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Notwithstanding the confidence with which modern philosophers have claimed the discovery, the experimental mode of investigation was undoubtedly known and pursued by the ancients, who appear, says Mr. Leslie,^[95] to have concealed their notions respecting it, under the veil of allegory. Proteus signified the mutable and changing forms of material objects, and the inquisitive philosopher was counselled by the Poets^[96] to watch their slippery demon when slumbering on the shore, to bind him, and compel the reluctant captive to reveal his secrets. This, adds Mr. Leslie, gives a lively picture of the cautious, but intrepid advances of the skilful experimenter;—he tries to press nature into a corner,—he endeavours to separate the different principles of action,—he seeks to concentrate the predominant agent, and labours to exclude, as much as possible, every disturbing influence.

But with whatever ingenuity and success the antiquity of chemical knowledge may be advocated, as it relates to the various arts of life, yet it must be allowed that not the most remote trace of its application to physic can be discovered in the medical writers of Greece or Rome. The operation of distillation^[97] is not even mentioned by Hippocrates or Galen; and the waters of different plants, as described by some later authors, are to be understood, as we are informed by Gesner, merely as simple decoctions, and not as the products of any chemical process; while the Essences of Dioscorides, Galen, Oribasius, and others, were only the extracts produced by the evaporation of such infusions.