The plan came to nothing, and next year Becher was again busy at Vienna, trying to transmute Danube sand into gold, and writing his Theses chemicae veritatem transmutationis metallorum evincentes.
The views of Becher on the composition of substances mark little essential advance on those of the two preceding centuries, and the three elements or principles of salt, mercury and sulphur reappear as the vitrifiable, the mercurial and the combustible earths.
Georg Ernst Stahl, following in some measure the views held by Johann Joachim Becher, as, for instance, that all combustibles contain a " sulphur " (which notion is itself of older date than Becher's terra pinguis), regarded all substances as capable of resolution into two components,.
Somewhat similar views were promoted by Becher, who named the principle acidum primogenium, and held that it was composed of the Paracelsian elements " earth " and "water."
Johann Becher, in 1669, first found that alcohol was formed during the fermentation of solutions of sugar; he distinguished also between fermentation and putrefaction.