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Updated: July 16, 2025
Lavoisier, the French chemist, states, that in a theatre, from the commencement to the end of the play, the oxygen or vital air is diminished in the proportion of from 27 to 21, or nearly one fourth; and consequently is in the same proportion less fit for respiration, than it was before.
Such expressions as "dephlogisticated" and "phlogisticated" would obviously have little meaning to a generation who were no longer to believe in the existence of phlogiston. It was appropriate that a revolution in chemical thought should be accompanied by a corresponding revolution in chemical names, and to Lavoisier belongs chiefly the credit of bringing about this revolution.
The rules, composed of platina and copper, which LAVOISIER and BORDA imagined for measuring bases, without having occasion to calculate the effect of dilatation, are a singular invention, and greatly surpass what RAMSDEN made for the bases measured in England. LAPLACE has discovered in the Moon inequalities with which we were not acquainted.
Lavoisier, by heating mercury to a high temperature in a close vessel containing air, found that the mercury increased in weight and became what was then called red precipitate, while the air, on being examined after the experiment, proved to have lost weight, and to have become incapable of supporting life or combustion.
Lavoisier also recognised that certain definite substances could be divided into things simpler than themselves, but that other substances refused to undergo simplification by division into two or more unlike portions.
Laplace and Monge are even "automatons," so many calculating machines; Lavoisier, "reputed father of every discovery causing a sensation in the world, has not an idea of his own;" he steals from others without comprehending them, and "changes his system as he changes his shoes." Fourcroy, his disciple and horn-blower, is of still thinner stuff.
These discoveries prepared the way for the illustrious Frenchman, Lavoisier, who first approached the problem of fermentation with a complete conception of the nature of the work to be done.
I have given a free rendering of Lavoisier's words. In these words Lavoisier defines the chemical conception of elements; since his time an element is "the actual term whereat chemical analysis has arrived," it is that which "with our present knowledge we cannot sub-divide"; and, as a working hypothesis, the notion of element has no wider meaning than this.
"My patient, frightened by the cries of his animalcules, wanted to stop the operation; but I went on regardless of his remonstrances; telling him that those evil animals were already gnawing at his bones. He made a sudden movement of resistance, not understanding that what I did was for his good, and my knife slipped aside, entered my own body, and " "He is stupid," said Lavoisier.
The difference between these weights, namely, 3 grains, was accounted for by Lavoisier as due to the solvent action of the water on the glass apparatus wherein it had been distilled, and on the glass basin wherein it had been evaporated to dryness.
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