European scientists became interested in the natural effervescence of mineral waters in the sixteenth century. Mineral-water springs were very popular at the time because of their supposed therapeutic properties. Chemists and scientists studied the nature of the bubbles in the water and considered ways to reproduce them artificially.

The Irish scientist Robert Boyle wrote about mineral waters and the possibility of imitating them chemically in 1685. Jan Baptista van Helmont (1579-1644) was the first to use the word gas to describe the vapor in the bubbles (which was carbon dioxide), in the early part of the seventeenth century. Joseph Black (1728-1799) used the term fixed air. Many investigations of the chemistry of mineral waters were reported in the bulletin of the Royal Society of London during the 1700s. American scientists who became interested in mineral waters beginning in the 1770s included Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) of Philadelphia...