Chapter Six: Universal Medicines: Johann Rudolph Glauber and his Reception in England
'[Glauber] ist ein Mensch voller verstand und wißenschafften in re medico-chimica Ia so [sehr?] daß Er gleichsam darinnen sich veriret und nicht weiß welches er am ersten furnehmen oder ins werkh richten soll' ('[Glauber] is a man of great understanding and knowledge in medical and chemical matters; so much so, indeed, that he loses himself in them, as it were, not knowing what to undertake or set on foot first') - Moriaen to Hartlib, 27 August 1647, HP 37/121A.
'Paracelsus of the Seventeenth Century' or 'German Robert Boyle'?
Of all the many 'Chemical Philosophers' with whom Moriaen became associated in the course of his long involvement with alchemy, the one personally closest to him and on whom he sent the longest and most detailed reports was his highly controversial countryman Johann Rudolph Glauber (1604-1670).[1] It is now generally accepted that Glauber was among the most historically significant practical chemists of his day, though assessments of the scientific value of his work still vary considerably. Because of Moriaen's personal friendship and practical collaboration with the man, his comments on Glauber are of particular value. They supply some hint of what is most irrevocably lost to later scholars, the essential oral component of alchemical communication, in the context of which published and even manuscript material was intended to be understood.
Though numerous monographs on him have been written, many details of Glauber's personal history remain obscure. The principal primary source of information hitherto available on his life has been his own autobiographical writings - a notoriously unreliable form of evidence. These autobiographical fragments, which are scattered in typically disorganised fashion throughout his work, were mostly written in response to accusations published by Christoph Fahrner, an assistant and protégé with whom Glauber fell out in 1654.[2] They are thus highly polemical and defensive, and particularly in the cases where Fahrner's charges appear to have had at least an element of truth in them, Glauber did not scruple to doctor the facts in order to refute them. The other main source has been contemporary publications about him, almost all of which were written by personal enemies such as Fahrner and are hence equally partisan and unreliable.
Hartlib's papers, especially the letters from Moriaen, supply a number of lacunae in the biographical data so far available on Glauber, particularly for <184> the 1640s and 1650s. They are also a rich source of informal contemporary comment on the man and his work, covering the whole gamut from enthusiastic approval through interested comment, scepticism and frank bafflement to outraged condemnation. This chapter will present a considerable body of new biographical evidence to supplement the extant accounts, and draw on the Hartlib archive to provide a more sophisticated analysis of the reception of his work in his own age than can be gleaned from printed sources. Though the letters preserved by Hartlib are by no means free of partisanship and personal agendas, neither are they public denunciations or defences, and a measure of balance is supplied by the sheer variety of sources and opinions. The case of Glauber also provides a very interesting and well-documented example of the workings of Hartlib's information network as applied to a given subject or individual.
Glauber's life and work were both consciously modelled on those of Paracelsus: he has been described as the 'Paracelsus of the seventeenth century'.[3] He wandered as restlessly through Europe as his forebear before finally settling for good in the Netherlands in his fifties. Like Paracelsus, he wrote in the vernacular, though in Glauber's case this was as much a consequence of linguistic limitation as of principle.[4] He despised received academic wisdom, though as Boyle was to complain of the Spagyrists in general, he was not always so cautious of doctrines of the non-'academic' variety. He laid great emphasis on exact observation and physical experiment, and displayed exceptional practical expertise, particularly in technological and agricultural matters.
Like Paracelsus, he was a spectacularly controversial figure during his lifetime, and has continued to be the object of both uncritical praise and excessive vilification in the centuries since his death. What both camps have generally agreed on, however, is that an evaluative judgment of Glauber depends on the question of whether he is to be seen as an alchemist or a chemist - a question which, as was argued in the previous chapter, is wholly anachronistic.[5] Adelung thought him a complete charlatan, but he is seen far more sympathetically by most of his more recent biographers. Erich Pietsch calls him 'a founder of chemical technology' ('einen Ergründer der chemischen Technologie'); for Kurt Gugel 'he became one of the founding fathers of German chemistry' ('wurde er zu einem der Väter der deutschen Chemie überhaupt').[6] Jan V. Golinski agrees with Pietsch in seeing Glauber as a pioneer of precise and lucid scientific terminology,[7] but J.R. Partington, while acknowledging him to have been 'a very skilled practical chemist', criticises him as 'an extremely untidy, verbose and often obscure author', 'too fond of praising himself and posing as a benefactor of mankind in general and Germany in particular'.[8]
Paul Walden, on the other hand, goes so far as to call him 'the German Robert Boyle'.[9] This is about as illuminating as calling Shakespeare the English Racine. Both can be seen as the leading exponents in their respective countries and generations (Glauber was already about 23 when Boyle was born) of the same discipline, but in almost every other respect they were diametrical opposites. Boyle was an aristocrat with a thorough classical education, a man of independent means which enabled him to devote his time and energy to his beloved science without being distracted by the problem of funding. Glauber's origins were in the artisan class and he was largely self- <185> taught, facts he stressed in his autobiographical writings with truculent pride if not outright inverted snobbery:
I am glad to admit that I never went to prestigious schools and never wanted to: had I done so, I might never have gained such understanding of Nature as, without wishing to boast, I now possess; I do not in the least regret that from my youth I had my hands among the coals and by this means learned the hidden secrets of Nature. I seek to take no man's place, I have never aspired to eat fine gentlemen's bread, but preferred honestly to earn my own, with regard to this motto, ALTERIUS NON SIT QUI SUUS ESSE POTEST.[10]
The motto ('let him belong to no one else who can belong to himself') is taken directly from Paracelsus,[11] a reference Glauber would have expected a reader with any knowledge of the chemical tradition to recognise. Chemistry was the trade by which Glauber earned his living, partly by teaching, both publicly and privately, partly by seeking employment and (for all his declared distaste for eating fine gentlemen's bread) patronage from men of rank, and partly by marketing a whole range of products, principally distillation ovens and other equipment, mead and wine made from various fruits, and chemical medicines.
Boyle's thought was exceptionally systematic and sequential: he was among the first clearly to formulate and practise a method of consistent scepticism and experimental verification, rejecting all prior authority and tradition, of what is now called empiricism (though the word had other connotations at the time, implying random guesswork if not outright quackery). The insistence on trusting only the evidence of the senses, the 'light of nature', was nothing new, having been commonplace already in medieval alchemical writing and become even more strident in Paracelsus and his followers, especially (in his earlier work) Glauber. What is revolutionary about Boyle is that he followed the idea through and made it the central tenet of his scientific method rather than a mere rhetorical tag. His style is incomparably more organised and sophisticated (though at times hardly less verbose) than Glauber's: indeed, Glauber's frequent coarseness is singled out for criticism in Boyle's Sceptical Chymist.[12]
Glauber's thought and writing, by contrast, were spectacularly unorganised, and he had the practical autodidact's defensive contempt of theory and method. As Gugel points out, although he described his profession (on his second marriage certificate) as 'apothecarius', he never attempted to gain a qualification from the Amsterdam Collegium Medicum, as practising apothecaries were theoretically required to do.[13] Gugel considers this surprising, but it probably reflects the same disapproval of monopolies and mistrust of academic establishments that characterised the attitude of so many English iatrochemists to the College of Physicians.[14] There is no documentary evidence about his education. His father was a barber,[15] and it is not clear what first attracted him to natural philosophy, though the combination of a quick brain, lively imagination, practical dexterity and strong ambition are in themselves perhaps explanation enough. Thanks to the keen interest taken in chemistry, and the substantial sums laid out on it, by many German princes and indeed the Emperor himself,[16] few professions offered such potential rewards for a gifted man without formal training or private <186> means as that of investigator of nature.
Boyle's thorough scepticism led him to be chary of all tradition and received wisdom from whatever source, to take nothing on trust until he had himself seen it experimentally verified. Glauber, like the majority of iatrochemists, ostensibly held the same opinion, but in fact reserved his mistrust for the authorities sanctioned by the Schools, investing in the Hermetic writers, particularly van Helmont, 'the most learned and experienced philosopher of his day',[17] and above all his hero Paracelsus, a faith every bit as blind as that of the Schoolmen in their sacred cows. He portrayed it as part of his mission on earth to unravel and state in plain terms the mysteries embedded in Paracelsus's often well-nigh impenetrable pronouncements, into which he had gained unique insight by the parallel routes of meditation and practical experiment. His methodology, in later years at least, ran to such procedures as solving what he took to be anagrams in his forebear's work, in a manner distinctly akin to the approach of the chiliasts who applied numerology to the prophetic books of the Bible in order to date history in advance, and his belief in the transcendent truth of these texts was almost as fervent as theirs in Scripture.
Finally, while Boyle's thought developed towards a scientific methodology recognisable and indeed still practised today, Glauber in his old age turned away from the practical chemistry for which he is now best known - his observations on acids, alkalis and salts, his production of fertilisers and fruit wines, his studies of the therapeutic effect of spa waters - and turned instead to a wholly contemplative and mystical approach, depicting his earlier labours as a superficial and mechanical preliminary to the true transcendent insights into the secret fires of the earth, the transmutation of metals and the universal animating spirit which he gained only after abandoning practical experiment. The development of Glauber's scientific thought from the merely practical to the transcendent could serve as a paradigm of the progression through 'chemistry' to 'alchemy' suggested in the previous chapter, though the utter rejection in his last years of practical experimentation makes his a rather extreme and idiosyncratic case.
Heyday in the Netherlands
Between the still almost totally obscure Wanderjahre of his youth and his move to the Netherlands in c.1640, Glauber was for a time Court Apothecary to Landgrave Georg II of Hessen-Darmstadt, in Giessen and Marburg. He occupied this position by 1635 at the latest.[18] Why he left the post remains entirely unknown, but it is certain he was in Amsterdam by 1640, for it was there that he married Helena Cornelisdottir on 20 January 1641.[19] This was his second marriage, the first having come to an untimely end, according to Glauber, some two years earlier when he surprised his wife in bed with his servant.[20] If Glauber's account of the business is true, he then separated from his first wife, leaving her to wander into France with her paramour. He is rather vague about the details, saying of his second wife, 'two years passed before I married this wife after the first',[21] but whether this means two years after the first marriage or two years after its annulment (if indeed it was officially annulled) is not clear. Fahrner accused him of adultery and bigamy, <187> which he of course denied, but with a suspicious lack of verifiable evidence.
Glauber had not, he claimed, intended to settle in Amsterdam, but had merely been making a business visit. He cited two compelling grounds for taking on another wife in spite of the previous unfortunate and cautionary experience: he had fallen ill, and he disliked Dutch food: 'I went to Holland on business, but because of the change of air I fell ill, and being unable to stomach Dutch food, I was obliged to remarry, that I might be better looked after'.[22] An additional and more convincing incentive is suggested by the fact that the couple's first child, Anna, was born almost exactly seven months after the date of the wedding, on 29 September.[23]
It may well have been at this time that Glauber made friends with Moriaen. It is the first time both men were demonstrably in the same place, and as two German émigrés with a pronounced interest in chemistry, it would hardly be surprising if they became known to one another. They were certainly acquainted by 1642, for on returning to Amsterdam in September that year after two months' absence, Moriaen mentioned to Van Assche that on account of this he had not seen Glauber for some time.[24] This is his first surviving mention of the man, but makes it obvious he already knew him well. According to Moriaen, Glauber at some unspecified point spent 'a long time' as a guest or lodger in his house,[25] and it seems very likely that this refers to some at least of the period between Glauber's arrival in Amsterdam and his marriage.
On 9 May 1643, Moriaen told Van Assche that Glauber had moved into a new house in Amsterdam.[26] This was on the Elandsgracht,[27] and is doubtless the house described in Glauber's De tribus lapidibus, which the chemist had bought from a 'lover of the art' ('Liebhaber der Kunst', i.e. an alchemist), who had had it built expressly to house a laboratory. Glauber gave a grand account of the establishment he set up here with the intention of performing 'something proper on a large scale in Alchemy'.[28] It featured, he claimed, six large stone outbuildings with mighty chimneys, 'all sorts of ovens, large and small, various small and large bellows'[29] and a staff (number unspecified) of labourers and apprentices.[30] Among the visitors to this impressive-sounding public laboratory were Moriaen, who received instruction in metallurgy from Glauber,[31] and Dury's future brother-in-law Heinrich Appelius.
In a letter to Hartlib of 7 June 1644, Appelius assumed his friend in London would already have heard all about Glauber from Moriaen: 'I would have sent you Glauber's Uses of the New Philosophical Oven, but I suppose you will have heard all about such matters from Herr Moriaen, and if not, he is the best person to ask, for he surely knows more about such things than I'.[32] Apparently, however, Appelius was wrong, for some two or three weeks later, he sent a copy of 'Glauber's oven' ('Glauberi ofen'), presumably at Hartlib's request, mentioning again that 'Herr Moriaen and other physicians who have some of his things are well satisfied with him'.[33] But either Hartlib did not follow up the suggestion of directing his enquiries to Moriaen for another two-and-a-half to three years, or Moriaen did not bother replying until then.[34] This lends considerable weight to the conjecture that there was a lapse in Moriaen's relations with Hartlib between these dates. From this point on, however, Glauber became far and away the most discussed figure in the correspondence, and Moriaen took over from Appelius as Hartlib's principal source of information on the German chemist.
<188> The tract sent by Appelius was an advertisement for Glauber's new laboratory. A copy, in Appelius's hand, is preserved among Hartlib's papers, entitled 'Furni Noui Philosophici Utilitates oder Beschreibung der eigenschafften eines sonderbaren new erfundenen Philosophischen distillir ofens […] Zu Amsterdam gedruckt beÿ Broer Ianß. Ao 1643' ('Uses of the New Philosophical Oven, or a description of the particulars of a singular new philosophical digesting oven, printed at Amsterdam by Brother Jans, 1643).[35] No copies of the printed version of this pamphlet seem to have survived, and it is not mentioned in any bibliography of Glauber. Pre-dating his first previously recorded publication by three years, it is the earliest known piece of writing by him (see Appendix One).
In contrast to the later but very similarly entitled Furni novi philosophici (1646-9), the work that was to make Glauber's name throughout Europe, the advertisement gives no indication whatsoever of how the furnace was constructed or how it worked. Instead, it describes, in deliberately vague terms, the processes it could perform and the products it could yield. The fact that only one oven is mentioned suggests that Glauber's later description of his laboratory in De tribus lapidibus, equipped 'with all manner of small and large furnaces', had benefited from a certain amount of retrospective embellishment. It may be, however, that Glauber was using one oven for public displays and others for his private research: it is clear from Appelius's report that there was at least one other oven in the house. The advertisement concludes with an invitation to 'the lover of truth and the spagyric art' to visit Glauber and have the furnace's operations revealed to them: Glauber would not withold his mysteries from the curious visitor. Not, at least, if the visitor came armed with a suitable fee. Appelius was charged 30 Imperials to see both furnaces and their more basic operations: he thought this a reasonable sum.[36] The more specialised processes, however, had to be paid for separately. The sums involved are revealed in detail by Appelius in a later letter,[37] and make it clear that the charge of 30 Imperials was very much a budget-class deal. Between them, these documents supply quite a detailed price list of the marvels on display in a mid-seventeenth century public chemical laboratory.
A particularly striking feature of the list is that Glauber was already speaking of the 'secret philosophic fire', probably some highly corrosive acid, which was to become one of his deepest obsessions in later years. The prices quoted by Appelius were what he and his friend[38] had themselves paid - a fact of some significance, since Appelius gave every impression of being thoroughly satisfied with the deal. This tends to verify that Glauber's claims were genuine, or at least appeared so to two experienced chemists of the day who had investigated them in person. Deliberately vague though much of Glauber's terminology is, it is not mere attention-grabbing publicity.
The total fee mentioned by Appelius is 420 Imperials, or about £100. Had Glauber had many such eager customers, his business would have been a very profitable one indeed: £100, it may be remembered, is what Comenius a few years earlier had considered an adequate annual income. Glauber was doubtless also selling the products of his laboratory, such as medicines, pesticides, preparations for purifying or preserving food and drink, and the like. But it seems there were few both able and willing to run to expenditure on this scale for the satisfaction of their curiosity, and the overheads must <189> have been considerable. The chemist himself later described the enterprise as 'nothing but much expense and little return for it'.[39] Moreover, Glauber, whose health was precarious throughout his life (which is hardly surprising given that the senses of taste and smell ranked first among the analytical apparatus of mid-17th-century chemistry), repeatedly complained that the damp and noxious Amsterdam air disagreed with him. On 22 July 1644, Appelius, writing from Amsterdam, reported that Glauber planned to leave the city in three weeks time and seek a more comfortable place of residence further up the Rhine.[40]
All that has previously been known of Glauber's movements in the Netherlands is that besides Amsterdam he dwelt at some point in Utrecht and Arnhem. This information is drawn from the truculently incoherent Glauberus ridivivus:
It is true that I could not stand the damp air of Amsterdam and sought healthier air in Utrecht and Arnhem; then for the sake of earning my keep I had to settle again in Amsterdam, but I never lived in Leiden as you [Fahrner] pretend, and if I had lived there, what would it have mattered if Leiden had suited me better than another place, who could object to my living there?[41]
Information in Hartlib's papers make it possible to establish the chronology of these movements with much greater accuracy, thanks to the regular news about Glauber sent by Moriaen and Appelius. Though the very vehemence with which Glauber denied a stay in Leiden inevitably arouses the suspicion that he had been there and had reason to conceal the fact, the absence from their reports of any mention of such a stay tends to suggest on this occasion he was in fact telling the truth.[42] He moved to Utrecht in August 1644,[43] and was back in Amsterdam briefly from March to at least the end of August 1647 before decamping to Arnhem.[44] He returned to Amsterdam probably between May and August 1648.[45] Unfortunately, nothing in the papers sheds any new light on the reasons for all these moves.
Both Pietsch and Gugel conclude that after leaving Amsterdam the first time, Glauber returned to the service of the court of Hessen-Darmstadt. This is because Glauber appears to cite the siege of Marburg by invading troops from Hesse-Kassel, which occurred on 2 November 1645, as his reason for leaving this employment. But as Arnulf Link points out,[46] this does not add up. Glauber's account of the episode is jumbled together with the lurid tale of his first wife's adultery. Writing in 1656, he declared that
twenty-odd years ago [i.e. before 1636 if the report is accurate] I took a wife in Giessen, then I was summoned to supervise the prince's court apothecary, but when Hesse-Kassel made war with Hessen-Darmstadt and sought to take Marburg by force of arms, everything changed, and whoever could fled to safety; I moved then down the Rhine to my gracious Lord [= Georg II of Hessen-Darmstadt?] in Frankfurt and then Bonn, and during this time surprised the said wife from Giessen one day committing adultery with my then manservant in my bedroom; I then moved to Holland for the first time over a year later [emphasis added].[47]
The passage thus seems to place the siege of Marburg (1645) a year before <190> Glauber's first move to the Netherlands (1640). Link suggests three possible explanations. Hessen-Darmstadt and Hesse-Kassel had been at war since 1618, and it is conceivable that the military threat to Marburg mentioned by Glauber was indeed merely a threat, not the actual siege of 1645. Or Glauber's memory may have been at fault. Thirdly and by far the most likely, it may be that the deliberately vague and confusing details are a smokescreen for the real reason (whatever that may have been) why he left the landgrave's service.[48] As will be shown below, this would not make it the only piece of deliberate misinformation in his autobiography.
Gugel and Pietsch also both assume Glauber was back in Amsterdam by 1646, on the grounds that his first major published works, Furni novi philosophici I and De auri tinctura (often referred to as De auro potabili), appeared there that year.[49] It was not, however, necessary to be in Amsterdam to have works printed there. He could have sent or brought them over from Utrecht, either direct to the printer - Moriaen's old associate Hans Fabel - or to friends in Amsterdam, Moriaen being an obvious candidate. Book I was out by September 1646, shortly to be followed by De auri tinctura.[50] Writing from Amsterdam towards the end of 1646, Appelius told Dury that 'the Author protesteth by his friends, that hee intendeth to write nothing but what hee hath, and yet daily can doe without fallacie, not what he hath observed or lighted upon by chance',[51] a turn of phrase strongly suggesting that Glauber was not yet in Amsterdam to do the protesting in person. According to Moriaen, he was on his way to settle there again in early February 1647,[52] and Appelius reported his arrival in March.[53]
It was at just this juncture, it seems, that Moriaen's regular correspondence with Hartlib was resumed, and it is obvious that his relations with Glauber were now very close. Though only part one of Furni novi philosophici had appeared in print, he was able to give detailed and accurate accounts of the ovens that were to be described in parts two to four (1647-8).[54] Indeed, he planned to set up the 'second oven' (i.e. the one described in part two) in his own house and to use it for the production of chemical medicines,[55] though there is no firm evidence as to whether he actually put this proposal into effect.
Moreover, it emerges that not only had Moriaen given the chemist lodgings at his house in Amsterdam, he and Odilia were the godparents of two of Glauber's children.[56] This bears witness to the remarkable latitudinarianism of both men, since Glauber was, nominally at least, a Roman Catholic. It is barely conceivable Moriaen was unaware of this. One of the more irrelevant charges later laid against Glauber by Fahrner was that he was a hypocrite in matters of religion, altering his allegiances to suit whatever set of circumstances he found himself in at the time and to ingratiate himself with people of influence. This elicited one of Glauber's most convincing and coherent refutations, indeed a fine and really quite bold defence of non-sectarian religion. He made no bones about having attended Catholic, Lutheran and Calvinist churches, nor about having had some of his children baptised Catholic and others Evangelical: he had, he said, simply done whichever was more convenient, seeing either as equally valid. He considered himself a Catholic, but pointed out that the Lord
expressly says in several places, Come unto me all ye that labour and are <191> heavy laden and I shall refresh you etc. And it was for everyone, not only for Catholics, Lutherans or Arminians etc. but also for all Jews, Turks and heathens that Christ in his perfection died and gained Heaven.[57]
If Glauber really had been playing the Vicar of Bray, he would hardly have published a declaration so calculated to offend all the established Christian orthodoxies, one which makes him sound more like a Behmenist or a Collegiant, or at any rate an 'impartial' spirit very much of Moriaen's own stamp, than a kow-tower to any denominational authority.
The evident closeness of their relationship did not, however, make Moriaen an uncritical admirer of his friend. Already at this stage he was commenting on Glauber's inability to concentrate on a given subject or follow his experiments through to a definite conclusion. Later, this inconstancy of purpose would be a source of continual annoyance to Moriaen, though he always stressed that Glauber was genuinely talented and that 'he has been granted a considerable light into Nature'.[58] One feature of that inconstancy, as Moriaen saw it, was his habit of constantly uprooting himself and setting off for Germany, but then returning to Amsterdam instead. It was not until 1650, a full decade after his first arrival in the Netherlands, that Glauber finally took his leave and departed for his native country.
Flight into Germany
At least as early as 1644, Glauber had been hankering to return to his homeland. Reporting his move to Utrecht that year, Appelius stated that he had intended to go to Germany but was prevented by the continuing state of war.[59] Again when he moved to Arnhem in 1647, it was intended as the first leg of a journey home: 'he would faine goe higher, in[to] Germany, & set up their such workes whereby he might maintaine his family most liberally […] so that hee expects onely [i.e. is only waiting for] peace in Germany for this Country agrees not with his nature'.[60] This is one of the reasons Glauber himself later gave for his eventual return to Germany in 1650: that he wished to see his homeland again after peace had been established.[61]Even his most sympathetic biographers have assumed that this was merely an excuse and that the real reason for his departure was a financial collapse and a bid to escape his creditors. However, Moriaen's and Appelius's evidence suggests it was in fact the truth, albeit not the whole truth: financial problems were almost certainly the immediate impulse. Glauber also claimed he was cheated in the selling of his house in Amsterdam, his laboratory equipment being wrongfully sold as part of the furnishings, and that it took him a two-year legal campaign to reclaim his lawful possessions.[62] This perhaps accounts for his return to Amsterdam from Arnhem in 1648 and the fact that instead of proceeding to Germany as he initially intended he did not, in the event, leave the Netherlands until two years after the signing of the Peace of Westphalia (1648).
It has not previously been possible to establish whether Glauber made his move in the spring of 1650 or that of 1651. The latter has, reasonably enough, been favoured, on the grounds that Glauber's son Alexander was baptised in Amsterdam in 1651.[63] But Moriaen's letters place the move squarely in March or April 1650. He told Worsley on 4 March that Glauber <192> 'hath now finished all hee thinks to doe heere' and was preparing to leave. He planned initially to go only as far as the Rhineland (or so he told Moriaen), to Duisburg or Wesel.[64] Brun had reported the previous year that he was planning to go to Cologne.[65] However, he soon changed his plans and plunged on north-east to Bremen, in the heart of Lower Saxony, where Moriaen thought him settled by the end of April.[66] He was still there in July,[67] but for unexplained reasons he set off again some time in the next two months, heading south this time, by way of Frankfurt to Wertheim, where he was living by 7 October 1650,[68] though still considering a move back to Frankfurt or on to Nürnberg. Glauber's account of this implies that the whole journey was of a piece,[69] which would be barely credible even without the evidence of Moriaen's letters to prove it was a matter of fits and starts, of constantly revised plans. He may well genuinely have wanted to see his homeland again, but to plan such a circuit would be taking a preference for scenic routes to extremes. A likelier motivation for the bizarre route is an attempt to shake off creditors on the one hand and repeatedly frustrated hopes of employment or business opportunities on the other.
Glauber also claimed that, far from sneaking out of Amsterdam in secret to escape his creditors and a pending court case for debt, as Fahrner (very plausibly) charged, he had merely gone on ahead alone to check that the route was safe for his family, and that having found it was, he summoned them to follow him by boat to Bremen, from where they completed the rest of the journey together.[70] Even the cautious Link sees no reason to doubt Glauber's word in this matter.[71] But Moriaen's letters reveal that Glauber left Bremen in September 1650 at the latest,[72] whereas Helena Glauber was still in Amsterdam for the baptism of her son the following year. When and how she and the children eventually did join him is not clear, but Glauber's version of the story is pure fiction.
There are two plausible reasons why Glauber should have bothered with this invention. The first is to gloss over the fact that he left a pregnant wife and nursing mother to fend for herself, and fend off the creditors, for at least the better part of a year. If, that is, Helena was pregnant when he left: and herein lies the second likely reason. Having admitted to one cuckolding already in this book, Glauber doubtless did not wish to draw attention to the fact that he had not seen his wife for a good nine months at least before the birth of 'his' son. The available evidence unfortunately does not reveal when in 1651 Alexander Glauber's baptism took place. If it was in early January, and if Glauber did not in fact leave Amsterdam until early April 1650, it is possible he was indeed the child's father, but the odds are not favourable. This would also help explain Glauber's apparently gratuitous remark, in the story of his first marriage, that in spite of her treachery he would not have cast his first wife off if they had had any children living.[73] The comment was perhaps more relevant to the second wife than the first. This piece of disinformation has led Gugel to be consistently a year out in his datings of Glauber's movements from this point until his final return to Amsterdam in 1656, since he assumes he cannot have left Bremen until after Alexander's birth.
In Wertheim, Glauber rented a large house and set up a new public laboratory in which to teach transmutation of metals, and set about exploiting a mine, the nature of which is not clear.[74] It was also (according to Moriaen) <193> at this juncture that he started claiming to have discovered the fabled universal solvent, alcahest.
The initial funding for these projects, which must have represented a considerable outlay, was presumably supplied by Glauber's new patron, Johann Philipp von Schönborn, Elector and Archbishop of the Imperial City of Mainz (some hundred kilometres to the west of Wertheim), though it has not previously been known that Glauber was associated with him this early. On 13 June 1651, Glauber specifically mentioned Johann Philipp as his patron, from whom he expected an unspecified advantage in exchange for the revelation of an unspecified secret.[75]Moriaen took Glauber to mean a privilege for his books, but it may be that what he was after was a patent for his process of extracting tartar from wine lees. He later described this in his Gründliche und wahrhafftige Beschreibung wie man auß den Weinhefen einen guten Weinstein […] extrahiren soll (1654), which he dedicated to the Elector. According to this dedication, he received a privilege for the process from Johann Philipp in 1652.
Faced with this large and diverse work-load, Glauber took on two students as apprentices-cum-assistants.[76] One of these was sent to Holstein on business, apparently to display some of Glauber's products or processes to the court there. He was supposed to deliver some alcahest to a correspondent of Hartlib's in Amsterdam (probably Moriaen) on his way back, but failed to do so. Glauber immediately concluded there was some sort of treachery involved.[77] He was, probably with some justification, of a highly suspicious nature, which in later years developed into something approaching full-blown neurosis. Glauber started imagining his enemies to be bribing his children to reveal his secrets, or lurking in gangs at street corners in the hope of killing him.[78] Even allowing for the wild overstatements habitual in seventeenth-century polemic, some of Glauber's outbursts, evidently written or dictated at great speed and quite extemporaneously, sound genuinely and alarmingly unhinged.
Despite the quarrels with his apprentices, Glauber seemed comfortably placed in Wertheim, in favour with the Elector, his mine and public laboratory flourishing. This situation too, however, was soon to be disrupted, as the owner of the house he was renting sold it and the buyer promptly evicted him. Glauber moved this time to the relatively nearby Kitzingen - still within the Elector's sphere of influence - and devoted himself more exclusively to his enterprises of manufacturing and improving wine and extracting tartar from wine lees.[79] Here he also had a medical practice, for which (or so he later claimed) he made no charge, accepting only voluntary donations which he distributed among the local poor.[80] He remained in Kitzingen for some three years, producing another daughter, Johanna, in June 1653, and publishing parts 2 and 3 of Operis mineralis (1652),[81] part 1 of Miraculum mundi (1653), part 1 of Pharmacopoea spagyrica (1654) and the Gründliche und wahrhafftige Beschreibung of 1654 mentioned above.
Gugel describes this last work as Glauber's parting gift to the Elector and the district that had treated him well for some years. This may be true as far as it goes, but if so it is the first of many examples of Glauber's offering as a gift what had ceased to be of any use to him. The explicit motivation behind this and the ensuing torrent of publications was to forestall the attempts of his estranged assistant Christoph Fahrner to pass off what he had learned from <194> Glauber as his own work.
Glauber had met Fahrner soon after his arrival in Kitzingen in mid-1651, and took him on as a trainee and assistant, under a vow of secrecy.[82] Fahrner later claimed that Glauber had duped him by promising to reveal the Philosophers' Stone and then refusing to do so. Glauber maintained he had taken Fahrner on only to work on his schnapps production, tartar extraction, vinegar making and wine improvement, and promised him no other secrets than these, 'by which means, if you had kept faith with me, we might both in a short while have richly provided for all our children': he had never offered 'to reveal any metallic art, which I neither could nor wished to perform'.[83]
This does not chime very well with Moriaen's earlier report that Glauber not only claimed to understand transmutation but had taught it publicly in Wertheim. It must, however, be doubted whether Moriaen's report is an entirely accurate representation of what Glauber had told him - or indeed whether what Glauber had told him was an entirely faithful representation of what Glauber was doing. If Glauber really was, as Moriaen stated, offering instruction to the general public in the transmutation of metals, he was breaking the most sacred alchemical taboo. The 'great work' was not to be made available to all and sundry, or not at least until the world itself had been transmuted into a terrestrial paradise by direct divine intervention. It seems likelier that what Glauber was doing, as in his earlier public laboratory in Amsterdam, was demonstrating the results of his methods to the public rather than explaining the methods themselves, and that these supposed results now included transmutation (to which he had not laid claim in Furni novi utilitates).
Gugel asserts somewhat defensively that though he believed in the possibility of transmutation, Glauber repeatedly stated that he himself had never achieved a successful transmutation.[84]However, while Glauber did indeed deny his own transmutational prowess when it suited him - as here, to make Fahrner's charge appear absurd -, he also repeatedly claimed precisely the opposite. Not only in the account of the Wertheim laboratory, but in other reports from 1657 and 1659, Moriaen passed on unequivocal claims by Glauber that he could turn base metals into gold: in the latter case, indeed, Moriaen himself believed he had seen him do so.[85]
According to Fahrner, not only did Glauber withold his alchemical secrets, even his wine treatments were valueless. Glauber countered that any failures they had met with were the result of Fahrner's incompetence. What truth there is in either account it is now largely impossible to determine. The polemics on both sides are almost exclusively ad hominem and obviously wildly exaggerated. Fahrner accused Glauber of being a time-server in religious matters, an adulterer and a bigamist; Glauber accused Fahrner of everything from inadequate facial hair to uxoricide.[86]
Whatever the full facts behind the dispute, it is clear that Fahrner did indeed set about selling some of the secrets he had learned from Glauber. Whether he also, as Glauber claimed, incited other former employees to do likewise is not verifiable, but since Fahrner himself did not deny the main charge, claiming only that he had offered his knowledge to far fewer people than Glauber made out, it seems certain the accusation was substantially true.[87] This treachery, Glauber claimed, moved him to go to press with all his knowledge. The account is the more convincing for the fact that, far from <195> painting an over-sanctified picture of Glauber himself, it frankly contradicts the purely philanthropic motivation he laid claim to elsewhere. If he was not to enjoy all the profit of his art for himself, he said, he could at least ensure, by making it public, that Fahrner would not do so either:
by which revelation the whole human race, its aged and sick, will gain great delight and salve, which I might perhaps not have done had the godless Fahrner not wrung it from me through his treachery, lies and calumnies, but Fahrner will earn a reward like Judas Iscariot's.[88]
Starting with the Gründliche und wahrhafftige Beschreibung, exposing in some detail the process even Glauber stated he had originally contractually agreed to confide to Fahrner, works flooded from his pen in the following years, all purporting to make a gift to mankind of what Fahrner had tried to steal for himself.[89] Moriaen at least found this self-projection entirely credible, and though he thought the quarrel reflected badly on both parties, he believed it would benefit the world in general by encouraging Glauber to publish.[90]
When Glauber left Kitzingen is uncertain, but it was probably soon after publishing Gründliche und wahrhafftige Beschreibung in 1654. He later gave as his grounds for leaving that the local distillers, envious of his success and under the influence of their own produce, had resolved to use violence against him: 'seeing that I was likely to come to blows with a gang of drunken thugs, I sought to take my family to a place of safety'.[91] It was perhaps during this move that he suffered another setback to his health, reported in a lost letter from Moriaen to Hartlib and mentioned by the latter to Boyle:
Mr. Morian writes again of Glauber, that he hath had a very dangerous fall from a waggon, spitting much blood, and if the fever prevail upon him he fears for his life; which I pray God may be yet continued for giving many good hints, at least[,] to the studiers of nature and arts.[92]
He then spent some time in Frankfurt am Main, which he was forced to leave, he claimed, for fear of being murdered by Fahrner's cronies.[93] Next, he worked for 'persons of high princely rank' ('hohen fürstlichen Personen') as an assayer in mines near Cologne. In this instance, Moriaen's letters provide confirmation of Glauber's own published statements, which have previously been the only evidence for his stay in Cologne, and suggest that by 'princely persons' Glauber meant the Elector himself.[94] Link concludes, by correlating Fahrner's and Glauber's accounts, that Glauber spent about a year in Frankfurt, from mid-1654 to mid-1655. Moriaen, however, said he was on the brink of moving to Cologne in October 1654[95] - though whether that intention was followed through is not revealed. This remains another very obscure period of Glauber's life, on which Hartlib's papers otherwise shed no new light. He comes back into focus with his return to Amsterdam in 1656, this time for good.
Last Years in Amsterdam
In Glauberus ridivivus, published in 1656, Glauber declared - somewhat paradoxically in view of his statement elsewhere in the same book that one reason he kept moving was to escape Fahrner's murderous intentions - that
now here I am in Amsterdam and I live on the Kaisersgracht, in a well-known place, not in a corner; if you [Fahrner] or anyone else have anything to say to me, come here and say it; you shall have a straight answer.[96]
Here he continued working on his celebrated and much discussed aurum potabile, with which according to Moriaen he now claimed he could transmute all metals, albeit unprofitably. It was also, more importantly, a universal medicine.[97] He also experimented, apparently successfully, with a salt-based fertiliser.[98] Potentially even more profitable were a method he claimed to have invented to convert common salt into saltpetre,[99] and his proudest achievement, 'sal mirabile'. This is sodium sulphate, known to this day as 'Glauber's salt' and still used in medicine. It is possibly the basis of the alcahest he had already claimed to have discovered in 1650, for he affirmed that 'my sal mirabile fundamentally dissolves not only all metals but all stones and bones, yea, coal itself, which no other corrosive can dissolve; I could write a great book about this miraculous solution'.[100] The excitement engendered by such ideas is well illustrated by Moriaen's pouncing on this passage after a hurried inspection of the work and copying it out at once to send to Hartlib.[101]
Plans for Moriaen to visit Glauber, or vice versa, were constantly being renewed after the latter's return to the Netherlands in 1656, but were repeatedly frustrated by one or the other's ill health, or by bad weather. Indeed, in July 1658, Moriaen reported that Glauber had 'a violent desire to leave Amsterdam',[102] and planned to join Moriaen in Arnhem, though there is no indication of the reason. However, nothing came of the proposal, and Glauber remained based in Amsterdam until his death.
He was evidently soon thriving once more, for at least by 1659 he had set up yet another new laboratory, part public and part private. Moriaen finally managed two visits to Amsterdam in the summer and autumn of 1659 in order to inspect this. Another visitor that summer was Kretschmar, who told Hartlib:
Herr Glauber's public and private laboratory has now been set on foot, and he has many friends visiting him, especially good old Joh Moriaen of Arnhem, with whom I have met several times. He is staying in Herr Glauber's own house, and will perhaps be able to tell you more than I can of Herr Glauber's affairs.[103]
Both Glauber himself and his new laboratory were described by the travelling French scholar Samuel de Sorbière in 1660.[104] Sorbière, who was no novice in scientific matters, was greatly impressed both by the chemist and his equipment. After a long passage expressing haughty contempt for Paracelsian mumbo-jumbo, for
the Panaceas, the Alcahest, the Zenda and Parenda, the Archeus, the Enspagoycum, the Nostoch, the Ylech, the Trarame, the Turban, the Ens Tagastricum and the other visions van Helmont and his fraternity serve up to us,[105]
he was careful to absolve Glauber:
By none of this speech, Sir, do I intend to insult Glauber, nor any of those who, <197> like him, set their hand to the work, and whom I should rather encourage. He is undoubtedly the most excellent or the noblest of them all'.[106]
Indeed, so well-appointed were Glauber's premises that Sorbière, for all his sarcasm about alchemical jargon, was only half in jest when he stated that Glauber must indeed have mastered the secret of transmutation in order to maintain his laboratory and his large family (eight children by this time) in such fine style.
But there is a telling detail in Sorbière's account: he and his companions guessed Glauber's age to be sixty-six. In fact, he was at least ten years younger than that.[107] The years of handling assorted poisonous and corrosive materials were taking their toll, and Glauber's health was soon to give way completely. Serrarius visited him in February 1662 and 'found him yet very sick, though in a recovering way for life thoug not for perfect health.'[108] For much of the rest of his life he was bedridden. According to another travelling French scholar, Balthasar de Monconys, who visited him in 1663, he 'no longer works, and has no ovens'.[109] In 1668 he offered what remained of his library and laboratory for sale, producing a catalogue of his books and equipment.[110] It appears from this that Monconys overstated the extent of Glauber's decline, since the catalogue includes sixteen ovens and stills. It does seem fairly certain, however, that Glauber's ill health prevented him almost entirely from conducting any further practical laboratory work.
Nonetheless, he managed in his last eight years, before being finally released from what must have become a very trying and dispiriting existence in March 1670, to produce a further eleven works besides the catalogue of his effects. In terms of numbers of titles this represents forty percent of his total output, though it should be said these are all short single-volume works, and in terms of bulk of content account for only half that proportion.[111] But they still represent a significant section of his work, and though they have received less attention than his earlier productions on the grounds that they are less 'scientific', they are of considerable interest in assessing the development of his thought, as he turned perforce from practical experiment and consoled himself instead with mystical speculation.
He took to denouncing practical experiment as a superficial, mechanical operation, and to lauding instead the 'secret fire' he claimed to have discovered, probably an acid of some form, which could do more in a hazelnut shell than could be done by ordinary fire in the greatest furnace.[112] He indulged too in various pieces of fanciful etymology and mystical anagrammisation to demonstrate his long-standing conviction, originally arrived at by experimental practice, that salt constituted the essence of life. The Latin words for salt and sun, 'Sal' and 'Sol', he decided, both derived from the same word in the original, divinely-inspired pre-Babelian language in which words perfectly and directly signified their objects. Furthermore, the only difference between them was A and O, Alpha and Omega.[113]
There can be little doubt that Glauber's rejection of laboratory work was to some extent at least a case of sour grapes. One of the advantages of his 'secret fire' was that the adept did not even need to get out of bed to work with it:[114] it is surely pertinent that when Glauber wrote this, he had been physically incapable of getting out of bed for the best part of seven or eight years. Nonetheless, these musings of his old age were not a wholly new departure following his physical collapse, and should not be too lightly dismissed. Such ideas had had a place in his thought from the very first, from <198> the promise in Furni novi utilitates to reveal the 'secret fire of the philosophers', and had gained rather than lost weight with him as his technical expertise increased. Long before he was forced to give up practical experiments, he was busying himself with isolating and analysing the 'soul of the world', interpreting the microcosmic 'signatures' of salts, and offering chemical accounts of Creation itself. This 'mystical' aspect of his thought was not separate from, let alone opposed to, his practical work, and only became divorced from it when the latter became impossible for him. Like so many of the figures associated with or promoted by Hartlib and his circle, Glauber has been widely praised as a precursor, or even a 'father', of modern science, but was in fact turning more and more against the rationalist and empiricist currents that became increasingly prevalent in the latter half of the century.
Glauber's Reception in the Hartlib Circle
The most valuable supplement the Hartlib Papers can add to the individual history of Glauber is a broader and more contextualised view of contemporary reaction to the man and his work. They also reveal much about the international dissemination of his writings and equipment, which Hartlib did a great deal to promote. Glauber's first public laboratory in Amsterdam began to acquire a reputation in 1643, with the publication of Furni novi utilitates. This was precisely the time when Hartlib, after the failure of his plan to launch a pansophic reformation of learning by establishing a College of Light in England under the directorship of Comenius, began to turn more wholeheartedly to the study of nature as a means of achieving universal illumination, and he immediately latched onto Glauber's work as a possible means of promoting this. The earliest surviving mention of Glauber in his papers is in a letter from Appelius of 7 June 1644 mentioning the Furni novi utilitates,[115] but it is obvious Appelius was returning to a subject that had been broached earlier.
Several extracts of Glauber's works are to be found among Hartlib's papers, but Hartlib must have possessed all, or almost all, the Glauberian works that appeared during his lifetime. Appelius sent him Part I of Furni novi philosophici and probably De auri tinctura.[116] Moriaen sent the subsequent four parts of Furni novi, as well as Operis mineralis, De medicina universali, De natura salium, the Apologia against Fahrner, and other unspecified books. He also promised to send Trost der Seefahrenten, until he discovered that copies had already been sent directly to England by the publisher. This work was published simultaneously in Amsterdam by Jansson and in Arnhem by Jacob von Biesen: it appears from Moriaen's letter that it was Biesen who was sending copies to England to pre-empt Jansson - proof in itself of how ready a market there was in this country for Glauber's productions.[117] From 1658 onward Moriaen was trying to assemble a complete collection of Glauber's publications, to send them bound together to Hartlib,[118] though whether he in fact did so is unrecorded.
Hartlib in turn distributed the works he received, or copies of them, to other chemical enthusiasts. He had Furni novi utilitates translated from German into Latin and recopied for circulation. He aroused the interest of <199> William Petty, John Sadler and Cheney Culpeper.[119] In 1648 he sent a 'Glauberianus Tractatus' (probably Furni novi philosophici, or part of it, possibly De auri tinctura), to Comenius's estranged assistant Cyprian Kinner in Poland.[120] Robert Child acknowledged receipt from Hartlib of the first two books of Operis mineralis (1651) early in 1652,[121] about a year after Moriaen had sent them, and further unspecified works in August.[122] Henry Jenney sought to obtain further information about Glauber through Hartlib, as did John Winthrop in America.[123] While he did not pursue the promotion and distribution of Glauber's work with quite the same wholeheartedness and zeal as he had done that of Comenius, Hartlib was probably the most important channel through which Glauber became known in England, and also encouraged his dissemination abroad.
Not only Glauber's writing but also his equipment was brought to England, or replicated there, by various of Hartlib's associates. However varied the judgments on his theoretical writings and chemical products, there has never been any doubt that his technological innovations were genuine and valuable: not even his fiercest detractors denied this, though some questioned their originality.[124] The Ephemerides of 1654, citing Boyle as a source, record that 'Dr Rigely an Auncient Physitian of the College […] bought vp all Glauberian furnaces especially the 2d with a new Head, which also Mr Boyle hath'.[125] Clodius also sampled this '2d oven' and 'performed that by it in the space of 6. houres, which could not bee done by other meanes in 24. or 12.' - though Clodius, typically enough, added that it was 'not so vniversal as he brag's' and that Clodius could improve on it.[126] Moriaen sent a retort for Glauber's second oven to one Mr. Sotheby, with a wooden model showing how to install it.[127] Culpeper was frequently on tenterhooks awaiting receipt of new models or specifications.
Hartlib was also instrumental in commissioning early translations of Glauber. His papers include a complete English version of the Gründliche und wahrhafftige Beschreibung, the work on tartar extraction Glauber had written for the Elector of Mainz,[128] and an account by Glauber of 'the Vertues of Mr Glaubers Alkahest', also in English translation.[129] It is not certain that these translations, which were never published, were written by or for Hartlib, but he is an obvious candidate. The first published English version of any of Glauber's work was a compilation of Furni novi and De auri tinctura, which appeared in 1651 or 52[130] from the pen of one 'J.F.M.D.'. This was John French (Medicinæ Doctor), a chemist associated with the circle at this period, and it is virtually certain that the impetus for his efforts came from Hartlib. French himself declared in the preface to his Description of New Philosophical Furnaces that he had found 'the greatest part of the treatise in private hands already translated into English by a learned German',[131] and had consequently been moved to complete the work. Given that Hartlib is known to have been collecting Glauber's works and was personally associated with French at the time, it is very likely that these 'private hands' were his. Whether he himself was also the 'learned German' who had already made a start on the translation is more doubtful: he is not otherwise known as a translator on this scale and it is difficult to see how he could have spared the time for such an undertaking. He cannot, however, be ruled out. Another possibility is that the 'learned German' was Haak, who was a prolific translator:[132] Moriaen had earlier suggested he translate Gabriel Plattes into <200> German,[133] indicating that he was seen as suitable for such work, though there is no evidence that he in fact ever did so.
What is certain, however, is that Hartlib subsequently urged French to undertake further translation of Glauber, a fact which lends considerable weight to the hypothesis that it was he who suggested and supplied the original texts for French's version of the Furni novi. Hartlib recorded that 'The 30. of Nov. 1652 I lent to Dr French the 2. et 3. Part of Glaub. to be translated into English'.[134] This cannot mean parts 2 and 3 of Furni novi, for French had already translated these and almost certainly published them.[135] The reference is surely to Operis mineralis, which Hartlib had received from Moriaen earlier that year, though if French did undertake this work it was never published.
Whoever French's predecessor as translator of Furni novi was, he must already have finished part one some time before March 1647, as Cheney Culpeper had by then started, given up on and decided to restart a translation of the English, presumably into Latin. He specifically remarked that he was not working from the original: 'truly', he complained, 'I finde it a greater busines to translate it out of Englishe then it wowlde haue beene out of Dutche [i.e. German] if I had vnderstoode that langwage'.[136] It had been handed over to William Petty for completion, but he had changed his mind or refused, moving Culpeper to take it up again himself.[137] Hartlib, rather untypically, seems to have worried about whether Glauber might object to this, since one of a battery of questions fired at Appelius must have concerned Glauber's attitude to translation of his work. Appelius answered reassuringly that Glauber had told another would-be translator that 'there was no necessity to aske leave of him, seeing the book were no more his, but all mens'.[138] Self-publicity being a major purpose of Glauber's going to press in the first place, he had little reason to object.
In this case, the correspondence leaves no doubt whatsoever that Hartlib was the instigator of the project. The translation cost Culpeper much pains, and he apologised repeatedly to Hartlib for the fact that it was taking him far longer than he had expected.[139] He was perhaps feeling a little put-upon, for he added pointedly that he was doing it 'upon your desires'.[140] He would appear to have given up on the project in the end; at all events no Latin translation of the Furni novi ever appeared in England.
Hartlib even nursed hopes of persuading Glauber to move to England to teach at Gresham College. In 1647, Appelius advised:
But to gett Gl. in Hunns.[expanded by Hartlib to Hunniades] place, that shall not bee, because hee is this summer gone from Amsterd. to Arnheim, to bee the nigher Germany, whither hee intends to goe up the next yeere, to settle him et so to live by his art.[141]
János Bánfihunyadi (1576-1646), better known in England as Banfi Hunniades (in an assortment of variant spellings) or Hans Hungar, was a Hungarian alchemist and mathematician who had moved to England by 1633 and at some point taught chemistry and mathematics at Gresham College. He was described on engravings by Wenceslaus Hollar, dated 1644, as a former practitioner of the hermetic and mathematical disciplines at Gresham ('Olim Anglo-Londini in Illustri Collegio Greshamensi Hermeticæ Disciplini Sectatoris et Philo-Mathematici').[142]The astrologer William Lilly in 1644 <201> spoke of his achievements as having been equalled 'by few else, if any at all, Professors in Chimistry',[143] adding that Hunniades was planning to return to Hungary. This move must have been in the air by April 1643, when Appelius asked Hartlib whether Hunniades was still in London or had gone back to Hungary.[144] Since he left Gresham in or before 1644 (the date of Hollar's engraving), the suggestion of replacing him with Glauber in 1647 presumably means the post had been vacant since then.
It has been suggested that Hunniades' post at Gresham was Professor of Mathematics,[145] but Lilly's remarks and the evidence of the Hartlib papers suggest a stronger emphasis on chemistry. The legend on Hollar's engravings mentions his 'Hermetic' before his mathematical work at Gresham. Hartlib noted in 1640 that 'A Laboratory is erecting in Gresham-Colledge by Sir K. Digby and others […] Hunneades is the erecter or builder of it'.[146] Most convincing of all is this suggestion of 'getting Glauber in Hunniades' place', for Hartlib was certainly better-informed about Glauber than to suppose him either qualified or likely to be inclined to teach mathematics. Glauber was no scholar and had no pretensions to be one: his expertise lay entirely in the field of chemistry. In a draft version of one of Hartlib's numerous proposals for the Office of Address, probably dating from this period, a number of concrete schemes are mooted including 'The Erecting and maintaining of Glauberus New Laboratorie'.[147] However, this item has been struck through, probably on account of the disheartening news sent by Appelius, and does not appear on what is obviously a later draft of the same document.[148]
Hartlib's idea was in any case hardly realistic, if only on linguistic grounds. He had obviously considered this problem, as Appelius in the same letter reported that Glauber 'understands latyn well, et can also make his minde knowne therein, if I remember well',[149] which suggests something a good deal less than fluency. Moriaen mentioned that Glauber was uncomfortable expressing himself in Latin,[150] and Sorbière later noted, though not unkindly, that on the occasion of his visit Glauber 'made us no excuses for his poor Latin'.[151] It is certain he did not know English.[152] But the suggestion is a striking testimony of the extent of Glauber's reputation among the chemical fraternity in England only a year after the publication of his first two book-length works, as well as further confirmation of Hartlib's tireless activity in recruiting manpower for English education, and manoeuvring the educational ethos towards a concern with 'realia', with 'useful' knowledge and applied sciences.
Further evidence of this general early enthusiasm for Glauber is provided by the commendatory remarks by Appelius and Moriaen already noted. Glauber also inspired considerable interest in Boyle. Early in 1648, noting Boyle himself as the source, Hartlib recorded that
Helmont's stone wherby hee cured the stone in bladder kidney called Ludus Paracelsi is a stone which is found neere Antwerp prepared by Helmont. This stone one of Helmont's friends hath gotten and shewn or promised it to Morian, which hee hath promised for Mr Boyles sake to give to Glauberus that hee may prepare it and make the Ludus Paracelsi of it.[153]
Boyle had barely turned twenty when this was written, <202> and was only just beginning to take an interest in chemistry. It may be that it was only the medicine he wanted, not its recipe. But eight years later, he was still taking an approving - and now rather more informed - interest in Glauber's work, maintaining that
In Tractatus Glauberi de Prosperitate Germaniæ [i.e. Teutschlands Wolfahrt I, which came out that year], the annexed discourse of salpeeter De Nitro is the most substantial rational et real piece, wherin many secrets are discovered which himself [Boyle] had before.[154]
Perhaps the most assiduous collector of Glauberian writings and equipment was Cheney Culpeper, whose complex and ambivalent assessment will be considered at more length in Chapter Seven.
However, in a striking re-run of the history of the Hartlib circle's responses to Comenius, initial high enthusiasm was increasingly (though not invariably) displaced by scepticism and disillusion. Just as with Comenius, the more Glauber wrote, the less Hartlib's friends saw their initial expectations fulfilled. When Robert Child in 1652 received the first two books of Operis mineralis from Hartlib, he could make little sense of them, though he nonetheless asked in April, 'pray let me se all Glaubers workes if possibly [sic]'.[155] Henry Jenney failed to obtain the promised results from a Glauberian experiment relating to husbandry, but had the grace to admit it was perhaps a mistake on his part rather than dishonesty on Glauber's that had led to the failure.[156] He was one of very few with the humility to adopt the stance later recommended by Moriaen, that people should not automatically blame Glauber for their inability to replicate his experiments.[157]
Doubts about Glauber's honesty recur throughout the papers. The naturalist and historian Georg Horn complained that Glauber was more assiduous in making promises than in keeping them.[158] At one point in 1648, even Culpeper's enthusiasm seems to have been briefly quenched by adverse reports: 'Mr Petty his late carriage, & that Monsieur Glauberus is like to turne a Wheeler, hathe bred in me a resolution, not to trouble my thowghts any farther with these kinde of people'.[159] The following August, however, he was again excitedly looking forward to news about Glauber's 'ouens, & wayes of distillation; which I wonderfully approue'.[160]
A recurrent charge, and perhaps one of the weightier ones, was that Glauber was given to selling processes he had not in fact tested. Erasmus Rasch, for instance, declared: 'Glauber, in my opinion, commits a great sin by undertaking to teach others things he does not know himself'.[161] Earlier, however, he had been keen to learn Glauber's method of making aqua fortis and spiritus salis, and complained to Hartlib that Clodius, who was obviously very well up on Glauberian chemistry, or at least gave himself out to be so, had not sent him the promised recipes for these.[162]
Moriaen himself, during the 1650s, became increasingly dubious about Glauber's claims and motives. After reporting his friend's discovery of 'sal mirabile', he went on to remark that if what Glauber said was true, he had indeed discovered the alcahest or something very like it, in which case it would certainly cure Hartlib's bladder stone, an ailment Moriaen feared he was developing as well. But hard on the heels of this optimistic report came a sombre caveat: Glauber had promised to visit Moriaen soon and show him an even more important treatise,[163]but
<203> He has been putting me off in this fashion for a long time now, and leading me to the summit of Mount Pisga; whether anything will come of it this time and what good things he will bring me, only time will tell; I can no longer depend on him, having been disappointed so often and for so long.[164]
And indeed, when Moriaen asked Glauber for some sal mirabile, so that he might try to prepare the alcahest and treat his stone, the usual story unfolded: Glauber claimed to have no sal mirabile to hand, and sent instead some 'tinctura nitri', together with the unhelpful remark that Moriaen's bladder stone was probably hereditary.[165] It was just the same with Glauber's much-vaunted fertilising salt ('fruchtbarmachendes saltz'): he promised to send Moriaen some, but by April 1658 'I have still heard nothing, and now sowing time is almost over',[166] and by July he was still waiting.[167] By June 1658 he was thoroughly exasperated: 'it will be a wonder if anything further comes from him, for I have never known his like for inconstancy of purpose'.[168]
Nonetheless, the two men appear to have remained on friendly terms. In July 1657, when Moriaen was recovering from a violent fever he had fully expected would kill him, and was reflecting anxiously on what would befall Odilia if he died, Glauber reassured him that should the worst happen, he would take it upon himself to guarantee her welfare. Moriaen thought this reflected very well on the chemist.[169] After his visit to Amsterdam in 1659, when he had an opportunity to view all Glauber's processes for himself, Moriaen wrote excitedly that all his doubts had been resolved, and that having personally witnessed Glauber's transmutation of metals into gold and production of medicines, he could no longer doubt the validity of any of his claims.[170] Poleman, however, subsequently maintained that a friend of his had relieved Moriaen of some his delusions about Glauber, presumably during this visit:
You should know that Herr Moriaen no longer thinks so highly of Glauber as he did, for he has been convinced that the yellow metal of which his so-called aurum potabile is made is no true gold and will not stand thorough testing, as I have been told by a trusted friend who has proved this to Herr Moriaen on a sound basis, and whom Herr Moriaen had to admit was right.[171]
Unfortunately, the lack of material from Moriaen himself after this date makes it impossible to judge whether there was any truth in this claim of a chemical conversion.
In 1660, an anonymous correspondent who I believe is Kretschmar[172] evidently thought he was doing Hartlib and his friends (Clodius, Dury and Brereton) a great favour by sending - without Glauber's knowledge or consent - a very detailed description of the equipment in the last Amsterdam laboratory and the processes carried out there. If Glauber's laboratories can be seen as an early example of chemical industry, then this is an early example of industrial espionage, a world away from the ideal of 'free and generous communication':
I hope by God's grace I have it largely right; it was a wonder I managed to see the ovens despite the fact that he keeps the laboratory close shut now <204> they are built, and lets no one in. It has cost me all my slender means and there is nothing further I can do but faithfully reveal it all to you, begging once again for God's sake keep it utterly secret from everyone, especially Herr Moriaen, that I have told you, and let Glauber not learn of it.[173]
If this is indeed from Kretschmar (who, like Moriaen, frequently incurred Poleman's scorn for believing Glauber's fairy tales), it may well be that he was offering these details as an added incentive to the addressees to participate in his own transmutation project.[174] The response to this decidedly underhand piece of intelligencing is not preserved, but it is highly unlikely that Hartlib, at least, would have been impressed by such methods of gaining wisdom.
In 1660 and 1661, Fahrner's published attacks on Glauber were supplemented by three polemical works from other pens. These were the Sudum philosophicum (Philosophical Fine Weather, 1660) of the self-styled 'filius Sendivogii', Johannes Fortitudino Hartprecht, the Glauberus refutatus (1661) of one 'Antiglauberus', whom an anagram in his title reveals as Johannes Joachim Becher,[175] and the Gründliche Widerlegung (Thoroughgoing Refutation, 1661) of 'C.D.M.A.S.'.[176] There is little comment on these works in Hartlib's archive, but two pieces of evidence about them are of some interest. Though Poleman was elsewhere less than complimentary about the 'filius Sendivogii', he was always ready to approve an attack on Glauber, and in telling Hartlib about Hartprecht's Sudum philosophicum he supplied the bibliographical detail that this work, which was published without indication of place, in fact came out in Amsterdam: 'the Son of Sendivogius has thoroughly demonstrated that he [Glauber] is a complete ignoramus in true philosophy in his Ludum [sic] philosophicum, which is now under the press here [Amsterdam]'.[177]
'C.D.M.A.S.' accused Glauber of being semi-literate, of employing an assistant to render his books readable, of not understanding Paracelsus properly, of atheism, and of having killed a number of people with his 'aurum horribile'. The author has so far remained unidentifiable, though as Link remarks it is not unlikely, given that his work was published there, that he lived at the time in Leipzig.[178] An anonymous letter in the Hartlib Papers includes a quotation from one 'Charls de Montendon from Leipzigk concerning his Purpose and Booke against Glauber'.[179] In the extract, which is dated 4 March 1661, Montendon speaks of being at the 'Altenburg-Court' (near Leipzig), where Glauber had 'fallen vpon' him. The reference appears to be to a legal accusation rather than a physical attack, and presumably he means that Glauber fell on him by proxy, since there is no other indication at all of Glauber's having gone to Leipzig at this period, and indeed it is very doubtful whether his health would have permitted him to do so. Montendon went on to declare (not very lucidly, at least to anyone unfamiliar with the details of the affair) that Glauber had cheated him and that he (Montendon) was publishing 'a Treatise on purpose entituled - A needful Refutation of Glaubers hitherto divulged Vn-Truths' - an unequivocal reference to the Widerlegung's subtitle, Nothwendige Refutation auff etliche Johann-Rudolph Glaubers zu Amsterdam unwahre bißhero außgelaßene Bücher.
We have, then, a name to put to 'C.D.M.A.S.', Charles De Montendon - perhaps Altenburgensis Studiosus? Unfortunately that is about all we have. <205> Montendon himself mentioned in this extract that his mother tongue was French, and that he knew German well enough to write in it. The only other mention of Montendon in the papers is in the anonymous alchemical copy letter of 1660, quoted above, which I attribute to Friedrich Kretschmar. The author mentioned that he was enclosing a copy of a letter in French from one Peter Mariceus in Amsterdam to 'Monsr. Charle de Montendon of Yserton from Saphaÿen, who is now staying with me here'.[180] But there is no indication where the letter is from, the enclosure has not survived, and I cannot confidently identify either 'Yserton' or 'Saphaÿen', though Yverdon in Savoy is a possibility.[181] That is as much as it has been possible to ascertain. However, it seems worth exposing this loose thread in the hope that someone will find something to attach it to. The extract from Montendon is given in full below as Appendix Two, pp. 255-6.
All four men who published against Glauber in his lifetime (Fahrner, Hartprecht, Becher and Montendon) were themselves chemically inclined. So were the harshest critics whose comments survive in Hartlib's papers. Foremost among these was Poleman, whose diatribes are composed in a very similar spirit to those of Fahrner and the others, except that Poleman does not appear to have had any personal grudge against Glauber beyond the conviction that he brought discredit on the noble art of alchemy. Some of his comments have already been cited: there are a great many more. He reported with evident satisfaction that one Schöfler 'is slopping about in Glauber's stinking so-called alcahest and has made such serious mistakes with it that it well nigh cost him his life'.[182] Despite his claim that 'it nauseates me to think any further on Glauber's trickery',[183] he devoted a great deal of time and ink to vilifying his enemy.[184] 'As for Glauber's pranks' he maintained, 'it is truly not worth giving up so much as quarter of an hour to contemplate them, for they are nothing but trickery and empty boasts'.[185]
The range of opinions represented in the papers is spectacularly wide. The accusations of dishonesty and fraudulence somewhat outweigh the commendations, and the widespread enthusiastic interest of the 1640s tends to be replaced by disillusion and rejection in the 1650s. There is, however, no clear consensus at any point, and it should be added that even among Glauber's professed detractors a good many, like Rasch, were keen to obtain his works and, especially, his equipment. One of the more balanced judgments, which neatly sums up the tone of much of the polemic, is that of Appelius: 'for my own part, I have no reason to think him a cheat, but he despises others, and others despise him, as is the way with almost all artists, for none cries up any but his own wares'.[186]
Hartlib himself apparently remained perplexed as to which of the widely differing reports he should believe. Though he was still collecting Glauber's works assiduously at least as late as 1659, the stream of accusations from the likes of Rasch and Poleman, and news of the work of Becher, Hartprecht and Montendon, led him to become increasingly suspicious. In 1660, he told Winthrop:
our german adepti with whom I shall be better acquainted ere long, count no better of Glauber then a mountebank, one that continues to cheat all sorts of people by his specious artifices and one that knows nothing in the true Philosophical work Alkahest Elixir, &c &c There are some who are <206> resolved to take him into task, to discover the error and falshood of his philosophy and experimentall knowledges & his willfull cheates and cousenages.[187]
This, however, is followed by the quintessentially Hartlibian rider, 'I have suggested that some would also note whatever was true and good in all his writings'.[188]
It is obviously impossible to reduce such a broad spectrum of opinion to any simple formulation of the contemporary response to Glauber. It is quite clear, though, that the most savage attacks came from what one might call the 'old school' of Hermetic chemists: men such as Rasch, Hartprecht and Poleman, who were deeply committed to the notion of alchemy as essentially a mystic experience and a matter of personal revelation, from which it was important to exclude the common herd, even when publishing - indeed, especially when publishing. This peculiar ambivalence to the notion of publication finds striking expression in Poleman's comments on the manuscripts of Starkey, which were sent to him by Hartlib in 1659. Poleman was hugely impressed by these cryptic productions and wished to see them brought to press at once - indeed, he expressed an interest in arranging this himself.[189] There could be no harm in doing so, he declared in so many words, since they were so thoroughly obscure that there was no danger of anyone's understanding them: there were 'no arcana clearly enough expressed in them for any man to be able to make them out. And that is the very truth, for which reason they may safely be published'.[190]
Clearly, however, Poleman did not regard himself as 'anyone': these mysteries were not impenetrable to him. The purpose of publication, presumably, was to reach out to that tiny, elect body of similarly enlightened adepts whose learning and insight qualified them to share in this virtually sacred knowledge. The very fact that they were capable of understanding it guaranteed that they were worthy to do so. To the proponents of such an outlook, Glauber's direct, popular style and (comparatively) explicit terminology was anathema. This is not, to be sure, what they ostensibly attacked him for: the endlessly repeated charges were that he was at best mercenary and at worst a charlatan and confidence trickster whose fake medicines were lethal, whose writings led would-be adepts onto false paths and who brought the noble art of alchemy into disrepute by his association with it. However, the very vehemence of their onslaughts suggests they felt threatened by him in some way, and this concern for a gullible public whom they were themselves at such pains to keep in the dark is not overly convincing. What really upset them, I would suggest, is that Glauber was trying to make chemistry accessible to the commoner.
Others such as Boyle, Hartlib and Moriaen, who took a rather less elitist view of the chemical art, were inclined to give Glauber more credit, and to acknowledge at least his practical achievements. Boyle, as has been mentioned, was keen to apply his furnace-making technology and thought highly of his work on saltpetre; Moriaen was particularly impressed by his contributions to agriculture and longed more than anything to learn the secrets of his fertilisers and artificial wines. Poleman, by contrast, sneered at such mundane achievements, remarking (not unreasonably) that if Glauber's aurum potabile and alcahest were half so miraculous as he claimed, he would not <207> waste his time on gardening, or on merely technical processes such as smelting copper ore, and would have no need to offer such products or processes for money.[191]
But among those who did not simply dismiss everything connected with the man as manifest charlatanism, his practical and technical achievements were generally esteemed, even when his more grandiose claims were mistrusted. What many increasingly came to find wanting in his work, however, was the spiritual element, the transcendent insights into God and the harmony of the universe that were the ultimate goal of the 'Chemical Philosophy'. Attempts to apply Glauber's more mundane achievements to these mystical ends provide the subject of the final chapter of this study.
ECHA InfoCard100.029.495 EC NumberUNII
WarningH226, H312, H315, H319, H335Flash point44 °C (111 °F; 317 K)Related compoundsRelated compoundsLiquid smokeExcept where otherwise noted, data are given for materials in their standard state (at 25 °C [77 °F], 100 kPa).
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