Paper by Joseph Black on water samples brought back from Iceland by John Thomas Stanley.
Date: Written in 1791.
Publication: Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Volume 3, 1794, Pages 95-126.
Joseph Black presented this paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh on 4 July 1791. He was reporting his findings on experiments he carried out on water samples from boiling springs in Iceland.
He refers firstly to fossil samples from Icelandic volcanic springs brought back by Sir Joseph Banks in 1772. Black and others were intrigued at the crusted matter attached to these samples, formed after the samples had dried out. He was curious to examine the water from which the samples came, to discover more about the substances which were dissolved in it.
His curiosity had to wait for many years to be satisfied. John Thomas Stanley, later Baron Stanley of Alderney, had studied science at Edinburgh University and become interested in the work of Sir Joseph Banks. In 1789, aged only 22, Stanley financed his own expedition to Iceland and the Faroe Islands, and brought back water samples for Black to study.
At the time Black was Professor of Medicine and Chemistry at Edinburgh University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He was also:
- First Physician to His Majesty for Scotland.
- A Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians.
- A member of the Academy of Sciences
- A member of the Society of Medicine of Paris
- A member of the Imperial Academy of St Petersburg.