0.751; of sulphur 2.0434; of ammonia 2.128; of magnesia, 2.503; of lime, 3.62; of barytes, 9.7; of oxalic acid, 4.625; of chlorine is 4.498. An atom of platinum is 12.161; of gold 24.838; of silver 13.714; of iron 7.143; of copper 8; of antimony 11.249; of lead 25.974; of tin 14.705; of manganese 6.833. These are the standards for the equivalents of all other bodies.

Bodies of two equivalents, or atoms, are binary, as water, 1 O + 1 H, and carbonic oxide, 10 + 1 C. Others of three, ternary, as deutoxide of hydrogen, 2 O + I H and carbonic acid, 2 0+ I C; others quarternary, etc. Water is formed in bulk of one volume of oxygen, and two volumes of hydrogen; for, when water is decomposed by electricity, the hydrogen at the negative pole is double the volume of the oxygen at the positive. A cubic foot of water is 1000 ounces of 437.5 grains each, i. e., 437,500 grains. Then a cubic foot of hydrogen weighs but 38 grains, so that water is to hydrogen as 11,500 to 1.