Bergman presided on that day, and received Scheele in the name of the Academy, addressing him in terms of warm eulogy. It was on this occasion that Scheele read his paper on the preparation of calomel. He had just passed his examination as a pharmacist, and received an authorization, free of charge in consideration of his services, to keep the shop at Köping. Bergman, in the same year, secured for him a pension of one hundred riksdalers to encourage and assist his investigations in chemistry, which was continued till his death.
Scheele had now before him the prospect of an easier future. But, although he had never before been ill, he had an attack of gout toward the end of 1775. He nevertheless continued his studies. In February, 1786, he sent to the Academy of Sciences his memoir on gallic acid. In the same month he was attacked with phthisis; and this disease ended with his death on the 21st of May of that year, two days after he had married the widow of his predecessor in the pharmacy.
Scheele was a man of medium stature and vigorous constitution, and was as modest as he was deservedly famous. Thus he wrote to a friend on the occasion of his being elected to the Academy of Turin: "I really believe they think that I am one of the greatest chemists of the time, and they might make me proud. If they keep on in this way, I might come to think I had as much experience and genius as Macquer and Bergman. But I believe, in truth, that those worthy men have more knowledge in their fingers than I have in my head." His education was not extensive, but he had been accustomed from his youth to think independently and without prejudice, and to verify his conclusions, and never to believe any assertion in chemistry till he had personally tested its validity.
There were no grand, elaborately furnished laboratories in those days, and nearly all the great chemists who did so much to put the science on a firm foundation began their work in pharmacists' shops. Scheele's apparatus was of the most simple character, and included a few retorts, common bottles and flasks, and, for experiments on gases, bladders. To collect a gas, he fastened the bladder tightly to the neck of the retort, in which the chemicals for the development of the gas had been placed. If he had to deal with such a gas as nitrous oxide, he saw that the interior of the bladder was well imbued with oil. He usually employed wooden tubes instead of glass ones, lining their interior with a goose-quill. It would be discouraging to a young chemist of to-day to be limited to such apparatus; but Scheele made up for what was wanting in his tools by his remarkable faculty of observation, perseverance, and keenness of discernment. In his experiments he observed all of the slightest details, and went so near to the bottom of things that he left very little for others to discover in any of the work that he did.
Scheele's scientific labors were performed in different fields of chemistry—general, inorganic, organic, and physiological. The "Treatise
