82 M. Hess on the Scientific Labours of Richter. 



not only the air, but water and even earth still resisted the 

 efforts of three generations. 



However, George Stahl, a resident at Berlin, established 

 his theory of phlogiston which so long preserved its dominion 

 in the mind. Air was at last decomposed, and water also. 

 Lavoisier next analysed the phaenomenon of combustion ; and 

 from this period the new ideas became diffused; the im- 

 pulse was given, earth itself was analysed, and the number of 

 combinations was increased in a wonderful manner, without the 

 existence as yet of any known law to reduce this labyrinth to 

 order. Many persons still remember the manner in which 

 analyses were recorded ; everythingwas reduced to hundredths, 

 and thence resulted a confusion the shackles of which must 

 have been felt, in order to appreciate the system of notation 

 now used, at its just worth. It was Jeremias Benjamin Richter, 

 assessor at the office of mines at Berlin, who first gave 

 order to this chaos. You therefore would expect that the 

 highest esteem would invest his works, that his name was 

 revered. No; Richter was not appreciated, he was almost 

 forgotten whilst alive. He died at Berlin the 4th of May, 

 1807. The same year a celebrated author tells us, that being 

 employed in drawing up a treatise on chemistry, amongst 

 other works but little read he ran through those of Richter. 

 He was struck with the mass of light which he found there ; 

 but by a fatal chance he attributed to Wenzel, whose works 

 he must have read at the same time, the most beautiful result 

 obtained by Richter, that which was to serve for a foundation 

 to the whole edifice. In order to explain how it was that 

 Richter had been forgotten, the author to whom we allude 

 says that his results were not exact, which must have weak- 

 ened the impression the perusal of his works must have made, 

 and so much the more as Richter almost always took the carbo- 

 nate of alumina as the point of departure, a combination which 

 we know does not exist. Let us not be surprised, then, that 

 the most celebrated French authors repeat, on the authority 

 of a great name, the same errors concerning works which they 

 have not read ; we see, for example, the author of the Leqons 

 sur la Philosophic Chimique explain things in the same way, 

 and reduce the merit of Richter almost to nothing. " Can you 

 believe," says he, '* that in establishing his doctrines he nearly 

 always takes the carbonate of alumina as the point of depart- 

 ure ?" In short, Richter is there reproached with having too 

 much obscured the questions upon which Wenzel had begun to 

 throw light *. 



[* Our own countryman Dr. Wollaston, it would appear, justly appre- 

 ciated the labours of Richter : see the paper explaining his "Synoptic Scale 

 of Chemical Equivalents" in the Philosophical Transactions for 1814, p. 3, 4. 

 —Edit.] 



