The light emitted from burning gases which burn with bright flame is known to be a secondary phenomenon. It is the solid, or even liquid, constituents separated out by the high temperature of combustion, and rendered incandescent, that emit the light rays. Gases, on the other hand, which produce no glowing solid or liquid particles during combustion burn throughout with a weakly luminous flame of bluish or other color, according to the kind of gas. Now, it is common to say, merely, in explanation of this luminosity, that the gas highly heated in combustion is self-incandescent. This explanation, however, has not been experimentally confirmed. Dr Werner Siemens was, therefore, led recently to investigate whether highly-heated pure gases really emit light.
The temperature employed in such experiments should, to be decisive, be higher than those produced by luminous combustion. The author had recourse to the regenerative furnace used by his brother, Friedrich, in Dresden, in manufacture of hard glass. This stands in a separate room which at night can be made perfectly dark. The furnace has, in the middle of its longer sides, two opposite apertures, allowing free vision through. It can be easily heated to the melting temperature of steel, which is between 1,500° and 2,000° C. Before the furnace apertures were placed a series of smoke blackened screens with central openings, which enabled one to look through without receiving, on the eye, rays from the furnace walls. If, now, all air exchange was prevented in the furnace, and all light excluded from the room, it was found that not the least light came to the eye from the highly-heated air in the furnace. For success of the experiment, it was necessary to avoid any combustion in the furnace, and to wait until the furnace-air was as free from dust as possible. Any flame in the furnace (even when it did not reach into the line of sight), and the least quantity of dust in it, illuminated the field of vision.
As a result of these experiments, Dr. Siemens considers that the view hitherto held, that highly-heated gases are self-luminous, is not correct. In the furnace were the products of the previous combustion and atmospheric air: consequently oxygen, nitrogen, carbonic acid, and aqueous vapor. If even one of these gases was self-luminous, the field of vision must have been always illuminated. The weak light given by the flame of burning gases that separate out no solid nor liquid constituents cannot, therefore, be explained as a phenomenon of glow of the gaseous products.
It appealed to the author probable, that heated gases did not, either, emit heat rays; and he set himself to test this idea, experimenting, in company with Herr Fröhlich, in Dresden. They first convinced themselves in this case that the light emission of pure heated gases sunk to zero, even when the field of vision was not always quite dark, and it was only possible to observe this a short time; but the repeatedly observed perfect darkness of the field of vision was demonstrative. On the other hand, experiments made with sensitive thermopiles, in order to settle the question of emission of heat-rays from highly-heated gases, failed.
Afterward, however, Dr. Siemens was convinced, by a quite simple experiment of a different kind, that his supposition was erroneous. An ordinary lamp, with circular wick, and short glass cylinder, was wholly screened with a board, and a thermopile was so placed that its axis lay somewhat higher than the edge of the board. As the room-walls had pretty much a uniform temperature, the deflection of the galvanometer was but slight, when the tube-axis of the thermopile was directed anywhere outside of the hot-air current rising from the flame. When, however, the axis was directed to this current, a deflection occurred, which was as great as that from the luminous flame itself. That the heat radiation from hot gases is but very small in comparison with that from equally hot solid bodies, was shown by the large deflection produced when a piece of fine wire was held in the hot-air current. On the other hand, however, it was far too considerable to admit of being attributed to dust particles suspended in the air current.
It must be conceded to be possible (the author says) that the light radiation of hot gases, as also the heat radiation, is only exceedingly weak, and therefore may escape observation. It is, therefore, much to be desired that the experiments should be repeated at still higher temperatures and with more exact instruments, in order to determine the limit of temperature at which heated gases undoubtedly become self-incandescent. The fact, however, that gases, at a temperature of more than 1,500° C, are not yet luminous, proves that the incandescence of the flame is not to be explained as a self-incandescence of the products of combustion. This is confirmed by the circumstance that, with rapid mixture of the burning gases, the flame becomes shorter because the combustion process goes on more quickly, and hotter because less cold air has access. Further, the flame also becomes shorter and hotter if the gases are strongly heated previous to combustion. As the rising products of combustion still retain for a time the temperature of the flame, the reverse must occur if the gases were self-luminous. The luminosity of the flame, however, ceases at a sharp line of demarkation, and evidently coincides with completion of the chemical action. The latter, itself, therefore, and not the heating of the combustion products, which is due to it, must be the cause of the luminosity. If we suppose that the gas-molecules are surrounded by an ether-envelope, then, in chemical combination of two or several such molecules, there must occur a changed position of the ether-envelopes. The motion of ether-particles thus caused may be represented by vibrations, which form the starting-point of light and heat-waves.
In quite a similar manner we may also, according to Dr. Siemens, represent the light-phenomenon occurring when an electric current is sent through gases, which always takes place when the maximum of polarization belonging to them is exceeded. As the passage of the current through the gas seems to be always connected with chemical action, the phenomenon of glow may be explained in the same way as in flame, by oscillating transposition of the ether envelopes, by which the passage of electricity is effected. In that case the light of flame may be called electric light by the same light as the light of the ozone tube or the Geissler tube, which is mainly to be distinguished from the former in that it contains a dielectric of an extremely small maximum of polarization. This correspondence in the causes of luminosity of flame, and of gases traversed by electric currents, is supported by the similarity of the flame-phenomena in strength and color of light.
[These researches were lately described by Dr. Werner Siemens to the Berlin Academy.]
It is well known that if the size of an object be ascertained, the distance of a lens from that object, and the size of the image depicted in a camera by that lens, a very simple calculation will give the focus of the lens. In compound lenses the matter is complicated by the relative foci of its constituents and their distance apart; but these items, in an ordinary photographic objective, would so slightly affect the result that for all practical purposes they may be ignored.
What we propose to do--what we have indeed done--is to make two of these terms constant in connection with a diagram, here given, so that a mere inspection may indicate, with its aid, the focus of a lens. All that is required in making use of it is to plant the camera perfectly upright, and place in front of it, at exactly fifteen feet from the center of the lens, a two foot rule, also perfectly upright and with its center the same height from the floor as the lens, and then, after focusing accurately with as large a diaphragm as will give sharpness, to note the size of the image and refer it to the diagram. The focus of the lens employed will be marked under the line corresponding to the size of the image of the rule on the ground glass.
As our object is to minimize time and trouble to the utmost, we may make a suggestion or two as to carrying out the measuring. It will be obvious that any object exactly two feet in length, rightly placed, will answer quite as well as a "two-foot," which we selected as being about as common a standard of length and as likely to be handy for use as any. The pattern in a wall paper, a mark in a brick wall, a studio background, or a couple of drawing pins pressed into a door, so long as two feet exactly are indicated, will answer equally well.
And, further, as to the actual mode of measuring the image on the ground glass (we may say that there is not the slightest need to take a negative), it will perhaps be found the readiest method to turn the glass the ground side outward, when two pencil marks may be made with complete accuracy to register the length of the image, which can then be compared with the diagram. Whatever plan is adopted, if the distance be measured exactly between lens and rule, the result will give the focus with exactitude sufficient for any practical purpose.--Br. Jour. of Photo.
[Footnote: A paper recently read before the Society of Arts, London.]
As this paper is composed from a technical point of view, some elucidation of facts, forming the basis of it, is desirable before we proceed to the chronological statement of the subject. These facts are the strings, and their strain or tension; the sound-board, which is the resonance factor; and the bridge, connecting it with the strings. The strings, sound-board, and bridge are indispensable, and common to all stringed instruments. The special fact appertaining to keyboard instruments is the mechanical action interposed between the player and the instrument itself. The strings, owing to the slender surface they present to the air, are, however powerfully excited, scarcely audible. To make them sufficiently audible, their pulsations have to be communicated to a wider elastic surface, the sound-board, which, by accumulated energy and broader contact with the air, re-enforces the strings' feeble sound. The properties of a string set in periodic vibration are the best known of the phenomena appertaining to acoustics. The molecules composing the string are disturbed in the string's vibrating length by the means used to excite the sound, and run off into sections, the comparative length and number of which depend partly upon the place in the string the excitement starts from; partly upon the force and the form of force that is employed; and partly upon the length, thickness, weight, strain, and elasticity of the string, with some small allowance for gravitation. The vibrating sections are of wave-like contour; the nodes or points of apparent rest being really knots of the greatest pressure from crossing streams of molecules. Where the pressure slackens, the sections rise into loops, the curves of which show the points of least pressure. Now, if the string be struck upon a loop, less energy is communicated to the string, and the carrying power of the sound proportionately fails. If the string be struck upon a node, greater energy ensues, and the carrying power proportionately gains. By this we recognize the importance of the place of contact, or striking-place of the hammer against the string; and the necessity, in order to obtain good fundamental tone, which shall carry, of the note being started from a node.
If the hammer is hard, and impelled with force, the string breaks into shorter sections, and the discordant upper partials of the string, thus brought into prominence, make the tone harsh. If the hammer is soft, and the force employed is moderated, the harmonious partials of the longer sections strike the ear, and the tone is full and round. By the frequency of vibration, that is to say, the number of times a string runs through its complete changes one way and the other, say, for measurement, in a second of time, we determine the pitch, or relative acuteness of the tone as distinguished by the ear.
We know, with less exactness, that the sound-board follows similar laws. The formation of nodes is helped by the barring of the sound-board, a ribbing crosswise to the grain of the wood, which promotes the elasticity, and has been called the "soul" of stringed musical instruments. The sound-board itself is made of most carefully chosen pine; in Europe of theAbies excelsa, the spruce fir, which, when well grown, and of light, even grain, is the best of all woods for resonance. The pulsations of the strings are communicated to the sound-board by the bridge, a thick rail of close-grained beech, curved so as to determine their vibrating lengths, and attached to the sound-board by dowels. The bridge is doubly pinned, so as to cut off the vibration at the edge of the bearing the strings exert upon the bridge. The shock of each separate pulsation, in its complex form, is received by the bridge, and communicated to such undamped strings as may, by their lengths, be sensitive to them; thus producing the Æolian tone commonly known as sympathetic, an eminently attractive charm in the tone of a pianoforte.
We have here strings, bridge, and sound-board, or belly, as it is technically called, indispensable for the production of the tone, and indivisible in the general effect. The proportionate weight of stringing has to be met by a proportionate thickness and barring of the sound-board, and a proportionate thickness and elevation of the bridge.
The tension of the strings is met by a framing, which has become more rigid as the drawing power of the strings has been gradually increased. In the present concert grands of Messrs. Broadwood, that drawing power may be stated as starting from 150 lb. for each single string in the treble, and gradually increasing to about 300 lb. for each of the single strings in the bass. I will reserve for the historical description of my subject some notice of the different kinds of framing that have been introduced. It will suffice, at this stage, to say that it was at first of wood, and became, by degrees, of wood and iron; in the present day the iron very much preponderating. It will be at once evident that the object of the framing is to keep the ends of the strings apart. The near ends are wound round the wrest-pins, which are inserted in the wooden bed, called the wrest-plank, the strength and efficiency of which are most important for the tone and durability of the instrument. It is composed of layers of wainscot oak and beech, the direction of the grain being alternately longitudinal and lateral. Some makers cover the wrest-plank with a plate of brass; in Broadwood's grands, it is a plate of iron, into which, as well as the wood, the wrest-pins are screwed. The tuner's business is to regulate the tension, by turning the wrest-pins, in which he is chiefly guided by the beats which become audible from differing numbers of vibrations. The wrest-plank is bridged, and has its bearing like the soundboard; but the wrest-plank has no vibrations to transfer, and should, as far as possible, offer perfect insensibility to them.
I will close this introductory explanation with two remarks, made by the distinguished musician, mechanician, and inventor, Theobald Boehm, of Munich, whose inventions were not limited to the flute which bears his name, but include the initiation of an important change in the modern pianoforte, as made in America and Germany. Of priority of invention he says, in a letter to an English friend, "If it were desirable to analyze all the inventions which have been brought forward, we should find that in scarcely any instance were they the offspring of the brain of a single individual, but that all progress is gradual only; each worker follows in the track of his predecessor, and eventually, perhaps, advances a step beyond him." And concerning the relative value of inventions in musical instruments, it appears, from an essay of his which has been recently published, that he considers improvement in acoustical proportions the chief foundation of the higher or lower degree of perfection in all instruments, their mechanism being but of secondary value.
I will now proceed to recount briefly the history of the pianoforte from the earliest mention of that name, continuing it to our contemporary instruments, as far as they can be said to have entered into the historical domain. It has been my privilege to assist in proving that Bartolommeo Cristofori was, in the first years of the 18th century, the real inventor of the pianoforte, but with a wide knowledge and experience of how long it has taken to make any invention in keyed instruments practicable and successful, I cannot believe that Cristofori was the first to attempt to contrive one. I should rather accept his good and complete instrument as the sum of his own lifelong studies and experiments, added to those of generations before him, which have left no record for us as yet discovered.
The earliest mention of the name pianoforte (piano e forte), applied to a musical instrument, has been recently discovered by Count Valdrighi in documents preserved in the Estense Library, at Modena. It is dated A.D. 1598, and the reference is evidently to an instrument of the spinet or cembalo kind; but how the tone was produced there is no statement, no word to base an inference upon. The name has not been met with again between the Estense document and Scipione Maffei's well-known description, written in 1711, of Cristofori's "gravecembalo col piano e forte." My view of Cristofori's invention allows me to think that the Estense "piano e forte" may have been a hammer cembalo, a very imperfect one, of course. But I admit that the opposite view of forte and piano, contrived by registers of spinet-jacks, is equally tenable.
Bartolommeo Cristofori was a Paduan harpsichord maker, who was invited by Prince Ferdinand dei Medici to Florence, to take charge of the large collection of musical instruments the Prince possessed. At Florence he produced the invention of the pianoforte, in which he was assisted and encouraged by this high-minded, richly-cultivated, and very musical prince. Scipione Maffei tells us that in 1709 Cristofori had completed four of the new instruments, three of them being of the usual harpsichord form, and one of another form, which he leaves undescribed. It is interesting to suppose that Handel may have tried one or more of these four instruments during the stay he made at Florence in 1708. But it is not likely that he was at all impressed with the potentialities of the invention any more than John Sebastian Bach was in after years when he tried the pianofortes of Silbermann.
The sketch of Cristofori's action in Maffei's essay, from which I have had a working model accurately made, shows that in the first instruments the action was not complete, and it may not have been perfected when Prince Ferdinand died in 1713. But there are Cristofori grand pianos preserved at Florence, dated respectively 1720 and 1726, in which an improved construction of action is found, and of this I also exhibit a model. There is much difference between the two. In the second, Cristofori had obtained his escapement with an undivided key, reconciling his depth of touch, or keyfall, with that of the contemporary harpsichord, by driving the escapement lever through the key. He had contrived means for regulating the escapement distance, and had also invented the last essential of a good pianoforte action, the check. I will explain what is meant by escapement and check. When, by a key being put down, the hammer is impelled toward the strings, it is necessary for their sustained vibration that, after impact, the hammer should rebound or escape; or it would, as pianoforte makers say, "block," damping the strings at the moment they should sound.
A dulcimer player gains his elastic blow by the free movement of the wrist. To gain a similarly elastic blow mechanically in his first action, Cristofori cut a notch in the butt of his hammer from which the escapement lever, "linguetta mobile" as he called it--"hopper," as we call it--being centered at the base, moved forward, when the key was put down, to the extent of its radius, and after the delivery of the blow returned to its resting place by the pressure of a spring. The first action gave the blow with more direct force than the second, which had the notch upon what is called the underhammer, but was defective in the absence of any means to regulate the distance of the "go-off," or "escapement" from the string. In the second action, a small check before the hopper is intended to regulate it, but does so imperfectly. The pianoforte had to wait for fifty years for satisfactory regulation of the escapement.
In the first action, the hammer rests in a silken fork, dropping the whole distance of the rise of every blow. The check in the second action, the "paramartello," is next in importance to the escapement. It catches the back part of the hammer at different points of the radius, responding to the amount of force the player has used upon the key. So that in repeated blows, the rise of the hammer is modified, and the notch is nearer to the returning hopper in proportionate degree.
I have given the first place in description to Cristofori's actions, instead of to the "cembalo" or instrument to which they were applied, because piano and forte, from touch, became possible through them, and what else was accomplished by Cristofori was due, primarily, to the dynamic idea. He strengthened his harpsichord sound-board against a thicker stringing, renouncing the cherished sound-holes. Yet the sound-box notion clung to him, for he made openings in his sound-board rail for air to escape. He ran a string-block round the case, entirely independent of the sound-board, and his wrest-plank, which also became a separate structure, removed from the sound-board by the gap for the hammers, was now a stout oaken plank which, to gain an upward bearing for the strings, he inverted, driving his wrest-pins through in the manner of a harp, and turning them in like fashion to the harp. He had two strings to a note, but it did not occur to him to space them into pairs of unisons. He retained the equidistant harpsichord scale, and had, at first, under-dampers, later over-dampers, which fell between the unisons thus equally separated. Cristofori died in 1731. He had pupils, one of whom made, in 1730, the, "Rafael d'Urbino," the favorite instrument of the great singer Farinelli. The story of inventive Italian pianoforte making ends thus early, but to Italy the invention indisputably belongs.
The first to make pianofortes in Germany was the famous Freiberg organ-builder and clavichord maker, Gottfried Silbermann. He submitted two pianofortes to the judgment of John Sebastian Bach in 1726, which judgment was, however, unfavorable; the trebles being found too weak, and the touch too heavy. Silbermann, according to the account of Bach's pupil, Agricola, being much mortified, put them aside, resolving not to show them again unless he could improve them. We do not know what these instruments were, but it may be inferred that they were copies of Cristofori, or were made after the description of his invention by Maffei, which had already been translated from Italian into German, by Koenig, the court poet at Dresden, who was a personal friend of Silbermann. With the next anecdote, which narrates the purchase of all the pianofortes Silbermann had made, by Frederick the Great, we are upon surer ground. This well accredited occurrence took place in 1746. In the following year occurred Bach's celebrated visit to Potsdam, when he played upon one or more of these instruments. Burney saw and described one in 1772. I had this one, which was known to have remained in the new palace at Potsdam until the present time unaltered, examined, and, by a drawing of the action, found it was identical with Cristofori's. Not, however, being satisfied with one example, I resolved to go myself to Potsdam; and, being furnished with permission from H.R.H. the Crown Princess of Prussia, I was enabled in September, 1881, to set the question at rest of how many grand pianofortes by Gottfried Silbermann there were still in existence at Potsdam, and what they were like. At Berlin there are none, but at Potsdam, in the music-rooms of Frederick the Great, which are in the town palace, the new palace, and Sans Souci--left, it is understood, from the time of Frederick's death undisturbed--there are three of these Silbermann pianofortes. All three are with unimportant differences having nothing to do with structure, Cristofori instruments, wrest plank, sound-board, string-block, and action; the harpsichord scale of stringing being still retained. The work in them is undoubtedly good; the sound-boards have given in the trebles, as is usual with old instruments, from the strain; but I should say all three might be satisfactorily restored. Some other pianofortes seem to have been made in North Germany about this time, as our own poet Gray bought one in Hamburg in 1755, in the description of which we notice the desire to combine a hammer action with the harpsichord which so long exercised men's minds.
The Seven Years' War put an end to pianoforte making on the lines Silbermann had adopted in Saxony. A fresh start had to be made a few years later, and it took place contemporaneously in South Germany and England. The results have been so important that the grand pianofortes of the Augsburg Stein and the London Backers may be regarded, practically, as reinventions of the instrument. The decade 1770-80 marks the emancipation of the pianoforte from the harpsichord, of which before it had only been deemed a variety. Compositions appear written expressly for it, and a man of genius, Muzio Clementi, who subsequently became the head of the pianoforte business now conducted by Messrs. Collard, came forward to indicate the special character of the instrument, and found an independent technique for it.
A few years before, the familiar domestic square piano had been invented. I do not think clavichords could have been altered to square pianos, as they were wanting in sufficient depth of case; but that the suggestion was from the clavichord is certain, the same kind of case and key-board being used. German authorities attribute the invention to an organ builder, Friederici of Gera, and give the date about 1758 or 1760. I have advertised in public papers, and have had personal inquiry made for one of Friederici's "Fort Biens," as he is said to have called his instrument. I have only succeeded in learning this much--that Friederici is considered to have been of later date than has been asserted in the text-books. Until more conclusive information can be obtained, I must be permitted to regard a London maker, but a German by birth, Johannes Zumpe, as the inventor of the instrument. It is certain that he introduced that model of square piano which speedily became the fashion, and was chosen for general adoption everywhere. Zumpe began to make his instruments about 1765. His little square, at first of nearly five octaves, with the "old man's head" to raise the hammer, and "mopstick" damper, was in great vogue, with but little alteration, for forty years; and that in spite of the manifest improvements of John Broadwood's wrest-plank and John Geib's "grasshopper." After the beginning of this century, the square piano became much enlarged and improved by Collard and Broadwood, in London, and by Petzold, in Paris. It was overdone in the attempt to gain undue power for it, and, about twenty years ago, sank in the competition, with the later cottage pianoforte, which was always being improved.
To return to the grand pianoforte. The origin of the Viennese grand is rightly accredited to Stein, the organ builder, of Augsburg. I will call it the German grand, for I find it was as early made in Berlin as Vienna. According to Mozart's correspondence, Stein had made some grand pianos in 1777, with a special escapement, which did not "block" like the pianos he had played upon before. When I wrote the article "Pianoforte" in Dr. Grove's "Dictionary," no Stein instrument was forthcoming, but the result of the inquiries I had instituted at that time ultimately brought one forward, which has been secured by the curator of the Brussels Museum, M. Victor Mahillon. This instrument, with Stein's action and two unison scale, is dated 1780. Mozart's grand piano, preserved at Salzburg, made by Walther, is a nearly contemporary copy of Stein, and so also are the grands by Huhn, of Berlin, which I took notes of at Berlin and Potsdam; the latest of these is dated 1790.
An advance shown by these instruments of Stein and Stein's followers is in the spacing of the unisons; the Huhn grands having two strings to a note in the lower part of the scale, and three in the upper. The Cristofori Silbermann inverted wrest-plank has reverted to the usual form; the tuning pins and downward bearing being the same as in the harpsichord. There are no steel arches as yet between the wrest-plank and the belly-rail in these German instruments. As to Stein's escapement, his hopper was fixed behind the key; the axis of the hammer rising on a principle which I think is older than Stein, but have not been able to trace to its source, and the position of his hammer is reversed. Stein's light and facile movement with shallow key-fall, resembling Cristofori's in bearing little weight, was gratefully accepted by the German clavichord players, and, reacting, became one of the determining agents of the piano music and style of playing of the Vienna school. Thus arose a fluent execution of a rich figuration and brilliant passage playing, with but little inclination to sonorousness of effect, lasting from the time of Mozart's immediate followers to that of Henri Herz; a period of half a century. Knee-pedals, as we translate "geuouillères," were probably in vogue before Stein, and were levers pressed with the knees, to raise the dampers, and leave the pianoforte undamped, a register approved of by Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, who regarded the undamped pianoforte as the more agreeable for improvising.. He appears, however, to have known but little of the capabilities of the instrument, which seemed to him coarse and inexpressive beside his favorite clavichord. Stein appears to have made use of the "una corda" shift. Probably by knee-pedals, subsequently by foot-pedals, the following effects were added to the Stein pianos.
The harpsichord "harp"-stop, which muted one string of each note by a piece of leather, became, by the interposition of a piece of cloth between the hammer and the strings, the piano, harp, orceleste. The more complete sourdine, which muted all the strings by contact of a long strip of leather, acted as the staccato, pizzicato, or pianissimo. The Germans further displayed that ingenuity in fancy stops Mersenne had attributed to them in harpsichords more than a hundred and fifty years before, by a bassoon pedal, a card which by a rotatory half-cylinder just impinging upon the strings produced a reedy twang; also by pedals for triangle, cymbals, bells, and tambourine, the last drumming on the sound-board itself.
Several of these contrivances may be seen in a six-pedal grand pianoforte belonging to Her Majesty the Queen, at Windsor Castle, bearing the name as maker of Stein's daughter, Nannette, who was a friend of Beethoven. The diagram represents the wooden framing of such an instrument.
We gather from Burney's contributions to "Rees's Cyclopaedia," that after the arrival of John Christian Bach in London, A.D. 1759, a few grand pianofortes were attempted, by the second-rate harpsichord makers, but with no particular success. If the workshop tradition can be relied upon that several of Silbermann's workmen had come to London about that time, the so-called "twelve apostles," more than likely owing to the Seven Years' War, we should have here men acquainted with the Cristofori model, which Silbermann had taken up, and the early grand pianos referred to by Burney would be on that model. I should say the "new instrument" of Messrs. Broadwood's play-bill of 1767 was such a grand piano; but there is small chance of ever finding one now, and if an instrument were found, it would hardly retain the original action, as Messrs. Broadwood's books of the last century show the practice of refinishing instruments which had been made with the "old movement."
Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Burney distinguishes Americus Backers by special mention. He is said to have been a Dutchman. Between 1772 and 1776, Backers produced the well-known English action, which has remained the most durable and one of the best up to the present day. It refers in direct leverage to Cristofori's first action. It is opposite to Stein's contemporary invention, which has the hopper fixed. In the English action, as in the Florentine, the hopper rises with the key. To the direct leverage of Cristofori's first action, Backers combined the check of the second, and then added an important invention of his own, a regulating screw and button for the escapement. Backers died in 1776. It is unfortunate we can refer to no pianoforte made by him. I should regard it as treasure trove if one were forthcoming in the same way that brought to light the authentic one of Stein's. As, however, Backers' intimate friends, and his assistants in carrying out the invention, were John Broadwood and Robert Stodart, we have, in their early instruments, the principle and all the leading features of the Backers grand. The increased weight of stringing was met by steel arches placed at intervals between the wrest-plank and the belly-rail, but the belly-rail was still free from the thrust of the wooden bracing, the direction of which was confined to the sides of the case, as it had been in the harpsichord.
Stodart appears to have preceded Broadwood in taking up the manufacture of the grand piano by four or five years. In 1777 he patented an alternate pianoforte and harpsichord, the drawing of which patent shows the Backers action. The pedals he employed were to shift the harpsichord register and to bring on the octave stop. The present pedals were introduced in English and grand pianos by 1785, and are attributed to John Broadwood, who appears to have given his attention at once to the improvement of Backers' instrument. Hitherto the grand piano had been made with an undivided belly-bridge, the same as the harpsichord had been; the bass strings in three unisons, to the lowest note, being of brass. Theory would require that the notes of different octaves should be multiples of each other and that the tension should be the same for each string. The lowest bass strings, which at that time were the note F, would thus require a vibrating length of about twelve feet. As only half this length could be afforded, the difference had to be made up in the weight of the strings and their tension, which led, in these early grands, to many inequalities. The three octaves toward the treble could, with care, be adjusted, the lengths being practically the ideal lengths. It was in the bass octaves (pianos were then of five octaves) the inequalities were more conspicuous. To make a more perfect scale and equalize the tension was the merit and achievement of John Broadwood, who joined to his own practical knowledge and sound intuitions the aid of professed men of science. The result was the divided bridge, the bass strings being carried over the shorter division, and the most beautiful grand pianoforte in its lines and curves that has ever been made was then manufactured. In 1791 he carried his scale up to C, five and a half octaves; in 1794 down to C, six octaves, always with care for the artistic, form. The pedals were attached to the front legs of the stand on which the instrument rested. The right foot-pedal acted first as the piano register, shifting the impact of each hammer to two unisons instead of three; a wooden stop in the right hand key-block permitted the action to be shifted yet further to the right, and reducing the blow to one string only, produced the pianissimo register oruna cordaof indescribable attractiveness of sound. The cause of this was in the reflected vibration through the bridge to the untouched strings. The present school of pianoforte playing rejects this effect altogether, but Beethoven valued it, and indicated its use in some of his great works. Steibert called theuna cordatheceleste, which is more appropriate to it than Adam's application of this name to the harp-stop, by which the latter has gone ever since.
Up to quite the end of the last century the dampers were continued to the highest note in the treble. They were like harpsichord dampers raised by wooden jacks, with a rail or stretcher to regulate their rise, which served also as a back touch to the keys. I have not discovered the exact year when, or by whom, the treble dampers were first omitted, thus leaving that part of the scale undamped. This bold act gave the instrument many sympathetic strings free to vibrate from the bridge when the rest of the instrument was played, each string, according to its length, being an aliquot division of a lower string. This gave the instrument a certain brightness or life throughout, an advantage which has secured its universal adoption. The expedients of an untouched octave string and of utilizing those lengths of wire that lie beyond the bridges have been brought into notice of late years, but the latter was early in the century essayed by W. F. Collard.
From difficulties of tuning, owing to friction and other causes, the real gain of these expedients is small, and when we compare them with the natural resources we have always at command in the normal scale of the instrument, is not worth the cost. The inventor of the damper register opened a floodgate to such aliquot re-enforcement as can be got in no other way. Each lower note struck of the undamped instrument, by excitement from the sound-board carried through the bridge, sets vibrating higher strings, which, by measurement, are primes to its partials; and each higher string struck calls out equivalent partials in the lower strings. Even partials above the primes will excite their equivalents up to the twelfth and double octave. What a glow of tone-color there is in all this harmonic re-enforcement, and who would now say that the pedals should never be used? By their proper use, the student's ear is educated to a refined sense of distinction of consonance and dissonance, and the intention and beauty of Chopin's pedal work becomes revealed.
The next decade, 1790-1800, brings us to French grand pianoforte-making, which was then taken up by Sebastian Erard. This ingenious mechanic and inventor traveled the long and dreary road along which nearly all who have tried to improve the pianoforte have had to journey. He appears, at first, to have adopted the existing model of the English instrument in resonance, tension, and action, and to have subsequently turned his attention to the action, most likely with the idea of combining the English power of gradation with the German lightness of touch. Erard claimed, in the specification to a patent for an action, dated 1808, "the power of giving repeated strokes, without missing or failure, by very small angular motions of the key itself."
Once fairly started, the notion of repetition became the dominant idea with pianoforte-makers, and to this day, although less insisted upon, engrosses time and attention that might be more usefully directed. Some great players, from their point of view of touch, have been downright opposed to repetition actions. I will name Kalkbrenner, Chopin, and, in our own day, Dr. Hans von Bülow. Yet the Erard's repetition, in the form of Hertz's reduction, is at present in greater favor in America and Germany, and is more extensively used, than at any previous period.
The good qualities of Erard's action, completed in 1821, the germ of which will be found in the later Cristofori, are not, however, due to repetition capability, but to other causes, chiefly, I will say, to counterpoise. The radical defect of repetition is that the repeated note can never have the tone-value of the first; it depends upon the mechanical contrivance, rather than the finder of the player, which is directly indispensable to the production of satisfactory tone. When the sensibility of the player's touch is lost in the mechanical action, the corresponding sensibility of the tone suffers; the resonance is not, somehow or other, sympathetically excited.
Erard rediscovered an upward bearing, which had been accomplished by Cristofori a hundred years before, in 1808. A down-bearing bridge to the wrest-plank, with hammers striking upward, are clearly not in relation; the tendency of the hammer must be, if there is much force used, to lift the string from its bearing, to the detriment of the tone. Erard reversed the direction of the bearing of the front bridge, substituting for a long, pinned, wooden bridge, as many little brass bridges as there were notes. The strings passing through holes bored through the little bridges, called agraffes, or studs, turned upward toward the wrest-pin. By this the string was forced against its rest instead of off it. It is obvious that the merit of this invention would in time make its use general. A variety of it was the long brass bridge, specially used in the treble on account of the pleasant musical-box like tone its vibration encouraged. Of late years another upward bearing has found favor in America and on the Continent, the Capo d'Astro bar of M. Bord, which exerts a pressure upon the strings at the bearing point.
About the year 1820, great changes and improvements were made in the grand pianoforte both externally and in the instrument. The harpsichord boxed up front gave way to the cylinder front, invented by Henry Pape, a clever German pianoforte-maker who bad settled in Paris. Who put the pedals upon the familiar lyre I have not been able to learn. It would be in the Empire time, when a classical taste was predominant. But the greatest change was from a wooden resisting structure to one in which iron should play an important part. The invention belongs to this country, and is due to a tuner named William Allen, a young Scotchman, who was in Stodart's employ. With the assistance of the foreman, Thom, the invention was completed, and a patent was taken out, dated the 15th of January, 1820, in which Thom was a partner. The patent was, however, at once secured by the Stodarts, their employers. The object of the patent was a combination of metal tubes with metal plates, the metallic tubes extending from the plates which were attached to the string-block to the wrest-plank. The metal plates now held the hitch-pins, to which the farther ends of the strings were fixed, and the force of the tension was, in a great measure, thrown upon the tubes. The tubes were a mistake; they were of iron over the steel strings, and brass over the brass and spun strings, the idea being that of the compensation of tuning when affected by atmospheric change, also a mistake. However, the tubes were guaranteed by stout wooden bars crossing them at right angles. At once a great advance was made in the possibility of using heavier strings, and the great merit of the invention was everywhere recognized.
James Broadwood was one of the first to see the importance of the invention, if it were transformed into a stable principle. He had tried iron tension bars in past years, but without success. It was now due to his firm to introduce a fixed stringed plate, instead of plates intended to shift, and in a few years to combine this plate with four solid tension bars, for which combination he, in 1827, took out a patent, claiming as the motive for the patent the string-plate; the manner of fixing the hitch-pins upon it, the fourth tension bar, which crossed the instrument about the middle of the scale, and the fastening of that bar to the wooden brace below, now abutting against the belly-rail, the attachment being effected by a bolt passing through a hole cut in the sound-board.
This construction of grand pianoforte soon became generally adopted in England and France. Messrs. Erard, who appear to have had their own adaptation of tension bars, introduced the harmonic bar in 1838. This, a short bar of gun metal, was placed upon the wrest-plank immediately above the bearings of the treble, and consolidated the plank by screws tapped into it of alternate pressure and drawing power. In the original invention a third screw pressed upon the bridge. By this bar a very light, ringing treble tone was gained. This was followed by a long harmonic bar extending above the whole length of the wrest-plank, which it defends from any tendency to rise, by downward pressure obtained by screws. During 1840-50, as many as five and even six tension bars were used in grand pianofortes, to meet the ever increasing strain of thicker stringing. The bars were strutted against a metal edging to the wrest-plank, while the ends were prolonged forward until they abutted against its solid mass on the key-board side of the tuning-pins. The space required for fixing them cramped the scale, while the strings were divided into separate batches between them. It was also difficult to so adjust each bar that it should bear its proportionate share of the tension; an obvious cause of inequality.
Toward the end of this period a new direction was taken by Mr. Henry Fowler Broadwood, by the introduction of an iron-framed pianoforte, in which the bars should be reduced in number, and with the bars the steel arches, as they were still called, although they were no longer arches but struts.
In a grand pianoforte, made in 1847, Mr. Broadwood succeeded in producing an instrument of the largest size, practically depending upon iron alone. Two tension bars sufficed, neither of them breaking into the scale: the first, nearly straight, being almost parallel with the lowest bass string; the second, presenting the new feature of a diagonal bar crossed from the bass corner to the string-plate, with its thrust at an angle to the strings.
There were reasons which induced Mr. Broadwood to somewhat modify and improve this framing, but with the retention of its leading feature, the diagonal bar, which was found to be of supreme importance in bearing the tension where it is most concentrated. From 1852, his concert grands have had, in all, one bass bar, one diagonal bar, a middle bar with arch beneath, and the treble cheek bar. The middle bar is the only one directly crossing the scale, and breaking it. It is strengthened by feathered ribs, and is fastened by screws to the wooden brace below. The three bars and diagonal bar, which is also feathered, abut firmly on the string plate, which is fastened down to the wooden framing by screws. Since 1862, the wooden wrest-plank has been covered with a plate of iron, the iron screw-pin plate bent at a right angle in front. The wrest-pins are screwed into this plate, and again in the wood below. The agraffes, which take the upward bearings of the strings, are firmly screwed into this plate. The long harmonic bar of gun metal lies immediately above the agraffes, and crossing the wrest-plank in its entire width, serves to keep it, at the bearing line, in position. This construction is the farthest advance of the English pianoforte.
FIG. 2.--WILLIAM ALLEN.
FIG. 2.--WILLIAM ALLEN.
Almost simultaneously with it has arisen a new development in America, which, beginning with Conrad Meyer, about 1833, has been advanced by the Chickerings and Steinways to the well known American and German grand pianoforte of the present day. It was perfected in America about in 1859, and has been taken up since by the Germans almost universally, and with very little alteration. Two distinct principles have been developed and combined--the iron framing in a single casting, and the cross or overstringing. I will deal with the last first, because it originated in England and was the invention of Theobald Boehm, the famous improver of the flute. In Grove's "Dictionary," I have given an approximate date to his overstringing as 1835, but reference to Boehm's correspondence with Mr. Walter Broadwood shows me that 1831 was really the time, and that Boehm employed Gerock and Wolf, of 79 Cornhill, London, musical instrument makers, to carry out his experiment. Gerock being opposed to an oblique direction of the strings and hammers, Boehm found a more willing coadjutor in Wolf. As far as I can learn, a piccolo, a cabinet, and a square piano were thus made overstrung. Boehm's argument was that a diagonal was longer within a square than a vertical, which, as he said, every schoolboy knew. The first overstrung grand pianos seen in London were made by Lichtenthal, of St. Petersburg; not so much for tone as for symmetry of the case; two instruments so made were among the curiosities of the Great Exhibition of 1851. Some years before this, Henry Pape had made experiments in cross stringing, with the intention to economize space. His ideas were adopted and continued by the London maker, Tomkisson, who acquired Pape's rights for this country. The iron framing in a single casting is a distinctly American invention, but proceeding, like the overstringing, from a German by birth. The iron casting for a square piano of the American Alpheus Babcock, may have suggested Meyer's invention; it was, however, Conrad Meyer, who, in Philadelphia, and in 1833, first made a real iron frame square pianoforte. The gradual improvement upon Meyer's invention, during the next quarter of a century, are first due to the Chickerings and then the Steinways. The former overstrung an iron frame square, the latter overstrung an iron frame grand, the culmination of this special make since of general American and German adoption. It will be seen that, in the American make, the number of tension bars has not been reduced, but a diagonal support has, to a certain extent, been accepted and adopted. The sound-board bridges are much further apart than obtains with the English grand, or with the Anglo-French Erard. The advocates of the American principle point out the advantages of a more open scale, and more equal pressure on the sound-board. They likewise claim, as a gain, a greater tension. I have no quite accurate information as to what the sum of the tension may be of an American grand piano. One of Broadwood's, twenty years ago, had a strain of sixteen and one-half tons; the strain has somewhat increased since then. The remarkable improvement in wiredrawing which has been made in Birmingham, Vienna, and Nuremberg, of late years, has rendered these high tensions of far easier attainment than they would have been earlier in the century.
FIG. 3.--BROADWOOD.
FIG. 3.--BROADWOOD.
For me the great drawback to one unbroken casting is in the vibratory ring inseparable from any metal system that has no resting places to break the uniform reverberation proceeding from metal. We have already seen how readily the strings take up vibrations which are only pure when, as secondary vibrations, they arise by reversion from the sound-board. If vibration arises from imperfectly elastic wood, we hear a dull wooden thud; if it comes from metal, partials of the strings are re-enforced that should be left undeveloped, which give a false ring to the tone, and an after ring that blurslegatoplaying, and nullifies thestaccato. I do not pose as the obstinate advocate of parallel stringing, although I believe that, so far, it is the most logical and the best; the best, because the left hand division of the instrument is free from a preponderance of dissonant high partials, and we hear the light and shade, as well as the cantabile of that part, better than by any overstrung scale that I have yet met with. I will not, I say, offer a final judgment, because there may come a possible improvement of the overstrung or double diagonal scale, if that scale is persisted in, and inventive power is brought to bear upon it, as valuable as that which has carried the idea thus far.
FIG. 4.--BROADWOOD.
FIG. 4.--BROADWOOD.
I have not had time to refer other than incidentally to the square pianoforte, which has become obsolete. I must, however, give a separate historical sketch of the upright pianoforte, which has risen into great favor and importance, and in its development--I may say its invention--belongs to this present 19th century. The form has always recommended the upright on the score of convenience, but it was long before it occurred to any one to make an upright key board instrument reasonably. Upright harpsichords were made nearly four hundred years ago. A very interesting 17th century one was sold lately in the great Hamilton sale--sold, I grieve to say, to be demolished for its paintings. But all vertical harpsichords were horizontal ones, put on end on a frame; and the book-case upright grand pianos, which, from the eighties, were made right into the present century, were horizontal grands similarly elevated. The real inventor of the upright piano, in its modern and useful form, was that remarkable Englishman, John Isaac Hawkins, the inventor of ever-pointed pencils; a civil engineer, poet, preacher, and phrenologist. While living at Border Town, New Jersey, U. S. A., Hawkins invented the cottage piano--portable grand, he called it--and his father, Isaac Hawkins, to whom, in Grove's "Dictionary," I have attributed the invention, took out, in the year 1800[1], the English patent for it. I can fortunately show you one of these original pianinos, which belongs to Messrs. Broadwood. It is a wreck, but you will discern that the strings descend nearly to the floor, while the key-board, a folding one, is raised to a convenient height between the floor and the upper extremities of the strings. Hawkins had an iron frame and tension rods, within which the belly was entirely suspended; a system of tuning by mechanical screws; an upper metal bridge; equal length of string throughout; metal supports to the action, in which a later help to the repetition was anticipated--the whole instrument being independent of the case. Hawkins tried also a lately revived notion of coiled strings in the bass, doing away with tension. Lastly, he sought for asostinente, which has been tried for from generation to generation, always to fail, but which, even if it does succeed, will produce another kind of instrument, not a pianoforte, which owes so much of its charm to its unsatiating, evanescent tone.
[Transcribers note 1: 3rd digit illegible, best guess from context.]
Fig. 5.--MEYER.
Fig. 5.--MEYER.
Once introduced into Hawkins' native country, England, the rise of the upright piano became rapid. In 1807, at latest, the now obsolete high cabinet piano was fairly launched. In 1811, Wornum produced a diagonal. In 1813, a vertical cottage piano. Previously, essays had been made to place a square piano upright on its side, for which Southwell, an Irish maker, took out a patent in 1798; and I can fortunately show you one of these instruments, kindly lent for this paper by Mr. Walter Gilbey. I have also been favored with photographs by Mr. Simpson, of Dundee, of a precisely similar upright square. I show his drawing of the action--the Southwell sticker action. W. F. Collard patented another similar experiment in 1811. At first the sticker action with a leather hinge to the hammer-butt was the favorite, and lasted long in England. The French, however, were quick to recognize the greater merit of Wornum's principle of the crank action, which, and strangely enough through France, has become very generally adopted in England, as well as Germany and elsewhere. I regret I am unable to show a model of the original crank action, but Mr. Wornum has favored me with an early engraving of his father's invention. It was originally intended for the high cabinet piano, and a patent was taken out for it in 1826. But many difficulties arose, and it was not until 1829 that the first cabinet was so finished. Wornum then applied it in the same year to the small upright--the piccolo, as he called it--the principle of which was, through Pleyel and Pape, adopted for the piano manufacture in Paris. Within the last few years we have seen the general introduction of Bord's little pianino, called in England, ungrammatically enough, pianette, in the action of which that maker cleverly introduced the spiral spring. And, also, of those large German overstrung and double overstrung upright pianos, which, originally derived from America, have so far met with favor and sale in this country as to induce some English makers, at least in the principle, to copy them.
Fig. 6.--STEINWAY.
Fig. 6.--STEINWAY.
I will conclude this historical sketch by remarking, and as a remarkable historical fact, that the English firms which in the last century introduced the pianoforte, to whose honorable exertions we owe a debt of gratitude, with the exception of Stodart, still exist, and are in the front rank of the world's competition. I will name Broadwood (whose flag I serve under), Collard (in the last years of the last century known as Longman and Clementi), Erard (the London branch), Kirkman, and, I believe, Wornum. On the Continent there is the Paris Erard house; and, at Vienna, Streicher, a firm which descends directly from Stein of Augsburg, the inventor of the German pianoforte, the favorite of Mozart, and of Beethoven in his virtuoso period, for he used Stein's grands at Bonn. Distinguished names have risen in the present century, some of whom have been referred to. To those already mentioned, I should like to add the names of Hopkinson and Brinsmead in England; Bechstein and Bluthner in Germany; all well-known makers.
[Footnote: Read before the Medico Legal Society, April 5, 1883.]
Of the various salts of silver, the nitrate, both crystallized and in sticks (lunar caustic,Lapis infernalis), is the only one interesting to the toxicologist.
This salt is an article of commerce, and is used technically and medicinally.
Its extensive employment for marking linen, in the preparation of various hair dyes (Eau de Perse, d'Egypte, de Chiene, d'Afrique), in the photographer's laboratory, etc., affords ample opportunity to use the same for poisoning purposes.
Nitrate of silver possesses an acrid metallic taste and acts as a violent poison.
When injected into a vein of an animal, even in small quantities, the symptoms produced are dyspnoea,[1] choking, spasms of the limbs and then of the trunk, signs of vertigo, consisting of inability to stand erect or walk steadily, and, finally retching and vomiting, and death by asphyxia. These symptoms, which have usually been attributed to the coagulating action of the salt upon the blood, have been shown not to depend upon that change, which, indeed, does not occur, but upon a direct paralyzing operation upon the cerebro-spinal centers and upon the heart; but the latter action is subordinate and secondary, and the former is fatal through asphyxia.
[Footnote 1: Nat. Dispensatory. Alf. Stille & John M. Maisch, Phila., 1879, p. 232.]
One-third of a grain injected into the jugular vein killed a dog in four and one-half hours, with violent tetanic spasms.[1]
[Footnote 1: Medical Jurisprudence. Thomas S. Traill, 1857, p 117.]
Devergie states that acute poisoning with nitrate of silver, administered in the shape of pills, is more frequent than one would suppose. Yet Dr. Powell[1] states that it should always be given in pills, as the system bears a dose three times as large as when given in solution. The usual dose is from one-quarter of a grain to one grain three times a day when administered as a medicine. In cases of epilepsy Dr. Powell recommends one grain at first, to be gradually increased to six. Clocquet[2] has given as much as fifteen grains in a day, and Ricord has given sixteen grains of argentum chloratum ammoniacale.
[Footnote 1: U.S. Dispensatory, 18th ed., p. 1049. Wood & Bache.]
[Footnote 2: Handbuch der Giftlehre, von A. W. M. Von Hasselt. 1862, p. 316.]
Cases of poisoning have resulted from sticks of lunar caustic getting into the stomach in the process of touching the throat (Boerhave)[1]; in one case, according to Albers, a stick of lunar caustic got into the trachea.
[Footnote 1: Virchow's Archiv, Bd. xvii., s. 135. 1859.]
Von Hasselt therefore urges the utmost caution in using lunar caustic; the sticks and holder should always be carefully examined before use. An apprentice[1] to an apothecary attempted to commit suicide by taking nearly one ounce of a solution of nitrate of silver without fatal result. It must be remarked, however, that the strength of the solution was not stated.
[Footnote 1: Handbuch der Giftlehre, von A. W. M. Von Hasselt. Zweiter Theil, 1862. p. 316.]
In 1861, a woman, fifty-one years old, died in three days from the effects of taking a six-ounce mixture containing fifty grains of nitrate of silver given in divided doses.[1] She vomited a brownish yellow fluid before death. The stomach and intestines were found inflamed. It is stated that silver was found in the substance of the stomach and liver.
[Footnote 1: Treatise on Poison. Taylor, 1875, p. 475.]
It is evident that the poisonous dose, when taken internally, is not so very small, but still it would not be safe to administer much over the amounts prescribed by Ricord, for in the case of the dog mentioned one third of a grain injected into the jugular vein produced death in four and one-half hours.
The circumstance that more can be taken internally is explained by the rapid decomposition to which this silver salt is liable in the body by the proteine substance and chlorine combinations in the stomach, the hydrochloric acid in the gastric juice, and salt from food.
The first reaction produced by taking nitrate of silver internally is a combination of this salt with the proteinaceous tissues with which it comes in contact, as also a precipitation of chloride of silver.
According to Mitscherlich, the combination with the proteine or albuminous substance is not a permanent one, but suffers a decomposition by various acids, as dilute acetic and lactic acid.
The absorption of the silver into the system is slow, as the albuminoid and chlorine combinations formed in the intestinal canal cannot be immediately dissolved again.
In the tissues the absorbed silver salt is decomposed by the tissues, and the oxide and metallic silver separate.
Partly for this reason and partly on account of the formation of the solid albuminates, etc., the elimination of the silver from the body takes place very slowly. Some of the silver, however, passed out in the fæces, and, according to Lauderer, Orfila, and Panizza, some can be detected in the urine.
Bogolowsky[1] has also shown that in rabbits poisoned with preparations of silver, the (often albuminous) urine and the contents of the (very full) gall bladder contained silver.
[Footnote 1: Arch. f. Path. Anatomie, xlvi., p. 409. Gaz. Med de Paris, 1868, No. 39. Also Journ. de l'Anatomie et de la Physiologie, 1873, p. 398.]
Mayencon and Bergeret have also shown that in men and rabbits the silver salt administered is quickly distributed in the body, and is but slowly excreted by the urine and fæces.
Chronic poisoning shows itself in a peculiar coloring of the skin (Argyria Fuchs), especially in the face, beginning first on the sclerotic. The skin does not always take the same color; it becomes in most cases grayish blue, slaty sometimes, though, a greenish brown or olive color.
Von Hasselt thinks that probably chloride of silver is deposited in the rete malpighii, which is blackened by the action of light, or that sulphide of silver is formed by direct union of the silver with the sulphur of the epidermis. That the action of light is not absolutely necessary, Patterson states, follows from the often simultaneous appearance of this coloring upon the mucous membrane, especially that of the mouth and upon the gums; and Dr. Frommann Hermann[1] and others have shown that a similar coloring is also found in the internal parts.
[Footnote 1: Leh der Experiment. Tox. Dr. Hermann, Berlin, 1874, p. 211.]
Versmann found 14.1 grms. of dried liver to contain 0.009 grm. chloride of silver, or 0.047 per cent. of metallic silver. In the kidneys he found 0.007 grm. chloride of silver, or 0.061 per cent. of metallic silver; this was in a case of chronic poisoning, the percentage will be seen to be very small. Orfila Jun. found silver in the liver five months after the poisoning.
Lionville[1] found a deposit of silver in the kidneys, suprarenal gland, and plexus choroideus of a woman who had gone through a cure with lunar caustic five years before death.
[Footnote 1: Gaz. Med., 1868. No. 39.]
Sydney Jones[1] states that in the case of an old epileptic who had been accustomed to take nitrate of silver as a remedy, the choroid plexuses were remarkably dark, and from their surface could be scraped a brownish black, soot-like material, and a similar substance was found lying quite free in the cavity of the fourth ventricle, apparently detached from the choroid plexus.
[Footnote 1: Trans. Path. Soc., xi. vol.]
Attempts at poisoning for suicidal purposes with nitrate of silver are in most cases prevented from the fact that this salt has such a disagreeable metallic taste as to be repulsive; cases therefore of poisoning are only liable to occur by accident or by the willful administration of the poison by another person.
Such a case occurred quite recently, to a very valuable mare belonging to August Belmont.
I received on Dec. 6, 1882, a sealed box from Dr. Wm. J. Provost, containing the stomach, heart, kidney, portion of liver, spleen, and portion of rectum of this mare for analysis.
Dr. Provost reported to me that the animal died quite suddenly, and that there was complete paralysis of the hind quarters, including rectum and bladder.
The total weight of the stomach and contents was 18 lb., the stomach itself weighing 3 lb. and 8 oz.
Portions were taken from each organ, weighed, and put in alcohol for analysis.
The contents of the stomach were thoroughly mixed together and measured, and a weighed portion preserved for analysis.
The stomach, when cut open, was perfectly white on its inner surface, and presented a highly corroded appearance.
The contents of the stomach were first submitted to qualitative analysis, and the presence of a considerable quantity of nitrate of silver was detected.
The other organs were next examined, and the presence of silver was readily detected, with the exception of the heart!
The liver had a very dark brown color. A quantitative analysis of the contents of the stomach gave 59.8 grains of nitrate of silver. In the liver 30.5 grains of silver, calculated as nitrate, were found (average weight, 11 lb.). From the analysis made there was reason to believe that at least one-half an ounce of nitrate of silver was given to the animal. Some naturally passed out in the fæces and urine.
I was able to prepare several globules of metallic silver, as also all the well known chemical combinations, such as sulphide, chloride, oxide, iodide, bromide, bichromate of silver, etc.
From the result of my investigation I was led to the conclusion that the animal came to death by the willful administering of nitrate of silver, probably mixed with the food.
The paralysis of the hind quarters, mentioned by Dr. Provost, accords perfectly with the action of this poison, as it acts on the nerve centers, especially the cerebro-spinal centers, and produces spasms of the limbs, then of the trunk, and finally paralysis.
I might also state in this connection that, only two weeks previous to my receiving news of the poisoning of the mare, I examined for Mr. Belmont the contents of the stomach of a colt which died very mysteriously, and found large quantities of corrosive sublimate to be present.
Calomel is often given as a medicine, but not so with corrosive sublimate, which is usually employed in the arts as a poison.
It is to be regretted that up to the present moment, even with the best detectives, the perpetrator of this outrage has been at large. Surely the very limit of the law should be exercised against any man who would willfully poison an innocent animal for revenge upon an individual. Cases have been reported in England where one groom would poison the colts under the care of another groom, so that the owner would discharge their keeper and promote the other groom to his place.
A few good examples, in cases where punishment was liberally meted out, would probably check such unfeeling outrages.