230 Scientific Labors and Character of 



of it, he had the satisfaction of seeing nearly- all of them on his 

 side. 



To enable such of our readers as may not have had opportunity 

 to understand the nature of this controversy, it may be mentioned, 

 that the great Swedish Chemist, Scheele, who discovered chlorine, 

 supposed it to be muriatic acid deprived of its inflammable principle, 

 and hence denominated it dephlogisticated marine acid. This was 

 in tlie year 1774. In 1785, BerdioUet, one of the most distinguished 

 of the French chemists, afterwards subjected this substance to nu- 

 merous experiments, and concluded it to be a compound of muriatic 

 acid and oxygen, and hence named it oxy-muriatic acid. In 1809, 

 Gay-Lussac and Thenard published a number of experiments on it, 

 in which they intimated the possibility that it was a simple body, al- 

 though they adhered to the opinion of Berthollet. Such was the 

 state of opinion respecting oxy-muriatic acid, when Davy began his 

 experiments upon it in 1810. These led him to adopt and pub- 

 licly to assert the opinion, that oxy-muriatic acid, (or chlorine* as 

 he proposed to call it,) is a simple body, analogous in many of its prop- 

 erties and relations to oxygen ; and that muriatic acid itself is a com- 

 pound of chlorine and hydrogen, as sulphuric acid is a compound of 

 oxygen and sulphur. 



The simple enunciation of this doctrine, does not indicate to those 

 who are but little acquainted with chemical science, the reason why 

 chemists have attached so much importance to it ; nor would they 

 perhaps consider it as a point worth disputing about, whether chlorine 

 is a simple or a compound body. But two consequences resulted 

 from the doctrine asserted by Davy, which went to subvert the very 

 pillars of chemical science, although they were supposed to be im- 

 movably fixed by Lavoisier. For if chlorine contained no oxygen, 

 but is, like that, an independent supporter of combustion, and like that 

 also is capable of forming acids with combustible bases, then the doc- 

 trines of combusUon and acidification established by Lavoisier, must 

 be given up, since here is a case in which combustion and acidifica- 

 tion both take place without the presence of oxygen. A single ex- 

 periment which is found to be incompatible with a received doctrine, 

 is frequently sufficient entirely to subvert that doctrine ; and such 

 were the experiments in question. They required a great part of 



* A new name obviously became necessary, because the name oxy-muriatic acid 

 implied that it M'as an acid, and that it was composed of oxygen and muriatic acid, 

 both of which positions vvere now in controversy. 



