ABSTRACT
Robert Boyle was the prototype of the self-taught amateur scientist-investigator that thrived in England. Color changes occurring during chemical reactions interested Boyle, and there are references to vegetable extracts throughout Experimenta et Considerationes de Coloribus. Substances that caused no color change were neither acid nor alkaline. Boyle followed John Locke's outline of investigation in his listing of the headings under which whole blood should be examined: color, specific gravity, clotting time, agents that cause or delay clotting. Being a chemist, Boyle worked with normal blood and left it to others with medical training and access to people who were sick to analyze blood in various pathologic states. The methodology that led to advance in chemical individuality was the use of chemical analysis to characterize a substance by its reactions with other chemicals. Quantitative methods came to be accepted as essential to chemical investigation, and the whole new field of the chemistry of the gases was opened up.
