164 HISTORY OF CHEMISTRY. 



Views similar to those of Wenzel were also pub- 

 lished by Jeremiah Benjamin Richter 2 in 1792, in 

 his Anfangsgrilnde der Stb'ckyometrie, oder Mess- 

 kunst Chymischer Elemente, (Principles of the 

 Measure of Chemical Elements,) in which he took 

 the law, just stated, of reciprocal proportions, as 

 the basis of his researches, and determined the 

 numerical quantities of the common bases and acids 

 which would saturate each other. It is clear that, 

 by these steps, the two first of our three rules may 

 be considered as fully developed. The change of 

 general views which was at this time going on, 

 probably prevented chemists from feeling so much 

 interest as they might have done otherwise, in these 

 details ; the French and English chemists, in parti- 

 cular, were fully employed with their own researches 

 and controversies. 



Thus the rules which had already been pub- 

 lished by Wenzel and Richter had attracted so little 

 notice, that we can hardly consider Mr. Dalton as 

 having been anticipated by those writers, when, in 

 1803, he began to communicate his views on the 

 chemical constitution of bodies ; these views being 

 such as to include both these two rules in their 

 most general form, and further, the rule, at that 

 time still more new to chemists, of multiple pro- 

 portions. He conceived bodies as composed of 

 atoms of their constituent elements, grouped, either 

 one and one, or one and two, or one and three, and 



2 Thomson, Hist. Chem. vol. ii. p. 283. 



