phlogiston instantly revives dead metals-restoring them to life

An example of a historical scientific idea now recognised as an alternative conception,

"Phlogiston 'explained' many facts. Phlogiston was the same in one metal as in another, as well as in all burnable bodies. When metals were heated or burned they changed into powders or calces, as they were called. Why? Because they surrendered their fire, or phlogiston, to the air. When, however, charcoal, an inflammable substance rich in phlogiston, was added to the calx, the metallic properties were instantly restored. In a similar way phlogiston explained one of the most common of all chemical changes-the rusting of iron. For what was rust, if not iron minus its phlogiston? Add phlogiston to the rust in the form of charcoal, and lustrous metallic iron is re-formed. A simple enough explanation of the metallurgy of iron. Similarly, could not the white ash of pure tin be made to yield silvery tin again when phlogiston-rich coal was heated with it? The dead calx of any metal could be instantly restored to life by the addition of Belcher's all-powerful phlogiston. Paracelsus, himself, had written, 'Dead metals may be revived or reduced (reduzieren) to the state of metals by means of soot'."

Bernard Jaffe (1934) Crucibles. The Lives and Achievements of the Great Chemists. Jarrolds Publishers.

The idea of 'dead' metals being restored to life, being revived, is an extended metaphor

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