EARLY AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETIES. 823 



Dr. Adam Seybert (died 1825) was a pioneer in air analysis, 

 having made twenty-seven analyses of the air by eudiometric 

 methods on a voyage across the Atlantic in 1797. He came to the 

 conclusion that the sea exerted purifying power over the air. 



Benjamin Silliman, at the time of the founding of the Colum- 

 bian Chemical Society, was forty years of age and had held the 

 chair of chemistry in Yale College for ten years. The American 

 Journal of Science was not begun until 1818. Silliman's name is 

 a household word among us, and no eulogium is here needed to 

 magnify his position in the scientific world. 



The prominence of medical men on the roll of members is evi- 

 dent and readily explained. Before the days of schools of science, 

 and before colleges devoted a portion of their curricula to scien- 

 tific studies, almost the only training in science received by 

 American youth was in the medical schools. The chairs of natu- 

 ral history and of the physical sciences were almost exclusively 

 held by physicians whose education more nearly qualified them 

 for teaching these branches of knowledge than the graduates of 

 the classical courses customary in all colleges. To elevate the 

 standard of membership in the Columbian Chemical Society a 

 number of distinguished foreigners were enrolled. These in- 

 cluded such men as Berthollet, Gay-Lussac, John Dalton, Sir 

 Humphry Davy, and Dr. Wollaston, but no representatives of 

 Germany or Sweden, which presumably indicates that at this 

 early date communication and exchange of courtesies with Ger- 

 many and northern Europe were less common than with France 

 and England. 



The society issued in 1813 one volume of Memoirs, containing 

 twenty-six essays by ten writers on a great variety of topics 

 original, speculative, and practical. Eight of these papers are 

 from the pen of Dr. Thomas D. Mitchell. In his Remarks on the 

 Phlogistic and Antiphlogistic Systems of Chemistry he supports 

 the Lavoisierian theory of combustion, stating that there is " no 

 necessity for a principle of inflammability." He cites the experi- 

 ment of Woodhouse, who obtained an inflammable air by heating 

 charcoal with scales of iron, both being free from water; and 

 points out that Cruikshank, of Woolwich, demonstrated that the 

 inflammable gas thus obtained is gaseous oxide of carbon (carbon 

 monoxide), discovered by Priestley in 1799 and combustible al- 

 though containing no hydrogen. He compares combustion with 

 neutralization of an acid and base, and says, " Inflammation and 

 acidity are effects resulting from the action of relative causes and 

 not attributable to a single agent or principle." 



Dr. Mitchell, in his paper Remarks on Heat, objects to the 

 term " latent heat " and to Dr. Black's theories. In a paper enti- 

 tled On Muriatic and Oxy muriatic Acids he attacks the views of 



