Scottish Chemistry - a meeting to mark the 200th Anniversary of the Death of Joseph Black

20 November 1999, Conference Room of the Science Museum and Imperial College Library

Dr Anderson (British Museum) set the scene for the meeting with his paper "18th Century Scottish Background and Forefront". The paper described the University of Edinburgh in the second half of the 18th century, and the contributions made by Joseph Black, both as a teacher and as a consultant to a variety of Scottish industries. The paper served to reemphasise the enormous importance of Joseph Black in the history of chemistry in general, as well as his more specific influence on industry and teaching in Edinburgh.

Jean Jones's (Independent Scholar, Edinburgh) paper was entitled "Joseph Black and James Hutton". Both men were resident in Edinburgh for thirty years, and are known to have spent much time together. To a large extent they shared the same acquaintances and moved in same milieu. Although utterly different in temperament - a contrast which amused their friends - most of their intellectual interests were held in common: Both Hutton and Black were concerned with the practical applications of science. Hutton, renowned as a geologist, was a passionate chemist; Black, influential as a chemist, was an enthusiast mineralogist. Their publications, however, make a startling contrast: the range of subjects in Hutton's writings was unusually wide while the range of Black's, though profoundly influential, unusually narrow. The influence of Black on Hutton has been discussed in the work of Arthur Donovan. The influence of Hutton on Black is revealed by an examination of a letter of 1787 and of the Elements of Chemistry. Black wholeheartedly adopted all of Hutton's theory of the Earth. He agreed with Hutton that the enormous pressures within the Earth would make its chemistry quite different from the chemistry at its surface, the fact that limestone does not disintegrate with subterranean heat being the prime example. With fossils in mind, they carried out together at least one series of experiments to investigate the effects of heat and pressure on sea shells.

A.D. Morrison-Low's (National Museums of Scotland) paper,"Popularising chemistry: some Scottish lecturers during the 18th and 19th centuries," surveyed the background to chemistry within the Scottish universities, looking in particular at a number of individuals based in Edinburgh who brought a popular understanding of the subject to a wider public. By the mid 19th century, those who taught chemistry outside the universities had moved from being a more or less ad hoc phenomenon to (like so many other scientific activities at this time) becoming institutionalised. Examples included individuals such as: Henry Moyes, lecturing under the shelter of the larger umbrella of Literary and Philosophical Societies; his successor; William Nicol, for whom the Mechanics' Institutes served a similar purpose; to individuals, like Thomas Thomson and Andrew Fyfe, who, after starting as extra-mural lecturers, finally obtained university appointments. There were also links between those who lectured and those who supplied chemical apparatus, sometimes combining these in same person. Whether motivated by social, economic or utilitarian reasons, as individuals, they all appear to have loved their subject, and through the love of the subject endeavoured to popularise it, with some considerable success.

Dr Harry Smith's (H. Payne Associates) paper was entitled "J. F. Macfarlan and the Smith Brothers. The Edinburgh Connection". Whilst Joseph Black is best known for his chemical research, he continued to practise medicine throughout his life and was for a period the joint editor of the Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia. One of Black's successors was William Gregory. Before taking his M.D., Gregory had studied the extraction of drugs from plants with Robiquet in Paris. On his return to Edinburgh, he soon developed an improved process for producing purer and less expensive morphine from opium and published his work in 1831. This early research of Gregory soon helped to establish John F. Macfarlan, Thomas and Henry Smith and John Duncan (of Duncan, Flockart & Co.) as the founders of pharmaceutical manufacture in Edinburgh. All three companies which they established expanded throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and were involved in the extraction of many important natural drugs. They amalgamated during the 1960s to form Macfarlan Smith Limited.

John Hudson, Hon Secretary, SHAC
Anglia Polytechnic University