Polish alchemist

Polish alchemist, philosopher, and physician Michael Sendivogius (Michał Sędziwój) in his work De Lapide Philosophorum Tractatus duodecim e naturae fonte et manuali experientia depromti (1604) described a substance contained in air, referring to it as ‘cibus vitae’ (food of life,[12]) and according to Polish historian Roman Bugaj, this substance is identical with oxygen.[13] Sendivogius, during his experiments performed between 1598 and 1604, properly recognized that the substance is equivalent to the gaseous byproduct released by the thermal decomposition of potassium nitrate. In Bugaj’s view, the isolation of oxygen and the proper association of the substance to that part of air which is required for life, provides sufficient evidence for the discovery of oxygen by Sendivogius.[13] This discovery of Sendivogius was however frequently denied by the generations of scientists and chemists which succeeded him.[12]

It is also commonly claimed that oxygen was first discovered by Swedish pharmacist Carl Wilhelm Scheele. He had produced oxygen gas by heating mercuric oxide (HgO) and various nitrates in 1771–72.[14][15][6] Scheele called the gas “fire air” because it was then the only known agent to support combustion. He wrote an account of this discovery in a manuscript titled Treatise on Air and Fire, which he sent to his publisher in 1775. That document was published in 1777.[16]

In the meantime, on August 1, 1774, an experiment conducted by the British clergyman Joseph Priestley focused sunlight on mercuric oxide contained in a glass tube, which liberated a gas he named “dephlogisticated air”.[15] He noted that candles burned brighter in the gas and that a mouse was more active and lived longer while breathing it. After breathing the gas himself, Priestley wrote: “The feeling of it to my lungs was not sensibly different from that of common air, but I fancied that my breast felt peculiarly light and easy for some time afterwards.”[9] Priestley published his findings in 1775 in a paper titled “An Account of Further Discoveries in Air”, which was included in the second volume of his book titled Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air.[6][17] Because he published his findings first, Priestley is usually given priority in the discovery.