MEMOIRS 



OF 



®6e ititerara auK J)i)(loj5opfi(cal &ocUtSi of 

 inancj^e^Ur* 



MEMOIR OF DR. DALTON, 



AND 



HISTORY OF THE ATOMIC THEORY. 



[Read October 2nd, 1856.] 



CHAPTER I. 



In 1789, when this Society was first established, chemistry 

 could not with propriety be called a science, although 

 Lavoisier was attempting to decide on some of its more 

 prominent laws, and although Cavendish, Black, and Watt 

 had raised it from that position of obscurity to which the 

 meagreness of its results had so long condemned it, and 

 shewn to the world that it possessed a power, apparently 

 the highest in order. With the exception of these and a 

 very few others, the whole body of its students were under 

 the subjection of one of the strangest delusions that has ever 

 usurped the place of a law of nature. A body of men for 

 many ages at work had made so little progress towards 

 eliciting definite forms of thought upon the elements with which 

 they worked, that the theory of Phlogiston was regarded as 

 a great discovery ; a fanciful theory founded on an explanation 



