The new digester was invented by a Frenchman
named Papin, who exhibited his method before the Royal Society on 22d May, 1679,
and published a work on the subject in 1681. Sir Thomas Browne refers to it
(Works, ed. 1852, vol. III., p. 458)—“According to such a kind of way as in that
which is called, the philosophicall calcination of hartshorne, made by the steeme of
water, which makes the hartshorne white and soft, and easily pulverisable; and it
is to bee had at some apothecaries and chymists; and whether a fish boyled in the
steeme of water will not have the bones soft, I have not tried, &c.”
