Abstract
III. IN a yet higher degree than fluor spar, phosphorus attracted attention through its property of being self-luminous in darkness in consequence of a slow combus-tion. This substance was accidentally discovered, as I have already mentioned, at the close of the sixteenth century, at Hamburg in the course of experiments made by the ruined alchemist, Brand, with a view to produce the philosopher's stone by the dry distillation of urine which had been evaporated to dryness. The raw material was not abundant, the process of manufacture uncertain, and phosphorus, which is now sold at about 7s. 6d. per kilogram, was worth many times its weight in gold. Soon after the physician Bernard Albinus discovered that the same substance could also be produced from the ashes of certain plants, but its general occurrence in nature (in the bones of animals and in the mineral kingdom) was first pointed out by Scheele and Gahn, who, during Scheele's stay in Stockholm (1768–70), are believed to have simultaneously made this important discovery.1 It forms the proper starting point of our knowledge of this substance, of such extraordinary importance in the economy of nature, so indispensable in scientific agriculture, in medicine, and in numberless branches of modern industry.
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A Leaf from the History of Swedish Natural Science 1 . Nature 21, 563–565 (1880). https://doi.org/10.1038/021563d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/021563d0