Joseph Black quotes

Your happiness on the contrary is quite secure because you place it entirely in making others happy and doing those things to the utmost of your power which you can afterwards reflect upon with satisfaction. I must own your letter had that effect upon me that it made me apply to my work with double eagerness and alacrity with the hopes of being some time what you are at present. (Joseph Black)
I have now studied the Theory of medicine & have likewise been taught every thing upon the Practice which can be learned in a College. I have also seen some real Practice & have even practised a little myself. But all this is not enough. View quote
Joseph Black
If I go to London to acquire this part of medicine, I may see a good deal of Practice, but I am a stranger there, & have no acquaintance whom I can venture to trust so much or be so familiar with as to trouble him with all my questions and doubts.-On the contrary here, medicine is allowed on all hands to be in a very flourishing condition. It is practised in the most rational & simple manner. View quote
Joseph Black
These, sir, are the chief of the reasons which have been urged to me for staying here some time longer & which I thought so good that I determined to acquaint you with them & in the meanwhile [I] will employ my time to the best advantage till I have your opinion of them. I am D Sir Your most affec & Dutyfull Son. View quote
Joseph Black
He had discovered that a cubic inch of marble consisted of about half its weight of pure lime, and as much air as would fill a vessel holding six wine gallons. ...What could be more singular than to find so subtle a substance as air existing in the form of a hard stone, and its presence accompanied by such a change in the properties of that stone? ... It is surely a dull mind that will not be animated by such a prospect. View quote
Joseph Black
Black's celebrated thesis ...gained for him not merely the degree of Doctor of Medicine, but also brought his name before every "philosopher" in Europe and America as that of a man who had made a discovery of more fundamental influence on the progress of Chemistry than any which had previously been described. View quote
Joseph Black
It was Black's discovery of the production of carbonic-acid gas, or, as he named it, "fixed air," from marble, which first directed notice to this possibility of the production of a gas from a solid; and, further, the peculiar property of this gas its power of being fixed was one which completely differentiated it from ordinary air. View quote
Joseph Black
As Dr. Black had never anything for ostentation, he was at all times precisely what the occasion required, and no more. Never did anyone see Dr. Black hurried at one time to recover matter which had been improperly neglected on a former occasion. Everything being done in its proper season and place, he ever seemed to have leisure in store; and he was ready to receive his friend or acquaintance, and to take his part with cheerfulness in any conversation that occurred. View quote
Joseph Black
During the period in which the theory of phlogiston reached its zenith, four names stand out in bold relief. They are those of Joseph Black (1728–99), Henry Cavendish (1731–1810), Karl Wilhelm Scheele (1742–86), and Joseph Priestley (1733–1804). Of these men the last three were steadfast adherents of the theory, while Black seems to have been indifferent, devoting himself to his researches and placing his own interpretation upon his results. View quote
Joseph Black
His only other important discovery was that of the bicarbonates, but he is nevertheless correctly regarded as one of the greatest chemists of one of the most fruitful periods of chemistry, and his fame rests upon impregnable foundations. View quote
Joseph Black
Black realized that when chalk or marble was heated, a gas which he called fixed air was released. He was able to collect the gas, which we know as carbon dioxide, and to study its properties. He was also able to show that carbon dioxide was a normal constituent of the air because quicklime was changed into ordinary chalk, albeit tardily, by exposure to air. This was the first atmospheric gas to be isolated and described. The discovery heralded the dawn of a new era in chemical investigation, and so Black is often given the title-Father of Pneumatic Chemistry. (Joseph Black)