Traité élémentaire de chimie, présenté dans un ordre nouveau et d'après les découvertes modernes
Paris: Chez Cuchet, 1793.
Hardcover. Very good. Second edition. Two octavo volumes, pp. xliv, 322; viii, 327, complete with 2 folding tables and 13 folding engraved plates. A very good or better set in a modern quarter-leather binding, with light scattered foxing. Printing and the Mind of Man #238 (referring to the first edition, published in 1789): "This book accomplished a chemical revolution....[Lavoisier] finally established the modern conception of elements as substances which cannot be further decomposed. His Elementary Treatise on Chemistry contains a list of twenty-three such elements, which are still recognized today....Having proved the analogy between combustion and respiration, Lavoisier was able to explain many cyclical processes in animal and vegetable life and to carry out the earliest biochemical experiments. One of the most important consequences of Lavoisier's work was the establishment of the concept of the conservation of matter. Compound bodies were now found to represent the combined weight of the simple bodies of which they are composed, while, when those simple bodies are withdrawn, they have the same weight as what was put into them; i.e., matter remains constant throughout all chemical change. Lavoisier's book put an end to the phlogiston theory and the surviving remnants of alchemy."
Item #22560
Price: $800.00