GLAUBER, John Rodolph, a German chemist, born at the commencement of the sixteenth century, was one of those who were most ardently occupied with “the great work,” namely, the discovery of the philosopher’s stone. Full of love and enthusiasm for the marvellous, he abandoned himself without reserve to the extravagant ideas which then prevailed in chemistry. His long and painful labours, pursued with indefatigable perseverance, and an energy worthy of a nobler object, were almost always directed towards the discovery of the panacea, the philosopher’s stone, and other chimeras with which the alchymists amused the imagination. Infatuated with the doctrine of the adepts, he may be said to have passed his life over alembics and furnaces, and, in fact, he is regarded as a second Paracelsus. Not less presumptuous than his model, he boasted of the discovery of several wonderful secrets. Whether he was truly convinced of the reality [7:10:582]of his inventions, or whether, like empirics of all classes, he proposed to profit by the ignorance and blind credulity of men, he had the art to seduce many persons by promises as vain as they were exaggerated. He is even reproached with having carried on a vile traffic in pretended secrets, which he sometimes sold at an exorbitant price to different individuals, and afterwards published with his name in order to enhance his reputation. Devoid of the instruction and force of mind necessary to enable him to deduce just inferences from the numerous experiments which he had performed with ability and address, Glauber only attained a subaltern or secondary rank amongst the chemists. But he, nevertheless, discovered several important facts, which have materially contributed to make better known certain salts and some metals, which, eventually, had a marked influence on the progress of chemistry and materia medica. Thus, in examining the residue of the decomposition of sea-salt by the sulphuric acid, this laborious chemist discovered the sulphate of soda, to which his name is irrevocably attached under the denomination of Glauber’s Salt. His writings on dry baths and sulphurous fumigations entitle him, in certain respects, to be regarded as the inventor of confined vapour baths, which have been latterly brought forward as a new discovery; and he is equally the inventor of several chemical medicaments, the use of which is still preserved in most of the pharmacopoeias. We are also indebted to him for a great number of works (thirty in alD, an exact list of which may be found in the curious article entitled Glauber, in the fourth volume of Adelung’s History of Human Folly. A collection of them was printed in several volumes 8vo, and in two volumes 4to, at Frankfort, 1658, 1659, and translated into English by Pack, London, 1689, in folio. Of these the principal are, 1. Deutschlands Wallfahrt, or Prosperity of Germany, Amsterdam, 1656, often reprinted; 2. Fumi Nσυi Philosophici, or Description of a new Method of Distilling, Amsterdam, 1648, in 8vo, translated into French by Duteil, Paris, 1659, in 8vo; 3. De Medicina Universali, sive de Auro potabili vero, Amsterdam, 1658, in 8vo;

4. Miraculum Mundi, Amsterdam, 1653, in 8vo; 5. Pharmacopoeia Spagyrica, Amsterdam, 1654, in 8vo; 6. De Tartaro ex Vini foecibus, 1655, in 8vo; 7. Dissertatio Medica Hermetica et Catholica magni Naturae magiste-rialis Mysterii, Frankfort, 1656, in 8vo; 8. Consolation of Navigators, Amsterdam, 1659, in 8vo; 9. Opus Minerale, Amsterdam, 1651, in 8vo; 10. De Elia Artiste, Amsterdam, 1668, in 8vo. Glauber published many other alchy-mical productions, which are neither less obscure nor less enigmatical than the preceding, and in which vague hypotheses and chimerical conceptions supply the place of facts and of reasoning. All his works are in German; and although most of them have the first words of the title in Latin, there is good ground for believing that Glauber did not understand that language. (a.)