Chemistry Books

INTRODUCTORY To the following Treatise. O give the Reader an account, Why the following Treatise is suffer’d to pass abroad so maim’d and imperfect, I must inform him that ’tis now long since, that to gratify an ingenious Gentleman, I set down some of the Reasons that kept me from fully acquiescing either in the Peripatetical, or in the Chymical Doctrine, of the Material Principles of mixt Bodies.... more...

LETTER I My dear Sir, The influence which the science of chemistry exercises upon human industry, agriculture, and commerce; upon physiology, medicine, and other sciences, is now so interesting a topic of conversation everywhere, that it may be no unacceptable present to you if I trace in a few familiar letters some of the relations it bears to these various sciences, and exhibit for you its actual... more...

In venturing to offer to the public, and more particularly to the female sex, an Introduction to Chemistry, the author, herself a woman, conceives that some explanation may be required; and she feels it the more necessary to apologise for the present undertaking, as her knowledge of the subject is but recent, and as she can have no real claims to the title of chemist. On attending for the first time... more...

PREFACE In offering this book to teachers of elementary chemistry the authors lay no claim to any great originality. It has been their aim to prepare a text-book constructed along lines which have become recognized as best suited to an elementary treatment of the subject. At the same time they have made a consistent effort to make the text clear in outline, simple in style and language, conservatively... more...

Hoffman, in one of his observations, gives the history of a powder called magnesia alba, which had long been used and esteemed as a mild and tasteless purgative; but the method of preparing it was not generally known before he made it public. It was originally obtained from a liquor called the mother of nitre, which is produced in the following manner: Salt-petre is separated from the brine which first... more...

THE PREFACE. One reason for the present publication has been the favourable reception of those of my Observations on different kinds of air, which were published in the Philosophical Transactions for the year 1772, and the demand for them by persons who did not chuse, for the sake of those papers only, to purchase the whole volume in which they were contained. Another motive was the additions to my... more...

I. THE CONSTITUTION OF NATURE. [Footnote: 'Fortnightly Review,' 1865, vol. iii. p. 129.] WE cannot think of space as finite, for wherever in imagination we erect a boundary, we are compelled to think of space as existing beyond it. Thus by the incessant dissolution of limits we arrive at a more or less adequate idea of the infinity of space. But, though compelled to think of space as... more...

INTRODUCTION. That the phenomena of vegetation are dependent on certain chemical changes occurring in the plant, by which the various elements of its food are elaborated and converted into vegetable matter, was very early recognised by chemists; and long before the correct principles of that science were established, Van Helmont maintained that plants derived their nourishment from water, while Sir... more...

The very high character of Mr Lavoisier as a chemical philosopher, and the great revolution which, in the opinion of many excellent chemists, he has effected in the theory of chemistry, has long made it much desired to have a connected account of his discoveries, and of the new theory he has founded upon the modern experiments written by himself. This is now accomplished by the publication of his... more...

I THREE PERIODS OF PROGRESS The story of Robinson Crusoe is an allegory of human history. Man is a castaway upon a desert planet, isolated from other inhabited worlds—if there be any such—by millions of miles of untraversable space. He is absolutely dependent upon his own exertions, for this world of his, as Wells says, has no imports except meteorites and no exports of any kind. Man has no wrecked... more...