"Discovery" of calcium

By Cheryl Kondratov

The discovery of calcium is like the discovery of everything else. There’s what we do to existing particles to alter their properties that goes to the identification of the new discovery.

In this case they apply electrolysis to moist lime and do many experiments to evaluate the outcome of that manipulation. Scientists decide using sophisticated calculations and algorithms what might happen if we do this to that. I’ll try to simplify it by describing what you can do in your kitchen. 

What is likely to happen if I mix mustard ketchup and apply electrical current to it? Similarly, as a scientist, I’m establishing an hypothesis  if I do this to that, then I’m going to determine that that is calcium. This is what they say is isolation and discovery of calcium when in actuality nothing was isolated. They didn’t take a substance out of something else and set it aside and identify it as calcium. Calcium was identified as a result of a procedure performed on certain entities. 

That is likewise what is done with any testing to try to determine how much calcium is in the persons blood or urine. It’s going to be just as presumptive to examine the contents of the blood or urine.  Keep in mind also that when a person comes in and is suspected of having calcium buildup and then they run testing there’s an assumption that they’re  going to take the sample from the blood and they’re going run it right over to the laboratory and analyze it. 

That whole field of endeavor is highly specialized with very expensive equipment and to conduct testing microscopically for each patient would not be cost-effective. They use imagery equipment and the presumptive tests, the patient history and they put that all together and they come up with a diagnosis.