FOURCROY, AXTOINE FRANCOIS DE. 



FOURIER, CHARLES. 



branch of the family that had gradually sunk into poverty ; and hii 

 son, the subject of tba present article, grow up in the midst of it 

 When seven years old, ha loat hU mother, and his aUter preserved 

 him with difficulty till he went to college ; and in eonaeqaenoe of the 

 ill-treatment of a matter he left it at fourteen years of age, some- 

 what le-e informed than when he went to it. 



While uncertain what plan to follow, in order to obtain n livelihood, 

 the ndvioe of Vieq-d'Ayr, who waa a celebrated anatomist and a 

 friend of hi* father's, induced him to commence the study of medicine ; 

 and after racorrafully atmggling agaioat every kind of difficulty, ho 

 at Uat obtained the neoeuary qualiBcation to practiw in Paris. The 

 f.rat writing! of Fonrcroy did not evinca any peculiar predilection 

 f..r any particular branch of science ; he wrote upon natural history, 

 anatomy, and chemutry ; he published an ' Abridgment of the History 

 of InaeeU ; ' and a ' Description of the liursrc Muoonc of the Tendons ; ' 

 and in consequence of the celebrity which he acquired by the last- 

 mentioned performance, he wai admitted aa an Anatomist into the 

 Academy of Sciences in 1785. 



After the death of Haeqner, which happened in 1734, he succeeded 

 to the chair of professor of chemistry at. the Jardin du Hoi, and ho 

 continued there till his death, which took place twenty-five yean 

 afterwards He waa greatly admired for the eloquence with which he 

 delivered his lectures, and the writer of this article was a witness of 

 his great flow of language during a sitting of the Institute in 1802. 



In 1 795 he waa elected a member of tho National Convention, but 

 notwithstanding his reputation for eloquence, from prudential motives 

 he never opened his mouth in the Convention till after the death of 

 Robespierre. After the 9th Thermidor, when the nation was wearied 

 with destruction, and efforts were making to restore institutions 

 which had been overturned, Foureroy began to acquire influence, and 

 ho took an active part in whatever related to the establishment 

 of schools, whether of medicine, or for the purposes of general 

 instruction. Among those was the Polytechnic School, at which, as 

 already stated, he wag professor of chemistry ; and both as a member 

 of the Convention and of tho Council of Ancients, he was concerned 

 in the establishment of tho Institute and the Museum of Natural 

 History. 



The great exertions made by M. de Foureroy, aud the prodigious 

 activity which he displayed in the numerous situations which he 

 filled, gradually undermined his constitution ; he waa sensible of his 

 approaching death, and announced it to hi* friends as an event which 

 would speedily take place. On the 16th of December 1809, after 

 signing some despatches, bo suddenly exclaimed, "Je suis mort!" 

 and feu lifeless on the ground. 



In his 'History of Chemistry,' Dr. Thomson thus concludes his 

 notice of the works of Foureroy : " Notwithstanding the vast quantity 

 of papers which he pablUhed, it will be admitted, without dispute, 

 that the prodigious reputation which he enjoyed during his lifetime 

 was more owing to his eloquence than to his eminence as a chemist, 

 though even as a chemist he was far above mediocrity. He musi 

 have possessed an uncommon facility of writing. Vive successive 

 editions of his 'System of Chemistry' appeared, each of them gradually 

 increasing in size and value : the first being in two volumes and the 

 hut in ten. This hut edition be wrote in sixteen months : it contains 

 ranch valuable information, and donbtless contributed considerably to 

 the general diffusion of chemical knowledge. Its style is perhaps too 

 diffuse, and the spirit of generalising from particular aud often ill 

 authenticated facts, is carried to a vicious length. Perhaps the best 

 of all his productions is his ' Philosophy of Chemistry.' It is remark 

 able for its conciseness, iU perspicuity, aud tho neatness of its 

 arrangement. 



Besides these works, and the periodical publication entitled 'Le 

 Mddecin Eclaire",' of which he was the editor, there are above one 

 hundred and sixty papers on chemical subjects, with hit name attachec 

 to them, which appeared in the ' Memoirs ' of the Academy and of the 

 Institute; in the 'Annales de Chimie,' or the'Annales de Muice 

 I'lliitoirc Naturelle,' of which last work he waa the original projector 

 Many of these papers contained analyses, both animal, vegetable, am 

 mineral, of very considerable value. In most of them the name o 

 irlin is associated with his own as the author, and the genera 

 ii i< that the experiments were all made by Vauquelin, but tha 

 the papers themselves were drawn up by Fourcroy. There is one 

 merit at least to which Fourcrov is certainly entitled, and it is no small 

 on: be formed and brought forward Vauquclin, and proved to him 

 ever after a mort steady and indefatigable friend. 



It would serve little purpose to go over this long list of paper*. 

 Though they contributed essentially to tho progress of chemistry, ye 

 they exhibit but few of thoie striking discoveries which at once alte 

 the face of the science by throwing a flood of light on everything 

 around them. We shall niirely notice a few of what we consider hi 

 beat papers : 



' HeaicerUlned that the most common biliary calculi are compose! 

 of a substance similar to spermaceti. During the removal of the dead 

 bodlM from the burial ground of the Innocents at Paris, he discovered 

 that the bodies were converted into a fatty matter, which ho called 

 dinocire. It baa since been distinguished by the name of cholestrine, 

 has been shown to poawss properties different from those o 

 adipodrv aud spermaceti 



2. It is to him that we are indebted for the first knowledge of the 

 act, that the salts of magnesia and ammonia have the property of 



uniting together and forming double salts. 



3. His dissertation on the sulphate of mercury contain! some good 

 bservatioos. The sa'ue remark applies to his pajier on the action 

 f ammonia on the sulphate, nitrate, and muriate of mercury. He first 

 escribed the doable salts which ore formed. 



4. The analyses of urine would have been valuable had not almost 

 II tho facts contained in it been anticipated by a paper of Dr. Wollaston 

 mblished in the ' Philosophical Transactions.' It is to him that wo 

 re indebted for almost all the additions to our knowledge of calculi 

 iuce the publication of Scheele'a original paper on the subject 



5. We may mention the process of Fourcroy and Vanquelin for 

 obtaining pure barytes, by exposing nitrate of barytas to a red boat, 

 as a good one. They discovered the existence of phosphate of magnesia 



a tho bones, of phosphorus in the brain, and in the milts of fishes, and 

 a considerable quantity of saccharine matter in the bulb of tho common 

 onion, which, by undergoing a kind of spontaneous fermentation, was 

 converted into manna. 



In concluding, we may reainrk that his friendship, free from all 

 selfishness, for Vauquclin, coupled with the well-known fact of his 

 laving saved the lives of some men of merit, and among others of 

 )arcel, tends greatly to acquit Fourcroy of the disgraceful charge 

 which has been made against him of having contributed to tho death 

 >f the illustrious Lavoisier. This acquittal is rendered complete by 

 .he annexed declaration of Cuvier in hi* ' Eloge' of Fourcroy : " If, 

 n the rigorous researches which we have mode, we had found the 

 smallest proof of an atrocity so horrible, no human power could have 

 nduced us to sully our mouths with his Eloge, or to have pronoi 

 t within tho walls of this temple, which ought to be no less sacred to 

 lonour than to geniue." 



FOURIER, CHARLES, founder of tho system of communism 

 known as Fourierism, was born at Bisancnn, in Fr.inche-Comto, on 

 the 7th of April 1772 : he died at Paris on tho 10th of October 1837, 

 in his sixty-sixth year. He lived and died a bachelor. 



He was the son of Charles Fourier, a merchant and magistrate (jugo 

 consuhure) of the city of Besoncon, who died when Fourier was in 

 his ninth year, leaving a widow with a family of four children, and a 

 property of about 80001. Fourier was the youngest child and the 

 only son. After completing his studies at Besincon and Dijon, Fourier 

 was placed in a commercial house ut Rouen, where he remained a short 

 time, and then removed to Lyou in the year 1790, whon the French 

 revolution was commencing. It was a most eventful peri '1. Niw 

 philosophies and theories were almost annually tried experimentally, 

 and found deficient, notwithstanding their plausibility. Fourier, 

 though young, was led to think of principles and causes; social evils 

 aud their remedies ; the horrors of convulsive anarchy, and all the 

 aberrations of philosophy which then distracted his unhappy country. 

 He reflected long and deeply on these subjects in the midst of his 

 commercial occupations, and experience confirmed him in the opinion 

 he early formed that something must bo radically wrong to cause so 

 much injustice aud antagonism in society. Ht> mode himself acquainted 

 with the principles and theories of all the leading parties. From them 

 he turned to real science in its various branches ; travelled much to 

 gain experience; and laboured constantly with various feeling* of 

 alternate fear and hope, to discover the CUUPO of social misery, and an 

 efficient remedy. By the decree of the National Convention, August 

 23, 17U3, Fourier was compelled to enter the army, aud was d. 

 into the eighth ragimeut of Chasseurs a Cheval, which joined the army 

 of the Rhine and Moselle, where Fourier remained about two years ; 

 not without profiting by all that could be learned of scientific 

 evolutions, as his writings indicate, when treating of gymnastic exer- 

 cises and the disciplines of education. He also paid great attention to 

 the theory of music during his connection with the army; but his 

 health began to sink, and he obtained his release in January 1795. In 

 1799 be was employed in a commercial house at Marseille, and he had 

 to direct the operation of submerging a considerable quantity of corn 

 by night in order to avoid the vengeance of tho people, who were 

 sufleriug from scarcity of bread in the surrounding country. Tho 

 wheat which was thus thrown into the sen at midnight had been 

 spoiled by being kept too long. The scarcity of food bad been so 

 general in the country that the poor inhabitants of many parts were 

 suffering from famine and disease when this occurred, and Fourier 

 was more impressed than ever with the awful state of social and 

 commercial and political disorder which deranged tho general economy 

 of civilised society. His mind had been already fixed upon tho problem 

 for about ten years, but the first discovery which he aud his followers 

 regarded as one of general importance and undoubted certainty was 

 made soon after this remarkable event in 1799. 



In 1800 ho passed some months in Paris, and then returned to 

 Lyon, where he published articles in the newspapers, which wcni 

 noticed by the government for their acuteneas and range of 

 thought. One of those articles, published in the ' Bulletin do Lyon,' 

 in 1803, and headed 'Continental Triumvirate,' attracted the 

 attention of Napoleon I., who caused inquiries to be made about tha 

 author, but nothing further occurred. Fourier had to work out the 

 details of his plans, and years elapsed before they were sufficiently 

 mature for publication. Meanwhile he was employed as a commercin 1 



