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Abstract

Upon his death in 1895, Carl Schorlemmer, professor of chemistry at the Victoria University in Manchester/GB, left an extensive but unfinished and unpublished manuscript, which is now stored in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester. It covers about 1100 pages and deals with the history of chemistry from antiquity to the second third of the 17th century. Based on a several years' study of this paper, an evaluation of its main parts (Chemical knowledge of antiquity/The age of alchemy/ The age of medical chemistry) is given. As compared with his book The Rise and development of organic chemistry (Manchester/London 1879) Schorlemmer seemes to have overstepped the summit of scientific-historical efficiency in the "Contributions ...". Some authors believe that he intended to write an universal history of chemistry from the Marxist point of view but this presumption cannot be supported.